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Syracuse's Depth Issues Show in Road Loss to Clemson

Kaleb Joseph quickly re-adjusted the ball from his right side to the left when the clear path to the basket was suddenly impeded by 6-foot-10 Sidy Djitte.  Syracuse's point guard managed to avoid his defender and bank a soft floater off the glass.

It was the first basket for Joseph, who missed his first two shots of the game.

It was the first field goal from Syracuse that didn't come from Rakeem Christmas. 

And it didn't come until there was 4:02 left in the first half.

Syracuse got a 21 point performance from Christmas, but the Orange couldn't find any secondary scoring options for extended stretches of the game.  Not even another dominating effort by Christmas could bail out the Orange (13-5, 4-1 ACC), who lost 66-53 to the Clemson Tigers in Littlejohn Coliseum.

Syracuse's lack of depth showed in its second game without freshman forward Chris McCullough.  The only five players who scored for Syracuse were its starting five. B.J. Johnson and Ron Patterson, who played a total of 13 minutes off the bench, combined to shoot just 0-6.

Besides Christmas, Syracuse's leading scorers were Joseph and Michael Gbinije with 12 and 11 points, respectively. 

The Orange had won its past seven games, including one without McCullough, because of a two-headed attack of Cooney and Christmas.  Cooney had scored ten or more points in eight of the last nine games, while Christmas has done so in every game this season but one.  

While Christmas managed to shoot 10-13, Cooney could only produce five points and missed all seven of his field goal attempts.  Often, the Tigers opted against double-teaming Christmas in the paint, which allowed them to lock down Syracuse's shooters on the perimeter.  

The Orange shot just 2-15 from behind-the-arc.  It went 1-11 during a first half that ended, fittingly, with a missed 3-pointer from Joseph at the buzzer.

At intermission, Syracuse trailed 39-18, after its lowest scoring half of the season.  The red-hot Tigers shot 53.3 percent in the half, whereas the Orange made only a quarter of its shots.  

The Orange chipped away at the lead in the second half, a combination of better offensive play as the game went on and the cooling off of Clemson's shooters.  Early in the second half, Syracuse went on a 6-0 run by holding the Tigers scoreless for five minutes and 19 seconds of game time.

But the damage was already done.

Syracuse never again got within single digits and couldn't recover from its large intermission deficit.