Syracuse trailed by as many as 16 points on four occasions, including with 18:25 left in the second half, but rallied to take the lead before falling to Texas, 70-66, at Barclays Center in Brooklyn in the Legends Classic. The Orange (3-1) wiped out most of that last deficit with a 19-4 run and nosed out front with just over four minutes to play, but the Longhorns (4-1) pushed past them in the closing minutes.
SU bounced back from that lousy start due to their best defensive half of the season, holding Texas to 33.3 percent shooting from the floor and just 1-of-6 from long range. That defensive effort, however, was undercut by a poor effort at the foul line, as they made just 9-of-18 from the stripe.
Texas opened the scoring with a bucket on their opening possession and kept their foot on the pedal, scoring the first nine points of the action and forcing a Syracuse timeout. J.J. Starling broke through with a 3-pointer to get the Orange on the board, but the Longhorns stayed at it, eventually pushing their lead to 22-8 before the game was nine minutes old.
Jyare Davis and Eddie Lampkin Jr. tried to drag SU back into it by scoring on three straight possessions to get the margin into single digits. The Longhorns bounced back from this and another pair of Syracuse scores that clipped the margin to eight, posting six straight points for a 33-19 lead.
Texas stretched their lead out to 16 on three separate occasions, but a Starling dunk and a Donnie Freeman 3-pointer in the waning moments brought the Orange within 41-30 at halftime. The ‘Horns scored on their first two trips of the second half to start a 7-2 run and go up 16, seemingly restoring order.
SU responded with a 12-2 run. After a Chris Bell triple and a Freeman layup, Texas got a bucket. Jaquan Carlos responded by setting up Lampkin for a banked 17-footer, then drew a charge. After a Lampkin three-point-play, Carlos drew an illegal screen and Starling eventually fed Lampkin for a slam and a Texas timeout, the lead clipped to 50-44 with 13:36 on the clock.
The Longhorns got a dunk coming out of the pause, but Lampkin set up Davis on the doorstep and Bell added a 3 to draw Syracuse within 52-49. Lampkin added a floater after the media timeout to trim the gap to a single point, but Texas pushed it back out to four.
Starling scored twice to knot the game at 56 with just over six minutes on the clock. A couple minutes later, the Orange grabbed their first lead on a Lampkin foul shot at 59-58 with just over four minutes to go. Starling gave SU another one-point edge, but back-to-back Longhorn scores put them in front, 64-61.
Two Davis foul shots for Syracuse were offset by two for Texas with 1:00 to play, the ‘Horns holding a 66-63 lead. Bell stopped on a cut on an inbounds pass after a kicked ball, and Carlos’ pass went as a turnover.
Starling followed two Longhorn free throws with a short baseline push shot and Carlos got a steal and was fouled. The point guard could only make the second foul shot and the Orange were forced to foul with 9.3 seconds to go. Tre Johnson made both shots, sewing up the win for Texas.
Starling paced SU with 16 points while Lampkin tallied 12 of his 14 points in the second half. Bell had 11 points, as did Davis, who also pulled down a team-high seven rebounds. Freeman added nine points in just 15 minutes of play.
Arthur Kaluma and Tre Johnson topped the Longhorns with 16 points apiece with the former also grabbing a game-high ten boards before fouling out. Chendal Weaver added ten points while Kadin Shedrick added eight.
