Finally, a fast start. Finally, momentum before intermission. The Carrier Dome roared when Syracuse took a 16-point lead in the first half over a ranked opponent. Everything that didn’t go right last week clicked: ball movement and dribble penetration against Louisville’s pack-line, tight defense. Oshae Brissett’s bounce-back. A balanced offense that was absent week ago in a blowout loss to unranked-North Carolina State.

On Wednesday night at the Carrier Dome, Syracuse played as well as it has in the past four weeks, dictating tempo and forcing the Cardinals to resort to outside shots. No. 18 Louisville (18-9, 9-5 Atlantic Coast) created open 3-pointers. Some were contested. But they shot a dismal 21.4 from deep against the 2-3 zone in SU’s (18-8, 9-4) 69-49 victory, the Orange’s third Top 25 win of the season. Junior guard Elijah Hughes led SU with 18 points, while Brissett added 16, Buddy Boeheim had 14 and Tyus Battle had 11 in front of 22,988 fans.

“Our defense was really good right from the beginning,” SU head coach Jim Boeheim said. “I thought we covered their shooters and made them take tough shots inside. At the end of the day, in the middle there, they missed probably five or six shots that they would normally make. We took advantage of that.”

The victory bolsters Syracuse’s NCAA Tournament resume, improving the Orange to 9-4 — their fastest route to nine conference wins in five years. For Syracuse, the first two ranked wins came on the road, at Ohio State and at Duke. The latest came Wednesday night, three days ahead of a rematch against the top-ranked Blue Devils in the Carrier Dome. The win over UofL doesn’t lessen the magnitude of the expected record-breaking crowd for Saturday, but it does boost SU’s NCAA Tournament hopes and position in the ACC standings.

With a week of rest — “it really helped us,” Boeheim said — SU looked to regroup after a 73-58 loss at North Carolina State, against whom the Orange shot 35 percent from the field and just 20 percent from deep. Offensive stagnancy doomed SU. But players turned the time off into an advantage. “I forgot about it as soon as it ended, honestly,” Brissett said of the NCSU loss. Against UofL, instead, the Orange came out firing, and hit shots one after the other. They shot just 38.6 percent, but they won the rebounding battle and limited the Cardinals’ second chances.

With five contests left on the slate — three against ranked teams and two on the road — the Orange won’t have an easy road toward wins. “The gauntlet,” as senior point guard Frank Howard put it, has begun in earnest. But the first night of the rest of SU’s season didn’t look anything like a week prior because the Orange’s ability to dominate a Louisville team that once held a 23-point lead on No. 1 Duke shows SU’s progression since its loss at NCSU. It was a night when SU fans felt comfortable enough to put on their coats and leave — with five minutes remaining, the Orange up 20.

“We knew there was a lot of gaps in their press,” Brissett said, “so we wanted to get the open guys into the middle and down the sideline.”

The extra rest benefited Battle and Hughes, whose production had diminished in recent weeks. Hughes averaged 15.2 points per game through SU’s first 19 contests, but just 8.5 points over his last six. He shot 4 for 12 against Louisville.

Louisville’s pack-line defense didn’t prevent Syracuse from dribble penetration. While the Orange couldn’t attack Virginia Tech’s similarly up-tight defense, they found crevices against UofL. High ball screens setup openings. Shooters caught passes on the perimeter in rhythm. Hughes was one of several beneficiaries. Behind a remodeled, new-look offense SU commanded a 35-23 halftime lead. SU had hit 8-of-9 free throws and scored six fast-break points Battle scored his 1,540th career point, surpassing SU associate head coach Adrian Autry to become the program’s 20th-highest scorer of all time.

Despite a sluggish start to the second half, the Orange kept plodding along, and the shooting bug that swarmed SU last week kept smacking the Cardinals in the face. Passes through the high post, then to the baseline cutter, were there, but SU had sealed off any room for inside moves when UofL bigs caught the ball near the basket.

Out of a Louisville timeout, Battle wasted no time to take a chance. With SU up 10, he gambled and jumped in a passing lane. He intercepted a lazy pass and dunked at the other end, all by himself. Louisville head coach Chris Mack placed his hands on his hips and stared straight ahead.

Shortly thereafter, Syracuse pushed its lead back to 17 with a Buddy Boeheim 3. The building rocked. A minute later, Boeheim stepped into a 3 from just off the top of the key. All net. SU’s lead had swelled to 18, and the Orange were well on their way to their fourth win in their last six games.

“We moved the ball well,” Boeheim said. “Marek (Dolezaj) was huge for us on defense. Oshae was playing like he did last year and just got going.”

In the postgame locker room last week at NC State, while Howard was packing his belongings, the room fell quiet. He was one of the last players yet to walk out toward the team bus. He summarized the loss and SU’s state: “You can let a loss like this drag on you and mess up your next two games,” he said, “or you can build on it and come back strong.”

Syracuse chose the latter in a double-digit win, an outcome that functioned as a reminder of the type of team the Orange can be. Time and again, Boeheim has emphasized that Syracuse doesn’t need a better plan. He’s echoed several iterations of the phrase, “We have a lot of work to do,” throughout the season, and Wednesday represented the strongest example in recent weeks that SU had done it.

Published on February 20, 2019 at 9:03 pm

Contact Matthew: [email protected] | @MatthewGut21