NEW YORK — Tyus Battle turned around to look inside from the perimeter and hollered, “Hell no!”

Syracuse’s sophomore guard had seen Wake Forest big man Doral Moore rising up for a jumper from the left short corner with a hand in his face, and he knew his team couldn’t allow that sort of look. Moore missed strong. On the next WFU possession, another Demon Deacons big man, this time Olivier Sarr, took off inside for a dunk. Again, Battle screamed, “Hell no!” and Sarr threw it out of bounds.

Every time Wake Forest tried to make a run Tuesday night in the Barclays Center, No. 11-seed Syracuse (20-12, 8-10 Atlantic Coast) crushed it in an eventual 73-64 victory over No. 14-seed Wake Forest (11-20, 4-12). This was the first-ever ACC tournament victory for the Orange and snapped a four-game losing streak on this court.

Despite a Wake Forest push toward the end of the first half, it was so lopsided late that both teams sent in their walk-ons.

The win sent Syracuse into a second-round matchup with No. 6-seeded North Carolina on Wednesday night at 9 p.m. at the Barclays Center.

Here are three quick reactions to Syracuse’s win.

Ma-wrecked

It started with a jumper from the high post.

It was the shot fans in the Carrier Dome have urged Dolezaj to put up all season. It was the shot Boeheim has exasperatedly motioned him to take. It was one of the Dome’s main frustrations during Syracuse’s Saturday win over Clemson, because when Dolezaj got the ball in the high-post, he, for some reason, refused to shoot. He hadn’t gotten an attempt off against Boston College and the Orange desperately needed supplementary scorers.

Well, Syracuse got just that Tuesday. The freshman forward finished with a career-high 20 points.

Dolezaj drilled one from the high-post, but then he fell into a funk. He threw the ball away, missed his follow-up elbow jumper and picked up a bad foul. Then he took a shot in the face from Moore’s arm and transformed.

After that play, which had Dolezaj holding his head for several possessions afterward, he finished an and-1 despite getting bodied by two larger defenders. He tear-dropped in a floater and a wave of orange bench players emulated his shot. He finished at the rim and, once, when a pass from Chukwu deflected off a defender’s hands, he snared the ball from midair and jammed.

Methodically, Syracuse dissected Wake Forest’s zone and bludgeoned the Demon Deacons into submission. No one played a more important role than Dolezaj. With the game winding down, and with the Orange’s lead stretched to nearly 20, Dolezaj flushed a Chukwu pass that essentially banged the gavel on Wake Forest’s fate.

As he let go of the rim, Dolezaj broke the blank, impassive face he’d worn nearly every minute of this season. He appeared to yell over to the same bench that had egged him on earlier, a window that closed as quickly as it opened. On this night, on this stage, the young, lightly recruited, Flat Stanley-thin foreigner played his best game of the season.

Window shopper

One of Syracuse’s biggest concerns coming into a matchup with the Demon Deacons was the capability of WFU center, 7-foot-1, 280-pound Doral Moore. One of the nation’s best rebounders on the offensive and defensive glass posed a significant matchup problem with the Orange’s depleted frontcourt.

On Saturday, Chukwu seemed to be running on almost one leg, and left-knee tendinitis has limited backup center Bourama Sidibe to playing just a few minutes per game since late November.

But Moore never actualized the threat Syracuse perceived him to be. Chukwu grabbed a game-high nine rebounds and Moore only grabbed three. That could be, in part, because Wake Forest relies so heavy on the outside shots, which tend to have longer rebounds, but it also seemed as though Syracuse executed its game-plan against him by having Chukwu find him to box out nearly every time a shot went up. To supplement a struggling offensive day, Brissett chipped in eight rebounds as well.

Syracuse also tried to manipulate Moore away from the paint by sending high ball screens with Chukwu even if they had no intention of passing to the roll off the pick. Wake Forest briefly countered that action with the zone, where Moore stayed put, but after the Orange broke the Demon Deacons’ new scheme in the second half, he, like his team, was toast.

Anything you can do…

It seemed like Syracuse couldn’t miss. Not from the free-throw line. Not from the mid-range. Not from beyond the perimeter. On the other side, Wake Forest missed its first seven 3-pointers and couldn’t hit a thing inside the arc, either.

Dolezaj turned and hit the high-post jumper everyone in the crowd has wanted him to all season. Battle stole-and-slammed a lazy Wake Forest pass. Brissett spun in a reverse layup. Even when the Orange were off-target, things ended up OK. Midway through the first half, Chukwu vacuumed the offensive glass and finished a put-back.

Then, the Demon Deacons went zone. And Syracuse seemed to solve that too. On the first possession against the new look, SU’s Frank Howard lobbed an alley-oop to Chukwu, who thundered it down. After that, though, Syracuse froze over.

The Orange generated just five points over the final eight minutes of the first half and its lead, once at 16 points, whittled down to as few as four and finished with a halftime count of 30-24. It was eerily similar to the situation Syracuse faced in Durham, North Carolina, last week when Duke zoned Syracuse into just 44 points on offense. But the Demon Deacons didn’t have the length and athleticism down low the Blue Devils did.

In the locker room, Boeheim seemed to steady his team. It was apparent from the first check of the second stanza that the Orange had returned to the floor to reenact the script from the beginning portion of the first half. Battle drilled a jumper. Howard, a floater. Dolezaj, another jumper.

Whatever once bothered them no longer did, and the Orange picked up a historic win.

Published on March 6, 2018 at 9:25 pm

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