After a nine-day break, Syracuse (17-8, 7-5 Atlantic Coast) ran past Florida State (16-8, 6-6) for a 85-72 win in the Carrier Dome on Thursday night. The victory improved the Orange to 7-1 in its last eight contests and 7-2 since since Jim Boeheim’s return from his nine-game suspension.
Here are three quick thoughts from the game.

1. Can you hear me now?

National polls and social media perception don’t define a college basketball team. They don’t even start to. But it has seemed that Syracuse, which came into Thursday’s game having won six of its last seven contests, is still having to prove itself worthy of “everyone’s” attention.

And if that wasn’t accomplished against the Seminoles, it’s hard to imagine what the Orange needs to do to truly be considered a contending team. After playing neck-and-neck with FSU in the first half, SU clicked on all cylinders and buried the visitors with a 22-8 run to start the second.

There were a lot of things that Syracuse did right to pull away from Florida State. Michael Gbinije finished with 22 points in one of his most convincing performances of the season. When he wasn’t scoring, the Orange crisply worked the ball around in search of the perfect shot. After allowing the Seminoles big men to get comfortable inside and collect 10 offensive rebounds in the first half, Tyler Lydon, Tyler Roberson and Dajuan Coleman teamed up to clog the paint and limit FSU’s second-chance points.

When those all added up, Syracuse looked like it was in a different league than a Florida State team that came in with an identical conference record. And as postseason play nears, that should start counting for something.

2. The Dajuan effect

For the 2 minutes and 32 seconds after halftime, Dajuan Coleman took over a basketball game.

First, the mercurial SU center took a feed from Gbinije and dunked home two as the 7-foot-3 Boris Bojanovsky failed to recover at the rim. Next he grabbed an offensive rebound behind Bojanovsky and finished an uncontested layup. Then came the most improbable play of all, when he caught the ball at the top of the key, made a small head fake and took two dribbles to the rim before finishing a left-handed layup in traffic.

And to top it all off, after his personal 6-0 run forced FSU to take a timeout, Coleman zipped a pass to a cutting Malachi Richardson for a layup. Twenty-four seconds later, Coleman picked up his third foul and sauntered to the SU bench while the Carrier Dome crowd rose into a standing ovation.

At that point, the damage was done. The eight straight points Coleman accounted for to start the half stretched Syracuse’s three-point halftime lead to 11 before the Orange never looked back.

3. Half and half

Malik Beasley and Dwayne Bacon came into the game averaging a combined 33.5 points, which the ACC said Thursday is the highest scoring freshman duo in conference history.

The pair was outscoring that pace through 20 minutes, with Beasley leading the Seminoles with 11 first-half points and Bacon notching 10 of his own. Beasley did so by hitting three 3s on six attempts while Bacon attacked the rim and helped FSU exploit the Orange on the offensive boards. They were almost the full reason why Florida State trailed by just three at halftime despite shooting 14-for-33 from the field.

But the pair wasn’t as sharp in the second half, combining for four second-half points while the Seminoles offense sputtered to the finish. Beasley and Bacon are as good as it gets when it comes to freshman scorers, but an extended SU zone developed into an antidote for their consistent success.

Published on February 11, 2016 at 9:04 pm

Contact Jesse: jcdoug01@syr.edu | @dougherty_jesse