Men’s Basketball: Panthers come up short in loss against No. 2 Syracuse

Before the basketball even left Lamar Patterson’s fingertips with less than 10 seconds in the Pitt men’s basketball game, the players sidelined on the Panthers’ bench stood up — a universal sign of anticipation in college basketball.

They saw Patterson drilling the clutch shot long before he found himself with a clean look from well beyond the top of the 3-point line. The Panthers trailed 55-52, but Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim saw it, too, and so did the players on his undefeated Syracuse team.

But the raucous, packed crowd at the Carrier Dome did not have to feel apprehensive for long. The shot carried just left, clanging the rim and ordering the Pitt sideline back to a seat on the bench.

Patterson had spent the previous 19:50 of the second half looking like the ringleader of a Pitt team destined to pull off a coup in Syracuse, NY, bound to knock off the No. 2 Orange and continue ascending the national ranks.

But the Panthers could not seal their fate.

Despite two more opportunities to close the gap afterward, No. 22 Pitt couldn’t come up with an answer for Syracuse’s late free throws and suffocating defense, as they dropped a bruising 59-54 decision Saturday evening.

Patterson finished with 18 points on 4-of-9 shooting from beyond the arc, most of the makes highlighting a torrid streak of confident-looking 3-pointers in the second half. He scored just four points on 2-of-6 shooting in the first half, which ended with Pitt having missed several close-range shots and trailing, 25-21.

Pitt (16-2, 4-1 ACC) got the extra looks — evidenced by a massive 35-24 rebounding edge, including a 16-4 advantage offensively — but just couldn’t finish.

Syracuse’s lead would extend to as many as 10 points — a 37-27 score — with 14:20 remaining in the game, but it evaporated as soon as Patterson started unlacing Boeheim’s tightly-woven 2-3 zone defense. He made three 3-pointers on three consecutive possessions to bring the Panthers within a 39-36 margin.

No challenge — not the distance of the arc from Patterson’s launching spot or a defender’s long arms flailing in front of his face — proved worthy of halting Patterson.

Talib Zanna found a gap in between the layers of Syracuse’s zone, sinking a jumper from the top of the key to tie the score at 46-46. Zanna, a redshirt senior, posted another double-double, scoring 12 points and grabbing 11 boards.

But while a pair of fifth-year seniors dissected the defense to lead Pitt, which eventually grabbed a slim three point lead with under five minutes to play, it was a teenage freshman who was busily operating a fluid offense for the Orange, which shot 51.2 percent from the field and sported four starters with double-digit points.

Point guard Tyler Ennis scored 16 points on an efficient 5-of-8 shooting performance, but his poise belied his youth late in the contest. Six of Ennis’ points came in the final 1:50, protecting the Syracuse (18-0, 5-0) advantage, which swayed and teetered with each of Pitt’s responding possessions.

After Patterson missed his long-range 3 that would have tied the score, James Robinson hauled in the offensive rebound, which led to a pair of made free throws by freshman forward Michael Young. But Ennis matched.

On the other end, Pitt had three seconds to capitalize on one final chance to send the game to overtime. Everyone knew where the ball was going, and it eventually went there: Lamar Patterson’s trusted hands.

He was swarmed — as had been Boeheim’s solution to cooling the red-hot shooter since his unwavering stretch of 3-point mastery — and fouled immediately, negating the chance for a tying 3.

Patterson missed his first attempt, then tried spiking a shot off the rim in hopes of an offensive rebound and another possession. Instead, Syracuse forward Rakeem Christmas’ arms enveloped the ball and a foul sent him to the line for two shots.

As Christmas backed away from the charity stripe, sinking both free throws, Syracuse’s bench stood up. By then everyone saw it coming: another win for the ACC’s top team.