DETROIT — No. 11 seed Syracuse (22-13, 8-10 Atlantic Coast) defeated No. 6 seed TCU (21-12, 9-9 Big 12) 57-52 on Friday night. The Orange outplayed the Horned Frogs for much of the first half, before slipping in the final two minutes and going into the break with a one-point deficit. But the Orange defense locked up TCU in the second half on the way to victory.

Here are three reactions from the game.

Coming alive

Most defenses that go up against Syracuse this season have had a simple plan. Stop Frank Howard, Tyus Battle and Oshae Brissett. Rotate over extra help if necessary and leave the other two SU players alone.

Marek Dolezaj made TCU pay for that in the first half. He scored the first bucket of the game on a baseline out-of-bounds play. The defense just lost him and Howard bounced a pass over for an easy layup.

Everything was going right for the Slovakian freshman. He missed an early floater, but got his rebound back and hit a subsequent floater. Later, he caught the ball with the shot clock winding down and threw up a 3-pointer that went right in.

In the second-to-last game of the regular season against BC, Dolezaj was held scoreless, and head coach Jim Boeheim said postgame that he, alongside with secondary players Matthew Moyer and Paschal Chukwu, couldn’t score consistently. Since then Dolezaj — who averages 5.2 points per game — has averaged 11.2 points, including a 20-point explosion against Wake Forest.

Running them off

TCU came into the game as the seventh-most efficient offense in the country, per Kenpom.com. Part of that had to do with the Horned Frogs’ success from deep. They averaged 8.5 makes per game on about 21 attempts per game, a 40 percent clip.

And the Horned Frogs found success from beyond the arc early. Of their first eight field goal attempts, four came from deep and they nailed three of them. Two came from the corner right in front of the SU bench, as the Orange failed to rotate over.

Shortly after, the Orange started rotating over and TCU got gun-shy. For a stretch of more than eight minutes in the first half, the Horned Frogs didn’t attempt a 3-pointer. On one possession, TCU pump faked four different times from beyond the arc, some on open looks.

TCU finished 3-of-17 from deep in the game.

When it matters

Although Dolezaj was on fire, Syracuse’s big three did very little for much of the night. Battle, Howard and Brissett combined to shoot 10-of-39 from the field, struggling to knock down shots.

But the three ramped up their scoring in the last five minutes to help ice the game for the Orange. Brissett knocked down two tough floaters in the lane while getting hammered, letting out a roar after the second one.

Then, Battle dribbled around several defenders, from right to left, and hit a tough one-handed floater. He turned around and mean mugged toward the section where the SU faithful, and his family, was sitting. Howard followed that up with a floater of his own looking over at the same area.

Syracuse’s defense kept it in the game, just long enough for its stars to put it away.

Published on March 17, 2018 at 12:17 am

Contact Tomer: tdlanger@syr.edu | @tomer_langer