Syracuse basketball survives Jimmy Boeheim rally to beat Cornell

Syracuse basketball got the win, as expected, and Buddy Boeheim bested his brother Jimmy. Here are all the highlights and top takeaways.

Prior to the game starting, we were served a Syracuse basketball bombshell: guard Jalen Carey is “out indefinitely” with a thumb injury and is a “solid bet” to redshirt this season. Here’s how the game played out and the top nuggets.

First half

Outside of the Jalen Carey news, which didn’t affect the starting lineup since he was no longer in it, saw no change. Joe Girard got his second straight start at point guard, Buddy Boeheim, Elijah Hughes, Marek Dolezaj, and Bourama Sidibe rounded out the rest of the starters.

Although for the first time this season, Bourama didn’t score the first offensive points of this game, Buddy Boeheim did when he canned a beautiful three. Sort of poetic that it happened that way in this game.

The matriarch of the Boeheim family Juli Boeheim donned this shirt (pictured below) for Battle of the Boeheim’s version three.

After a hot start from the Orange, the game became a turnover slop fest of ugly basketball and poor decisions.

Buddy Boeheim started out hut garnering eight points on 3-of-6 shooting in the first 13 minutes, but Cornell battled back to make it 24-19.

Syracuse was hot from deep (4-of-6), but have since cooled missing six straight which has allowed the Big Red to get back in the game near the end of the first half.

At one point the Orange went five minutes without scoring a basket vs Cornell, not exactly ideal.

First half takeaways:

• In the battle of the Boeheims:
  • Buddy Boeheim led Orange in scoring (10 points on 4-of-11 shooting, two assists, one steal, and one board.
  • Jimmy Boeheim led Big Red in scoring (12 points on 4-of-8 shooting, 4-for-4 from the line, and two rebounds).
• Syracuse offense struggling after hot start: 10-of-28 from the field (35.7 percent).
• Orange outrebounded at the half: 14-13, despite having the size advantage in this contest.

Second half

In the second half, it seemed like the Orange put an emphasis on feeding it inside, which was a smart strategy.

The tallest guy on Cornell is 6-foot-9, but he rarely plays, Jimmy Boeheim at 6-foot-8 is the biggest guy that they use in their real rotation.

While the Orange has guys like Dolezaj (6-foot-10), Bourama (6-foot-10), and Jesse Edwards (6-foot-11) to name a few.

Although Syracuse wasn’t the only finding success, Jimmy Boeheim seemed to be finding a groove slicing and dicing the 2-3 zone.

Although with the game hanging in the balance Joe Girard hit a clutch three-pointer to expand the lead to nine with under 12 minutes remaining: 44-35.

Then Cornell made another rally to bring it back within three thanks to some clutch free-throw shooting from Jimmy Boeheim: 44-41.

You hate to blame officiating, but it was pretty awful on three to four straight possessions where the refs just completely missed the call. Despite the poor calls, Syracuse still led 47-41 with under eight minutes remaining in the game.

Quincy Guerrier drains the clutch three-pointer from the corner, which is immediately answered on the other side by Cornell.

Then we got the moment we were all waiting for, even with the game out of hand, Jimmy Boeheim drilled a triple try which was answered by his younger brother Buddy on the other end for a little fun moment.

At the end of the day, Syracuse ended up winning this one 72 to 53 over Cornell.

Final takeaways:

• Free throw disparity:
  • Syracuse was 11-of-17 from the charity stripe.
  • While Cornell was 16-of-21.
• Jimmy Boeheim went off and had his best game of the season (25 points on 7-of-16 shooting from the field, and was  9-of-11 from the free-throw line).

Up next for the Orange they’ll stay right at home to play Bucknell at noon in the dome on Saturday.