CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Let’s start by laying out the harsh truths.

Syracuse’s offense isn’t going to play much better than that. North Carolina is not the toughest team the Orange will face this season. Late January is far too late in the college basketball season to hand out any moral victories.

But in most seasons — where a team didn’t just lose its third conference game despite posting its fourth-highest point total of the season — a moral victory is exactly what SU’s (14-7, 5-3 Atlantic Coast) 93-83 loss to the No. 13 Tar Heels (17-4, 7-1) was.

Instead, what transpired in the Dean E. Smith Center on Monday night was another act in the Orange’s unending attempt to meet unreachable expectations. SU has seven players, at most, in its run-down rotation, lacks a reliable third scoring option and a ball-handler with experience in close conference games.

UNC, while taking advantage of all of these deficiencies in one of Syracuse’s best performances of the season, exposed the harshest truth of all.

SU isn’t capable of winning games it’s not supposed to. It scratched at its latent potential against the Tar Heels and still came up well short.

“We need to make a few more shots if we’re going to win a game like this,” SU head coach Jim Boeheim said. “And we didn’t.”

In some ways, UNC outdid itself en route to its sixth straight win.

North Carolina received a career-high four 3-pointers from backup guard Nate Britt, shot 56 percent from 3 overall and held SU’s Rakeem Christmas to just one make on five first-half attempts.

But UNC also committed 13 first-half turnovers — and 20 overall — that left the Orange with a window of opportunity to climb through.

SU guard Trevor Cooney carried the offense early on, pouring in 15 first-half points with a mix of catch-and-shoot 3s and off-the-dribble pull-ups. After his second make, Cooney ran down the court pumping his arms down at his sides, and the Tar Heels crowd silenced at his command.

Yet the crowd wasn’t quiet for long. North Carolina roared out of the halftime break and erased Syracuse’s five-point cushion with a refined game plan: pound the ball inside and make the Orange’s big men body up and risk fouling, or soften up and get scored on.

With foul trouble looming and no reliable forwards on the bench, SU settled on the latter and the UNC frontcourt took advantage.

“They can’t go for too many blocked shots because they only have five or six guys. Some terrible losses this season — (DaJuan) Coleman and (Chris) McCullough were two guys they were counting on,” UNC head coach Roy Williams said of what worked for his team in the second half.

“So that doesn’t give them much depth up front. I don’t like to talk too much about the other team but those injuries have really been big for Jimmy. His guys got to stay out of foul trouble.”

And that’s how the second half unfolded.

Syracuse was unable to stand up to Tar Heel forwards Brice Johnson and Kennedy Meeks, and the pair combined for 34 points while North Carolina scored more than any SU opponent has in five seasons.

When the Orange needed an offensive complement to Christmas in the second half, Cooney was blanketed by UNC forward J.P. Tokoto and no other players fully stepped up. The Orange received 50 total points from Christmas and Cooney, but not enough from the supporting cast.

SU trailed by just four at the three-minute mark but then the game escaped it. Freshman point guard Kaleb Joseph and pseudo point guard Michael Gbinije each committed a crucial crunch-time turnover. All seven players Boeheim put on the court finished with at least three fouls and Tyler Roberson fouled out, leaving B.J. Johnson on the court when the final buzzer rung in the Orange’s second conference loss in three days.

SU has now played and lost to three ranked teams and still has No. 10 Louisville, No. 8 Notre Dame, No. 2 Virginia and No. 4 Duke (twice) left on its schedule.

That’s five games against some of the country’s best teams and the Orange still hasn’t shown an ability to run 40 minutes with the top competition. In it’s 14 wins this season, just two — Iowa and Louisiana Tech — have come against teams that currently have winning records.

And while this loss to North Carolina doesn’t define Syracuse’s season, the way it lost to the Tar Heels eventually will.

“I think it’s just about figuring it out, the more you’re in situations like this the better you become really,” Cooney said. “Maybe down the stretch this game will help us.”

Right now, using this loss as a springboard seems like a lot to ask.

Published on January 26, 2015 at 11:50 pm