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With three minutes remaining and No. 11 Gonzaga leading by 10, Syracuse’s two forwards who were the presumed starters at the beginning of the season sat on the bench.

Chris Bell finished his day with a technical foul after bumping into his head coach and only making two shots. And Benny Williams, who didn’t play a single second after having impact minutes against No. 7 Tennessee the game before, seemed dejected as he wore all-blue warm-up clothes on the bench in the SU’s 76-57 defeat against the Bulldogs.

If Syracuse (3-2, 0-0 Atlantic Coast Conference) looked to have any chance to beat No. 11 Gonzaga (3-1, 0-0 West Coast Conference), the forwards were going to have to compliment the guard play of Judah Mintz and J.J. Starling, who finished with 64% of the team’s points. But Bell finished 2-for-18 shooting and missed just one of his 10 3-point attempts, while Williams remained absent on the floor.

SU head coach Adrian Autry offered no comment when asked why Williams did not play.

Against Tennessee Monday, Williams played in his second game of the season and scored eight points off the bench. Williams missed Syracuse’s second exhibition game and first two regular season games after being given a suspension for a violation of team rules.

Williams had some impact even though the Orange lost to Tennessee. On his first shot, Williams nailed a contested jumper to give the Orange a 10-9 lead. One possession later, Williams made a 3-pointer to increase the lead to four points.

But during today’s game, Williams remained on the bench wearing blue sweats, watching as his fellow forward struggled to make a dent in the game.

While Williams hasn’t been on the court enough to have a solidified role with SU, Bell has; he is its primary 3-point shooter. A week after he scored a career-high 25 points against Colgate, Bell knocked down two 3-pointers against the Volunteers, who SU players noted were much more physical than the Bulldogs. In the loss, where Bell scored six points, the forward still felt confident heading into the next day’s game.

“I don’t think we look at it as being another top-15 opponent,” Bell said Monday. “We look at ourselves as some of those top teams in the country.

“Really just being ready to play, make shots, do the things we know we can do, don’t be stagnant. I feel like we play defense at a high level, and I feel like if we do that tomorrow we’re going to get a win, so I ain’t worried about none of that.”

Bell finished with 10 fewer points than he had the previous game and it took much more shots to get there. Quite simply, Bell couldn’t get anything to go. With Gonzaga up five just over a minute in, Bell received a bounce pass from Justin Taylor and tried to convert a floater but failed as the shot hit the rim. On Syracuse’s next possession, Bell pulled from beyond the arc at the left wing and hit the rim again.

Autry said postgame that most of the 3-point attempts went to Bell because the Orange wanted the forward to take them. He called Bell “one of the better shooters on our team.”

“He had good open looks, it happens,” Autry said. “We play the game and we try to play to our strengths, and one of those strengths is that we’ve got to get Bell, Justin Taylor and Kyle Cuffe Jr. some open shots.”

It took Bell 10 minutes and 14 seconds to knock down his first field goal and he made his only 3-pointer with 8:30 left in the first half, nailing the shot from the right wing. But he still continued to struggle.

On Bell’s last 3-point attempt of the first half, Dusty Stromer blocked the forward’s shot which led a Ben Gregg layup off a Ryan Nembhard bounce pass on the other end to increase the lead to 14. On other shots, though, Bell bricked the corner 3s entirely. His attempts to draw fouls also weren’t successful, eliciting frustration while he laid on the court.

The anger boiled over when Bell received his technical foul and went to the bench for the final time today. Autry angrily subbed in Taylor and then seemed to chew out Bell on the sidelines. After that, Quadir Copeland put his arm over the distraught Bell.

But this was part of a second half where Bell started to shoot much less, finishing with only five attempts (all misses) and letting teammates like Mintz fully take over. On his only two shots of the second half, Bell couldn’t connect on a 3-pointer and a driving layup against the Bulldogs defense. While Gonzaga head coach Mark Few talked about anticipating both Mintz and Starling, he said that Bell was a focus defensively en route to the Bulldogs’ win.

“We’re very cognoscente of Bell,” Few said. “He’s got a really nice stroke and he can really get them up and get them in a hurry. Thought we did a nice job on him.”

Published on November 21, 2023 at 6:07 pm

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