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From the left wing, near the sideline where Wake Forest’s bench started to glance up the court, Buddy Boeheim pulled the ball across his chest and searched for a way to spark Syracuse’s transition offense. The 2-3 zone had just produced its eighth turnover of the second half — this one occurring when Isaiah Mucius attempted an entrance pass into the high post and Buddy tipped it away — and that allowed the Orange to build their lead up to 19. And Cole Swider, sprinting near the Demon Deacons’ 3-point line, found the lane Buddy was looking for.

Buddy swung the ball across the court to Swider in stride as he crossed into the Wake Forest paint, and the SU forward raced toward the basket with a pair of defenders pivoting for a last-second recovery. But Swider beat both of them to the net, slamming the ball through the basket with two hands and turning the turnover into two easy points. He immediately turned those open hands into fists and roared as he stomped his way back up the court — clenching his fists, his biceps, his entire body after the dunk, while Steve Forbes, Wake Forest’s head coach, attracted the attention of a referee for a timeout.

“You need all five guys to make the right rotations in the zone,” Buddy said. “You need them to keep guys in front and make deflections know where shooters are, and that’s what we did tonight. We moved as a unit, moved as one, and we did a great job knowing our responsibilities.”

In a season of defensive lapses, where one always followed the other and never quite stopped, the sparks created by SU’s zone in the second half on Saturday allowed its offensive burst, highlighted by 57% shooting from the field, to prevent any push from the Demon Deacons in a 94-72 win. The Orange, ranked 14th in the Atlantic Coast Conference in team defense and 223rd nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency, per KenPom, forced 17 Wake Forest (17-5, 6-4 ACC) turnovers overall, but it was the 11 in the final 20 minutes, along with the 19 points that Syracuse scored off those miscues, that paired with Buddy’s 30 points and Swider’s 18 to lift SU (10-11, 4-6) to just its third win in the last nine games.

“It was just a really good offensive and defensive performance, and we haven’t had that,” Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said. “We haven’t been able to put that together this year. It was a good thing to see.”

The win temporarily stopped Syracuse’s season from sinking while providing a tease of what could’ve been had sturdy, reliable defense been present instead of evaporating double-digit leads. After Syracuse’s season reached its worst point on Tuesday against Pittsburgh, when the Orange dropped lower in the conference by losing to one of the few teams still stationed beneath them in the standings, it found a way to inch back up.

If Syracuse wins games, what happened in the first half will often serve as the type — high-scoring outputs, with an ebb and flow favoring strong offense — since the Orange spent their first 20 games proving they can’t win because of the 2-3 zone. A similar trend started to unfold after the first two possessions, but this time, unlike the last two games, the Orange found a way to match the Demon Deacons’ pace. Both Syracuse and Wake Forest shot 50% or better in the opening frame, and the two teams combined to shoot 12-for-25 on 3-pointers.

The Orange jumped out to an early lead, keyed by Jesse Edwards scoring the first four SU points and flashing the offensive potential that’s allowed him to develop into a full-time starter this season, despite Boeheim saying earlier this week that “we need him to do more, but I don’t think he’s capable of it.”

Edwards split Jake LaRavia and Dallas Walton while driving to the basket and twisted his way through the pair of Wake Forest defenders for a layup. Earlier in the possession, Joe Girard III had looked like he wanted to take a 3, eyeing up a shot from behind the arc, but instead patiently waited for Edwards to open up after his roll. Then, after Daivien Williamson air balled a 3-pointer, Swider connected on one from the corner at the other end in transition.

But that lead quickly evaporated once the typical issues that followed the Orange throughout the season, the ones they could never quite shake and eliminate completely over the course of a 40-minute game, returned. Edwards picked up a foul off-ball and checked out midway through the first half after committing another. The Demon Deacons connected on 3s, and eventually pulled ahead 22-14. This time, though, SU used bench sparks from Benny Williams, Frank Anselem and Symir Torrence to spell the foul trouble, puncturing defensive possessions with fouls, blocks and rebounds to crawl back in the game.

Walton turned the ball over on the first possession of the second frame when he tried to kick the ball out to the corner but instead threw it to a vacant area. That was the first turnover, the one that snowballed into 10 more that frame, and Girard connected on a mid-range jumper at the other end. Minutes later, Mucius wasn’t supposed to receive the ball, but when a Wake Forest pass from the block back into the paint deflected off a pair of hands and back toward the 3-point line, he caught the ball and surveyed Syracuse’s defense. The shot clock had wound under 10 seconds as he dribbled from right to left across the arc, and eventually, the ball ended up in Williamson’s hands underneath the basket.

Joe Girard recorded 13 points in Syracuse’s blowout win over Wake Forest. Courtesy of Dennis Nett | Syracuse.com

Edwards kept his hands straight up in the air, aiming to avoid his fourth foul, and blocked Williamson’s shot to spark another opportunity in transition. When Buddy connected on a 3 from the corner, the Orange grabbed back the lead and took a 46-45 advantage.

“We just haven’t played that kind of defense, and that’s why we’re in the predicament we’re in,” Boeheim said. “And so we’ll just try to keep improving as we move forward here.”

Swider said postgame that Wake Forest was “adamant” about getting the ball into the middle of the zone and that Buddy and Girard mitigated the impact of those entrance passes by deflecting those passes.

Buddy stole an Alondes Williams pass possessions after his 3, made a jumper, stole another ball on the next possession and hit another transition shot in the paint. And four minutes later, when Swider rose through the air and grabbed the rim with both hands for his dunk, he capped off the pivotal stretch in one thunderous motion where defense, finally, had done enough for SU.

“The reason why you win by 20 is because your defense is good,” Swider said.

Published on January 29, 2022 at 10:24 pm

Contact Andrew: [email protected] | @CraneAndrew