LOUISVILLE, Ky. — In the midst of all the chaos, Frank Howard glimpsed something out of the corner of his eyes.

He was on the left wing, a step behind the arc, with Louisville’s Quentin Snider in his grill.

Eleven minutes remained and Syracuse was doing what it hadn’t all season: Stiff-arm a hard-charging Atlantic Coast Conference opponent to maintain a lead on the road. But now, Louisville had cut the lead from 12 to five. The KFC Yum! Center crowd sensed the Orange about to collapse, and thundered the loudest it had all night over the speakers blasting Wolfmother’s “The Joker & The Thief” at full volume.

Then, there, across the court and on the end of the bench, Howard spied a 5-foot-8, 150-pound walk-on stand up. Ray Featherston flashed his right hand in air, with his middle, ring and pinky fingers extended. Featherston wanted a 3.

Howard didn’t hesitate. After the shot swished, a Louisville student, who had been jeering all night, ripped off his snapback hat in frustration and bellowed, “That man is pure ice!” Howard held up his own right hand, putting his index finger up to his lips as he stared into the crowd.

“I did the little shush,” Howard said. “When you on the road, you got to tell the crowd to calm down.”

If anyone wanted a reason to believe in this Syracuse team, they got it on Monday night.

Syracuse (16-8, 5-6 ACC) moved the ball on offense as well as it has in conference play and battled through foul trouble and a lack of depth to stave off Louisville (16-8, 6-5), 78-73, for its most important victory of the season. The first ACC road victory over a team not named Pittsburgh came on ESPN’s Big Monday, in front of a national TV audience the Orange has seldom played in front of this season. The Cardinals’ strength, and its strength at home, made this a win the Orange can star on its NCAA Tournament resume come March.

“This is our best win in a long time,” Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said. “… It’s a lot easier to win a game when you score more than 50 points.”

The difference in SU’s offense against Louisville compared to the Orange’s past four games was that the Orange hit shots Monday night. SU’s 47.2 percent shooting from the field (25-for-53) and 46.2 percent from the 3-point line (6-for-13) are its second-best marks of this calendar year. The team defied expectations just by being in the game and nearly entered halftime with as many points (39) as it finished with on Saturday against Virginia (44).

Those makes worked in tandem with secondary drives to soften and stretch a defense that Kenpom.com ranks 15th in the nation for defensive efficiency. Syracuse sinking outside shots forced defenders to respect the jumper, said guard Tyus Battle, and that created more spaces inside to drive, because they had to also worry about the kick-out. This eliminated the pack-the-paint scheme that drove Syracuse to its worst offensive performances of the season in the last three games.

When asked if Syracuse had more room to operate in the paint than in its past few games, Howard almost laughed and said, “No question.”

He added: “We go through stretches where we go through fatigue, take plays off. Tonight, we moved the ball very well, created a lot of space for one another. … When you’re predictable, teams can shorten the court on you and the last three or four games, that’s what happened. We forced tough jump shots and leave all five guys to hang in the paint. We spaced ’em out today.”

The Orange also capitalized on a sloppy Louisville unit that turned the ball over nine times in the first half and 11 times overall. In total, SU scored 20 points off turnovers compared to UofL’s nine.

One of the Orange’s biggest turnovers came just before halftime, partly the product of a short bench that forced players into situations they haven’t been in all season.

About 10 minutes into the game, each of the three forwards and center Paschal Chukwu — Syracuse’s only available big man because freshman Bourama Sidibe again sat because of lingering left knee tendinitis — picked up two fouls. Then, with under a minute to go in the half, Marek Dolezaj was whistled for his third.

Boeheim subbed in junior transfer guard Braedon Bayer, who started the season without a scholarship and has played three minutes this season after transferring from Division III Grinnell College. On his first offensive possession, Syracuse held for the final shot and, as it has all season, the Orange put the ball into Battle’s hands at the top of the key and cleared out.

Battle drove, then in the middle of shooting a floater from the left of the free-throw line, flipped it out to Bayer, who tried to drive until a whistle stopped him. The referee called a travel.

Seconds later, the Cardinals’ Darius Perry hit a buzzer-beating 3 just beyond the halfcourt line to knock the wind out of the Orange headed into the break. Bayer never re-entered.

The dearth of depth strained Syracuse, which played the entire second half with six players available — half of whom picked up their fourth fouls with at least six minutes to go. Boeheim avoided forward Matt Moyer and rode with his five, even after they made costly turnovers or took shots that made him put his hands on his head. Louisville countered by attacking the interior because it knew Syracuse was in foul trouble.

The Cardinals clawed, eating away at Syracuse’s lead. It was 10, then UofL cut it to eight with a tip-in. To six with a high-post jumper. To four with another. To two with a pair of free throws earned after forcing the ball inside.

“Coach told us how important this game was,” forward Oshae Brissett said. “We knew it was going to be big and they were going to come at us.”

On this night, at least, Syracuse was ready. The Cardinals never got closer.

Inexplicably, UofL stopped going inside and settled for shots beyond the arc. None of Syracuse’s players knew why they stopped doing that, and each said the Orange did not change its defense late.

Then, Battle did what he had done all game and hit a crucial jumper to give the Orange a six-point cushion with less than 90 seconds to play.

“We were patient and it came down to Tyus making that jump shot in the lane to give us some space,” Boeheim said. “It was a great spot.

“They got it inside, but we had just enough to hold on.”

Published on February 5, 2018 at 9:25 pm

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