Syracuse needed a shooter to punish Carleton’s double-down man-to-man and claw back in the second half.

And instead of Trevor Cooney answering that call, sophomore guard Ron Patterson caught fire in the second half.

“I told everybody in (the locker room), Ronnie about two days a week makes every shot,” SU head coach Jim Boeheim said of Patterson. “The other five, he misses most of them, so this was one of the two. We don’t have any more games this week, so we don’t have to worry about it.

“He picked today.”

With Cooney and freshman Kaleb Joseph starting in the backcourt, Patterson made his case for minutes in the Orange’s 76-68 exhibition win over Carleton in the Carrier Dome on Sunday. He poured in 15 points and hit 4-of-5 3-point attempts, three of which came in the second half and fueled the comeback against Canada’s four-time defending national champions.

Boeheim also added that Patterson was a part of Syracuse’s best defensive lineup in the game — a “small” one that included Patterson and Cooney in the guard spots and Michael Gbinije on the wing, with Gbinije playing point guard on offense.

“Just setting the tone on defense and get breakout dunks,” Patterson said of what he was looking to do. “I wanted to play well and knock down shots when I was open.”

Patterson assisted on a Gbinije 3 at the 12:40 mark of the first half and hit his first off a quick swing pass from Gbinije three minutes later. Then he played sparingly for the rest of the half and Syracuse went into the break down 39-30.

Out of the break, Syracuse continually worked the ball inside to senior forward Rakeem Christmas, who sucked in double teams and scanned the floor with his back to the basket. He tried kicking out to Cooney a few times, but the junior sharpshooter finished 0-for-4 from beyond the arc and 0-for-6 from the field.

That shifted Christmas’ attention to Patterson, who benefited from the increase in touches. With under 17 minutes left in the game and Syracuse trailing by four, Patterson got a skip pass from Christmas on the right wing and buried a 3.

Then he blocked Gavin Resch’s 3-point attempt a few possessions later and, off another cross-court pass from Christmas, buried another triple. The bench stood up as he released the ball and he waved his hands in the air while nodding his head, lighting up a generally quiet crowd while backpedaling to his spot atop the zone.

“Ron Patterson is a natural-born scorer,” Gbinije said. “He has a shoot-first mentality, a shoot-only mentality, and he just proved what he’s capable of. He’s a good shooter and it’s kind of fun to pass him the ball knowing he’s going to make shots.”

After another 3 and five minutes went by, Patterson deflected a Phillip Scrubb pass at the top of the arc, gathered his balance and drove all the way down the court for a two-handed dunk.

For the first time since the game’s first 30 seconds, Syracuse had a lead — made possible by a guard who averaged 2.8 points and 5.4 minutes per game last season.

Those figures already seem far in the past.

“I just wanted to show them I can play, I can shoot, I can play defense,” Patterson said. “Whatever they need, I can do any of it.”

Published on November 2, 2014 at 6:21 pm

Contact Jesse: jcdoug01@syr.edu | @dougherty_jesse