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It didn’t matter that No. 16 Illinois came out flat, unable to score for the first two and a half minutes. Head coach Jim Boeheim called them one of the best offensive teams Syracuse is going to play. SU could play defense for only so long, even if Illinois finished the game shooting 35.8% from the field and 11-for-39 on 3-pointers.

Fresh off a nearly eight-minute scoreless stretch early in the second half, Judah Mintz collected a pass at the top of the key and cut in on Terrence Shannon down the left side of the lane. Mintz got too far underneath the basket and had to rifle up a hard shot on the glass that ricocheted off, yet another midst in a game that saw him misfire on 13 shots.

On the next drive, Mintz once again looked to drive from the top of the key. He stopped at the right elbow, allowing enough space between him and Shannon, who locked down Mintz, Girard and Williams on the perimeter all night. It was a good sequence, but Mintz misfired on another off-balance shot.

“Judah got the driving lanes he needs to get, but didn’t finish,” Boeheim said. “If he’s going to do that, 3-for-16, we’re struggling offensively.”

The Orange could only cling on to No. 16 Illinois for so long. A first half that featured both teams turning in poor shooting performances allowed SU to enter halftime down by just seven points. But four Illini (6-1, 0-0 Big Ten) led a 43-point charge in the second half, allowing them to pull away from Syracuse (3-4, 0-0 Atlantic Coast). The Orange shot a season-low 27.8% from the field. Not even Mintz, who entered the game taking 29.8% of SU’s shots, could muster enough offense to make a difference. Jesse Edwards and Benny Williams combined for 17 points, but the Orange hardly put up any scoring in the second half, ultimately falling to the Illini on the road. Mintz finished with nine points, and Joe Girard didn’t score at all.

Girard struggled more than he has throughout his entire Syracuse career over the last two games. He entered Tuesday night’s game shooting just 8% in the last two games, connecting on just 1-of-12 from deep during that time. Zero points against Illinoius might be rock bottom for Girard, a slide that began in Brooklyn and that has now cascaded through three straight losses.

Boeheim said Girard wasn’t doing the “other things” right. He went an ineffective 0-for-3 from the field, missing his only 3-point attempt and finishing with two rebounds and a turnover.

“He’s a senior,” Boeheim said. “If he has no confidence now then he shouldn’t be playing.”

No one on the team was shooting above Justin Taylor’s 36.4% entering Tuesday night — and that was on a limited 4-for-11 shooting. Boeheim has said repeatedly after games that the Orange shouldn’t shoot 3s. They can score tons of points — entering Tuesday night averaging 74.8 points per game — but will do so from inside the arc. Syracuse tried its hand at shooting from deep early on, namely with a missed corner 3 from Girard and two wide open attempts from Chris Bell from the left edge that missed their mark.

Then throughout the first half, no one could score from anywhere. It moved away from the 3-ball and didn’t return to it until Justin Taylor came off the bench and connected on 2-of-4 in the second half. Mintz, who’s been one of the only consistent spots this season, couldn’t connect from either level. He collected passes from Girard and Williams at the elbow and missed. He drove and was smothered on contested shots. Edwards led the team in the first half with seven points — three of which came from the charity stripe.

The only reason SU kept it close until midway through the second half was because Illinois was responding with an equally poor shooting effort. The 2-3 zone did exactly what it was supposed to do from the outset: stop shots from inside the paint. Through the first few minutes in the first half, Illinois struggled to connect when it drove, and aside from a corner 3 over Edwards from Jayden Epps, Illinois struggled to connect from deep. So began a slog of a start in Champaign as both teams struggled to find the bottom of the net.

That struggle continued throughout the second half for Syracuse, but Illinois picked up its shooting, finishing 12-for-30 from the field in the second half, blowing out the lead to what ended up being 29 points.

By the under-12 timeout, Syracuse led by a point, a brutal 13-12 score. Regardless, the Orange ensured that through the first 10 minutes of the game, they were on par with the No. 16 team in the country. The Illini finished the first half firing 5-for-24 from deep and getting eaten up consistently in the paint.

“Our defense really kept us in there in the first half,” Boeheim said. “You can play defense for so long, sooner or later it’s going to break down. Second half, it did.”

Boeheim has called offensive performances “horrendous” and “terrible.” Tuesday was about as abysmal as it’s been in recent memory. SU scored its fewest points since it started the 2019 season with 34 points against Virginia. Syracuse hasn’t shot below 30% since its loss to VCU in the Battle 4 Atlantis last year, when it connected on just 29% of its shots.

“Illinois’s a tremendous defensive team, and we couldn’t really get (anything) going on the offensive end,” Boeheim said.

By the time Taylor pulled up and clanked a transition 3 off of the rim at the end of the second half, Edwards fouled out, Shannon fired a 3-pointer from the left wing and Bell misfired from deep, Syracuse sat in a 21-point hole. The lineup to finish out the final two minutes of an ugly performance in Illinois didn’t include Girard. It lazily tried to stop the bleed on defense and hucked up exhausted shots that stopped falling completely.

The final nail that closed the books on the Orange was a missed floater from close range by Williams. Hawkins grabbed the rebound as Illinois head coach Brad Underwood called a timeout, allowing the fans to cheer on Hawkins, who’d just earned a triple-double. They chanted Hawkins’ name as Girard sat on the bench and Mintz desperately tried to get anything to work.

“We’ve got some young guys that are trying to figure out what they have to do, and they didn’t figure it out very well tonight,” Boeheim said. “We got a lesson.”

Published on November 29, 2022 at 10:08 pm

Contact Anthony: [email protected] | @anthonyalandt