Twenty seconds was all it took for a full wave of the Kaleb Joseph roller-coaster ride.

Right after feeding forward Chris McCullough for a basket, the point guard was ducking the feet of a dunking Erik McCree — a result of Joseph’s own blunder.

“He’s trying to do his best at what he does,” senior Rakeem Christmas said. “He’s trying to find open people and I think he’s overthinking. We’ll go through the film and we’ll go through all the things he can’t do and we’ll be fine.”

The aggression that Joseph has pledged to maintain on the offensive end bit him more than it helped him on Sunday afternoon. Although he hinted at progress by shooting efficiently with nine points in Syracuse’s (6-3) 71-69 win over Louisiana Tech (7-3) in the Carrier Dome, Joseph more so resembled the freshman point guard he is by committing a season-high eight turnovers to go along with his four assists in a full 40 minutes.

And those mistakes drew the brunt of head coach Jim Boeheim’s assessment of his first-year floor general after the game.

“Kaleb made some really good plays today, but he can’t make those unforced (mistakes),” Boeheim said. “A couple of them were traps — you turn it over, that’s OK. But he can’t make the unforced ones that he made … because his turnovers are right in the open where they’re scoring.”

Joseph turned it over twice in the opening five minutes — the first one trying to beat the Bulldogs’ press, the second one a late bounce pass to the middle of the floor that McCree grabbed for a transition dunk.

Yet through the following five minutes, Joseph responded by hitting a jumper from the free-throw line, calmly draining a wide-open 3 off a pass from Christmas, and sinking a floater from the lane.

But after that were two ill-advised attempts to push the ball ahead on the break. By halftime, Joseph had efficiently hit three of his five shots, but had already surpassed his season-high with five turnovers.

“Obviously he made a couple of mistakes, but that’ll happen,” forward Tyler Roberson said. “I trust him as a point guard.”

SU was ahead by nine with 8:33 left, but that lead slowly dissolved as a pair of Joseph turnovers directly led to Louisiana Tech points and the Bulldogs cut into the deficit. He clanked a wide-open 3-pointer that would’ve put the Orange up by seven with 1:58 remaining.

With the score tied 69, Joseph’s drive to the basket in the final 10 seconds was a feeble layup attempt that was deflected by Michale Kyser and never had a chance.

Yet the mere fact that Joseph — who left the locker room before reporters arrived for postgame interviews — was on the floor with the game on the line is an improvement from last week, as slight as it is.

After turning the ball over in the final minute of the Orange’s loss to Michigan on Dec. 4, Joseph only saw the floor in four seconds of the last 13 minutes of SU’s 69-57 loss to St. John’s on Dec. 6.

But as a scorer, he was a useful sidekick to Syracuse’s primary scorers on Sunday — an attempt to disprove Boeheim’s statement after the SJU loss that Joseph’s not a 3-point shooter. The point guard earned his crunch-time minutes against the Bulldogs, even though he didn’t make much of them.

“He’s just not really a point guard yet. He’s trying to learn how to play the point,” Boeheim said, before pausing for five seconds.

“It’s going to take him a long time to.”

Published on December 14, 2014 at 10:32 pm

Contact Phil: pmdabbra@syr.edu | @PhilDAbb