When Raheem Solomon corralled a pass and whipped past his defender on the right wing, Bourama Sidibe was the only remaining Syracuse player between Solomon and the basket. Elijah Hughes pivoted to recover, but Solomon’s leg had already left the ground.

Sidibe’s right hand latched onto the ball as the Niagara sophomore rose, and turned the shot’s direction away from the rim and into the backboard. The next offensive possession ended with a Sidibe dunk, and he swung his arm for a second afterward. Less than three minutes had passed, but a size advantage had already started to emerge.

At that point in the first half – a 10-0 run to open the game – the Orange were in full control.

When the first 20 minutes ended, however, a different picture had been painted. Twenty-two points in the paint allowed the Purple Eagles to pull within 13, despite just two 3-pointers. Flaws expected against a taller team emerged for Syracuse against a much smaller one. The Orange (8-5, 1-1 Atlantic Coast) still finished with 11 blocks and out-rebounded the Purple Eagles (2-9) by 13, but never took full advantage of a distinct size gap in their 71-57 win to close nonconference play. With each layup from the block and floater from the paint, the inconsistencies of the 2-3 zone reemerged.

“We were supposed to out-rebound them by more — probably 20 or 30,” Quincy Guerrier said. “They were not tall.”

As the last nonconference opponent on the Orange’s schedule, the Purple Eagles presented a similar opponent to their last two: North Florida and Oakland. Niagara wouldn’t shoot 3-pointers at a rate like the Ospreys, and it wouldn’t attack the paint like the Golden Grizzles. Instead, it aimed for a combination, one that relied on strings of 3-pointers to start but eventually turned into bunches of layups when shot after shot released from behind the arc rimmed out.

“They didn’t shoot well on the 3s in the first half and they tried to go in,” Marek Dolezaj said. “And we just didn’t do a good job.”

But when Niagara threatened to pull within single digits in the second half, when point guard Justin Roberts sunk a 3-pointer and clapped his hands twice trimming the deficit to 11, it was a stark difference from when the Orange jumped out to a 22-6 lead less than seven minutes in. The Orange had to treat it like a close game again.

Early on, Nick MacDonald launched a 3-pointer from in front of the Syracuse bench that marked the Purple Eagles’ latest search for rhythm behind the arc. His shot bounced out, and MacDonald shook his head down the court. Possessions later, he perched on the wing again and shot two more. Both missed. What started as six-straight Purple Eagle misses from 3 culminated in a 2-for-12 clip by halftime.

An 11-for-20 rate inside, though, allowed that deficit to be only 13. Even with the strings of misses and the shorter forwards, Niagara turned chances into successes from the left and right blocks. It found baseline lanes when the elbow ones remained closed. The Orange’s 2-3 zone disrupted the entry passes — specifically on Marek Dolezaj and Bourama Sidibe’s side — but continued to search for success outside the arc.

Greg Kuakumensah’s pump fake from the right block brought Sidibe into the air, but Dolezaj stepped forward to smack the ball into the ground. But on the Purple Eagles’ next possession, MacDonald lingered in the corner and cut behind the pair for an uncontested layup.

“They were trying to bring us up to the top,” Dolezaj said, “and when they brought us to the top they just dumped it inside.”

Earlier in the first half, Sidibe had lunged out into the corner and blocked the shots on closeouts. Denials from Joe Girard III at the top of the zone had avoided any opportunities for Syracuse defenders to get dragged into the paint and open up outside shots.

But with under eight minutes remaining, MacDonald stopped in the left corner and drained a 3. Minutes later, Roberts hit a 3 from the wing to pull the Purple Eagles within 11. This time, different lanes had opened up. The lower baseline and blocks had been mitigated, but opportunities from the outside emerged.

“We need to get in front and knock around people, because I feel like sometimes when we’re scoring, for example, we knew that at the end of the day we’re going to beat this team…” Sidibe said after the game, trailing off.

It took five straight-points from Girard to extinguish the Purple Eagles’ newfound success from behind the arc. A 32.4% shooting clip from the field and 22.2% one from behind the arc were made passable — at least to the point of limiting a potential blowout — with the holes of Syracuse’s defense that that followed it through the opening 13 games.

“We have better games, worse games,” Dolezaj said. “It depends.”

Published on December 28, 2019 at 11:51 pm

Contact Andrew: arcrane@syr.edu | @CraneAndrew