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ATLANTA, GA. — Up one with 35 seconds remaining, Georgia Tech’s Miles Kelly skittered past Quadir Copeland with a single dribble. The next two steps were meticulously controlled to set up a feathery teardrop over Maliq Brown’s contest.

Then, once both players collided mid-air came the shrill pitch of an official’s whistle. Kelly’s effort dropped through to give the Yellow Jackets a 61-58 lead with an and-one opportunity to come. Brown, meanwhile, was whistled for his fifth foul and cast out of Saturday’s game.

It was either that play, or Kelly’s offensive board — with 19 seconds left — which proved to be most crushing.

But take a step back and realize the bigger picture, removed from just two possessions. Notice a lackluster 36.7% clip from the field and a 4-for-25 performance from 3. More importantly, concentrate on the devastating 49-28 rebounding deficit — in GT’s (11-15, 4-11 Atlantic Coast Conference) favor — which overshadowed 17 turnovers and resulted in a 65-60 Syracuse (16-10, 7-8 ACC) defeat.

“Their rebounding was the difference,” Syracuse head coach Adrian Autry said postgame. “The second chance opportunities that they got, whether it was a drive or a foul, especially late in the game.”

A failure to keep the opposition off of the boards — an issue forward Chris Bell said postgame required all five players to fix — had reared its ugly head, again.

Flashing a wry smile during his postgame press conference, Autry noted that SU’s inconsistent rebounding plagued his side even when it had frontcourt depth. Go back as far as the AllState Maui Invitational where Tennessee and Gonzaga out-rebounded Syracuse 48-33 and 48-28 respectively. Remember the first meeting with UNC on Jan. 13 — a 103-67 blowout — and an away loss to Boston College on Jan. 30: 53-30, 37-27.

And now, there’s no 7-foot-4 Naheem McLeod — ruled out for the rest of this season — or 6-foot-11 Peter Carey, who’s missed the last three games due to concussion protocol. Brown played 39 minutes and only sat one, fouling out. Evidently, he shoulders an implausible load.

“They’re a good offensive rebounding team… We just didn’t do a good job of boxing out,” SU guard J.J. Starling said.

A confident-looking, free-flowing Syracuse offense — displaying shades of the side which picked apart No. 7 North Carolina days prior — took an early 9-5 lead. The Orange easily received most of the looks they hunted early. Starling splashed in a pair of 3’s and Brown threw down a dunk off of a flashy between-the-legs feed from Mintz in transition.

Seven minutes in, Autry even opted to re-introduce Kyle Cuffe Jr. to action. The 6-foot-2 guard hadn’t played since Feb. 3 at Wake Forest and cleaned up a Bell miss with a surprising two-handed flush soon after checking in.

But the Yellow Jackets, up against a McCamish Pavilion crowd seemingly leaning Orange, stayed competitive throughout the opening half despite their 1-for-7 shooting start. Two 3’s from Kelly — and five from backup guard Kyle Sturdivant — closed the gap on a few SU scoring spurts.

Georgia Tech earned its first lead of the evening with 10:28 remaining in the first half and leapt out to a 27-23 advantage after forward Tafara Gapare poured in six straight points.

Defensively, the home team featured a bold but logical approach. Gapara — tasked with guarding Syracuse’s Justin Taylor — consistently allotted the forward space to shoot. Taylor air-balled his first shot and went on to miss another three. Taylor finished with two points: his fourth consecutive single-digit scoring display.

Yet, Judah Mintz was left open a handful of times from straight-on and the Yellow Jackets seemed unbothered when Copeland hoisted a left-wing 3. On SU’s last possession in the opening period, Starling missed badly to prompt a chorus of jeers and GT headed into the break with a 34-30 advantage.

Though Syracuse started in a man-to-man look, it mostly resorted to the 2-3 zone. Autry revealed postgame that he plans on implementing the zone far more due to the Orange’s thin frontcourt. But a disciplined Georgia Tech side did well to find gaps and pick out its big men which spurred a series of open looks. Efficient high-low action was established and kick-outs led to 3-point makes.

“Zone is something that we’re going to have to play, just because of our numbers,” Autry said. “(In) our man-to-man we can’t be as aggressive as we were in the beginning of the year with our numbers down.”

On one play, Sturidvant was left uncontested on the right wing after a slew of perimeter passes muddled SU’s defense. He pump-faked to get Starling in the air before canning the shot to generate a 48-38 cushion.

“Quick ball movement and attacking it from the middle,” Sturdivant said when asked about how GT operated offensively. “I think that’s the weakest part of the zone whenever you have a good playmaker in the middle.”

If the harrowing rebounding margin or Kelly’s crunch-time heroics aren’t convincing enough culprits for the loss, then blame should shift to SU’s back-breaking scoring drought down the stretch. Amid a back-and-forth final 10 minutes, Bell dialed up a right-corner 3 to put Syracuse ahead 55-54.

Then, for the ensuing 5:50, it didn’t score another field goal.

Syracuse probably didn’t have an away matchup in Atlanta initially circled on its calendar. But after that historic 86-79 win over No. 7 North Carolina — the program’s first over an AP top-10 team in five years — glimpses of a potentially lengthy postseason arose. But to realize dreams of an NCAA or NIT appearance, however, the margin of error is miniscule.

And Saturday’s mistake-riddled display was far from what SU likely wanted. Far from what it needed.

“We keep taking these jumps but we stay stagnant,” Starling said.

Published on February 17, 2024 at 8:04 pm

Contact Tyler: [email protected] | @theTylerSchiff