Syracuse Basketball Suffers Embarrassing Loss to Georgia Tech

The Orange were thoroughly dominated by the Yellow Jackets.

“I hope they were embarrassed.”

That was Jim Boeheim’s response to a reporter who asked what the young freshman on this SU roster could learn after a 96-76 home loss to Georgia Tech. Embarrassing is the only true way to describe the effort and energy from this SU men’s team tonight. There wasn’t much at stake in this late February ACC matchup between the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and the Orange, but somebody forgot to get the memo to the Yellow Jackets. Georgia Tech, who came into this game record-wise as the third-worst time in the ACC and the worst shooting team in the league, came out guns a-blazing. 

Senior guard Lance Terry started off the three-point bonanza, knocking down his first two attempts to get Georgia Tech out to a quick 10-4 lead, and it was downhill from there. The game was competitive and frenetic for the first part of the 1st half, with both teams combining for 40 points in less than eight minutes of game time. However, SU’s offensive slowly faded as Josh Pastner’s squad piled up points. Tech ended the first half with 53 points and ten three-pointers on 21 attempts and set a program record with their 18 total. The Yellow Jackets had three players with over 20 points (Terry, Miles Kelly, and Kyle Sturdivant), and their season-high 96 points came off the back of a season-high 27 assists.

In the post-game presser, a surprisingly subdued Boeheim repeatedly lamented his team’s defensive efforts and further discussed the lack of production from his forward position. When asked about Chris Bell, a starter for the first 28 games but who has been DNP-CD the past two games, Boeheim responded with surprising transparency.

“He was going to start this game. He had a stretch in practice, six plays, where he did nothing. Six consecutive plays literally did nothing. So yes, he was going to start this game.

In a performance that looked like rock-bottom for Syracuse (The boss, Mike McAlister, said on Twitter that this game was one of the worst performances of his life he’s seen from SU basketball), Boeheim ultimately looked like an old, out-of-touch coach, bereft of answers struggling to deal with the current state of college basketball and his rapidly fading relevancy. The switch from man-to-man late in the second half with the game out of reach represented a last-ditch effort at assimilation by Boeheim. With only one regular season game left, a postseason tournament unlikely, and a less-than-stellar recruiting class coming in next year, one does have to wonder what the future of this Syracuse basketball program is as long as Jim Boeheim remains at the helm.