UPDATED: March 13, 2020 at 10:36 a.m.

GREENSBORO, N.C. — As conferences around the country banned fans from attending their tournaments due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus, Syracuse (18-14, 10-10 Atlantic Coast) defeated North Carolina (14-19, 6-14) 81-53 on Wednesday night in the Greensboro Coliseum. Elijah Hughes led all scorers with 27 points while Bourama Sidibe scored 12 points and snagged 13 rebounds for the Orange.

A few weeks removed from a 13-point loss, Syracuse looked like a different team in its rematch with North Carolina. Below are superlatives from the game.

The Big Moment: Throughout the first half, Syracuse had outscored North Carolina but never pulled away. With about 5:30 left in the first frame, that changed. Syracuse went on a 15-0 tear and entered the halftime break up 21 points. 

Quincy Guerrier hit a shot from the foul line and finished on a transition alley-oop. Sidibe hit several free throws, and Joe Girard III drilled a 3-pointer from the corner. North Carolina never came close after Syracuse created the wide gap.

Stud: Elijah Hughes 

The leading scorer in the ACC proved why he earned all-conference, first-team honors earlier this week. On his first shot of the game, Hughes sank a 3-pointer. Then he played the foul game, both drawing a charge and earning three chances from the charity stripe. He picked off passes and finished down at the other end. 

To end the first half, he hit two contested shots in the final 40 seconds. The first came spinning through several defenders and hitting a floating jumper. The second was a fadeaway jumper just before the halftime buzzer. The team lashed out in multiple “Let’s go” chants as Hughes darted for the locker room.  

Dud: Cole Anthony 

Anthony looked nothing like the freshman that shot 7-of-11 from 3 in late February. Anthony clanked long 3-pointers and sent passes out of bounds. Syracuse often hedged a defender out on him by the 3-point line. It left a bigger hole in the middle of the zone but was a tradeoff for holding Anthony well under his 25-point mark from the first meeting. 

Anthony didn’t score until well into the first half and finished with just five points. He never found a rhythm feeding Tar Heel players, and it showed with an inconsistent flow to the Tar Heels offense. With Anthony shooting 2-of-10 from the field. The Tar Heels jammed the ball inside. It didn’t work often enough. Despite open looks in the middle, UNC couldn’t convert. The Tar Heels finished the game shooting 33.3% from the field. 

 Highlight: Quincy Guerrier’s alley-oop 

Perhaps it was the magnitude of the run or perhaps it was the length of the lob, but something about Girard’s alley-oop to Guerrier embodied Syracuse’s win on Wednesday night. Running in transition beyond the foul line, Girard (eight assists) tossed up a pass to the far edge of the rim. From out of frame on a tight-angle look, Guerrier flew in. He snagged the ball and flushed it home to keep momentum during Syracuse’s defining run of the game. 

Lowlight: Fouls 

Had the game stayed close into the second half, Syracuse would’ve likely found itself in foul trouble yet again. Marek Dolezaj picked up his third foul with more than four minutes remaining in the first half. After Dolezaj’s incidental contact during an offensive possession put him two fouls away from exiting the game for good, Boeheim pulled the junior forward. With Sidibe picking up his third foul early in the second half and Hughes picking up a third foul, Syracuse had three players with three fouls with more than 10 minutes left in the game.

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, Syracuse’s record was misstated. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on March 11, 2020 at 11:42 pm

Contact Josh: jlschafe@syr.edu | @Schafer_44