Syracuse, N.Y. - Monmouth and coach King Rice came to the JMA Wireless Dome late Tuesday night.
This was the first of four 9 p.m. starts for the Orange, which meant guzzling some caffeine before the game even tipped.
JJ Starling was healed enough to play today. Tyler Betsey was not.
First half: Syracuse 36, Monmouth 33. Final score: Syracuse 78, Monmouth 73.
Syracuse had a 10-point lead with about 5 minutes left. But Monmouth nearly came all the way back. Syracuse did not foul a 3-point shooter up three with a couple seconds left. But Jason Rivera-Torres missed it and Donnie Freeman got the rebound.
Here’s what happened:
The concern continues about the Orange free throws.
Syracuse was efficient in Tuesday’s second half. Monmouth, conversely, was not. The Hawks, though, did take advantage of Syracuse’s insistence on fouling them.
Monmouth was 10-of-11 from the line with 3:34 left in the second half. Syracuse was 4-of-10 before Starling airballed one, then missed another one.
Starling made 1-of-2 with 1:20 left. He airballed the second one.
With 34.7 seconds left, Staring and Kyle exited the game for Kiyan Anthony and Luke Fennell.
Monmouth, of course, was pressing down just 74-72.
The final free throw numbers: Syracuse 19-of-23. Monmouth 20-of-25. The Orange missed 11 second-half free throws. Don’t blame Donnie Freeman, who was 12-of-14. Everybody else was 7-of-19. Yikes.
Hello, Nate Kingz.
This is the game we’ve been waiting for.
The guard from Oregon arrived in Syracuse with a well-deserved reputation as a 3-point shooter. He has played well this year. He’s a good defender, a tough young man who rebounds and plays hard. He’s attacked the rim with success.
On Tuesday, he made 3s.
Kingz finished with 15 points, four rebounds, two assists.
Naithan George was the reason Syracuse was (slightly) in the lead in that first half.
The SU point guard had 10 points, three rebounds and four assists in the first half. He was the only Orange player to shoot the ball consistently from 3 (or from anywhere, really) in that half. To add to that, he executed an exquisite pocket pass to Donnie Freeman that got the Orange to a 31-26 edge. George had another pretty over-the-shoulder pass in the second half to Freeman.
Monmouth is a pretty good defensive team. The Hawks ranked fourth nationally in defending shots inside the 3-point line in kenpom before this game.
But that doesn’t mean Syracuse in general and Donnie Freeman in particular needed to launch a whole lot of perimeter shots.
When the Orange did try to bang the ball inside, either with a dribble or a pass, Monmouth on often fouled SU players. The Orange was in the double bonus with 6:55 left in the half.
SU was also 3-of-11 from the 3-point line.
The Orange got on something of a roll late in the first half, going on a 9-0 run to open a 34-26 lead. The lineup of George, Freeman, Kiyan Anthony, Nate Kingz and Sadiq White were primarily responsible for that run.
Syracuse pressed and Monmouth beat the initial traps and advanced the ball, then promptly missed three straight 3-pointers. I’d take those shots, too. A transition 3 is almost always an open 3. But the upshift in tempo might have caused the Hawks to speed up those shots. Who knows?
Suddenly, Syracuse went from trailing by 1 to leading by eight.
And then this happened:
Sadiq White and Justin Ray were pursuing a loose ball along the sideline near the SU bench. White, it seems, hip-checked Ray into the scorer’s table. Nothing malicious. But there were some words, apparently.
When it was all said and done, Freeman and Cornelius Robinson were called for offsetting technical fouls. Adrian Autry was Teed up, too.
That meant Monmouth got to take four straight free throws, all of them by Ray. He made all four and the SU lead was suddenly a tenuous 34-30.
(In the second half, the Monmouth bench was issued a technical foul after Jason Rivera-Torres fouled Kiyan Anthony on a drive.
Anthony attempted all the free throws. He missed three of four.)
Freeman has all the tools to dominate in a game like this.
On a couple occasions in the first half, he got the ball at or near the rim and kind of flipped the ball toward the basket, hoping to draw a foul. He did, indeed, draw fouls. He was 6-of-8 from the line in that half. (None of SU’s players draw fouls the way Freeman draws fouls.)
But I’m guessing coaches would prefer that Freeman attack the rim with more purpose and better balance. He’s getting bumped around the bucket and should be able to take the hit, finish in there and attempt to complete a 3-point play.
In the second half, Freeman threaded a sweet bounce pass to Nate Kingz.
The SU sophomore finished with 18 points, most of them coming from the free throw line.
Monmouth started the second half with Ray making two straight 3s with very little interference.
Adrian Autry promptly ushered George to the SU bench and inserted Bryce Zephir.
Seems Autry is serious about defense.
But George soon enough went back in and engineered a nice alley-oop with Will Kyle.
The Orange started the second half 6-of-7 from the field; Monmouth, meanwhile, was 4-of-12. And the rebounding numbers, which strongly favored the Hawks in the first half (at one point they had a 9-board margin), swung to Syracuse in the second half.
But down the stretch, the Orange just couldn’t make a free throw.
NOTES: Starling was obviously shaking off some rust. Before injuring his hamstring, he had played a total of three game minutes before Tuesday night. Against the Hawks, he logged. He had some nice late-game moments, draining a corner 3 to stretch SU ‘s lead to 70-60. Two drives didn’t go down, but he got to the rim. The free throw shooting is ... a concern. He played at times with Anthony and Kingz. ... Justin Ray had himself a game. The Monmouth point guard scored a game-high 25 points. Stefanos Spartalis (18 points) was good, too. ... The rebounding is not trending in the right direction for SU in these first halves. Next week, the Orange will play Houston, a team with the best defense in America. The Cougars are also a very good offensive rebounding team. ... Sadiq White on the receiving end of lob passes is pretty much a given this year. William Kyle, too. The Orange is routinely executing lob passes for the first time in a long time.