Syracuse holds off late Georgia Tech rally

Georgia Tech nearly pulled off a massive comeback Tuesday at McCamish Pavilion, but Syracuse’s 20-point lead in the second half proved far too much to overcome for the Yellow Jackets in an 82-72 loss to the Orange in front of a crowd of 6,216.

Tech trailed by 20 with a little more than 14 minutes on the clock and looked doomed to get run out of its own building. But the Jackets kept chiseling away and crawled within 10 with 4:58 left, and then five with 3:26 left.

It took Tech, however, 2:14 to score after that 3:26 mark, and by then SU had built the lead back out to 76-67 and virtually iced the game.

“I thought this was the first game where us not making shots bled into our defense, and the game got away from us there,” Tech coach Damon Stoudamire said. “We just didn’t do a good job of keeping guys in front of us.”

Baye Ndongo led the Jackets (10-6, 1-2 ACC) with 20 points and nine rebounds despite playing much of the second half with four fouls. Kowacie Reeves added 11 points and Jaeden Mustaf chipped in 10. Lamar Washington finished with nine points, seven rebounds and seven assists.

Nait George, Tech’s starting point guard for the past two seasons now playing for Syracuse, scored 17 points to go along with five assists (he also had six turnovers). George was booed most times he touched the ball.

“It was pretty bittersweet,” George said on his return to McCamish Pavilion. “But it was fun at the end of the day, just seeing everybody we started our college career with and everybody here’s great dudes and great people. I was just smiling the whole game just because I’m playing back in McCamish, and we love this spot.

“I really didn’t expect (to get booed), but once it happened it was really fun. I told my teammates, ‘I’m not gonna make it one of them games, but if they boo me, it’s gonna be one of them games.’”

Tech, which fell to 10-2 at home and 1-6 against opponents inside the top three quadrants of the NCAA’s NET rankings, next plays at Miami (12-2, 1-0) at noon Saturday.

Both teams Tuesday started the evening strong offensively by combining to go 12 of 23 from the floor over the first 8 1/2 minutes. Tech had taken a slim, 12-11 lead on Cole Kirouac’s alley-oop dunk only to see Kiyan Anthony hit a 3 and Donnie Freeman flush an uncontested two-handed slam, putting Syracuse up 16-12.

With the score tied at 18, the Orange went on a 7-1 run, a spurt punctuated by Sadiq White Jr.’s alley-oop slam, one of four Syracuse dunks in the first half. Moments later, Anthony drained a 3 to give the Orange a 30-21 advantage, their largest of the game at that point.

Tech went the final 3:31 of the first half without making a field goal and thus fell into a 44-30 hole at the break. The Jackets missed six straight shots to end the half.

Syracuse finished with a 47.1% shooting clip in the first half and had 10 assists on 16 made shots. It also scored nine points off six Tech turnovers and produced 22 points from inside the paint.

The Jackets were clearly trying to get center Baye Ndongo into the offensive part of the game plan early in the second half, but 1:43 into the half the junior was charged with a fourth foul. So that put an end to that plan.

Syracuse was merciless after that development, upping the margin to 54-34 on Freeman’s long 3 with 16:28 to go.

“The biggest takeaway for me in this game is it’s the first time all season that our offense affected our defense. Tonight, you could just see it in the guys’ faces,” Stoudamire said. “The second half was good from the standpoint of we fought when we got down, but we shouldn’t have been in that hole anyway.”

Tech could do little to make a dent in the deficit from there, which allowed fans of the visiting team to start celebrating and chanting loudly “Let’s go Orange!” with 10:26 on the clock. But the celebration was a bit premature.