Syracuse men’s basketball falls to Texas 70-66 in first game of Legends Classic

Syracuse men’s basketball (3-1, 0-0 Atlantic Coast Conference) guard Jaquan Carlos stepped to the free throw line with 10 seconds left and his team down three to Texas (4-1, 0-0 Southeastern Conference) in the first game of the Legends Classic. The senior had just stolen the ball to give SU possession. Two made free throws would put the Orange down one, needing a foul and quick basket to stay alive. The forward took the first, and missed. He would go on to make the second, but one miss was enough for the Longhorns to escape with a 70-66 win Thursday night.

It wasn’t just Carlos who struggled from the free throw line. SU as a team shot 50%, which included forward Chris Bell going 3-5 and forward Jyáre Davis shooting 3-6. The Orange have consistently had trouble from the charity stripe in the 2024-2025 campaign, shooting less than 66% in all four games so far this season.

“This is frustrating and I’m tired of it,” SU head coach Adrian Autry said after the loss to Texas. “We have an expectation, we have a standard for ourselves and we haven’t played that way yet.”

In addition to the free throw line, the Orange’s offensive struggles extended out to the three-point arc. After shooting 1-13 from long distance in the first half in Saturday’s 105-94 double overtime win against Youngstown State (2-2, 0-0 Horizon League Conference), Syracuse went 5-21 from deep through 40 minutes against Texas. Still, Autry hasn’t lost faith in his squads ability to connect on three pointers.

“I’m very confident in these guys. We work a lot at it.” Autry explained in the postgame press conference. “We got the right guys taking the shots, they're just not making them. I thought we had good shots in the beginning of the game and we just didn’t make them.”

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It wasn’t all bad for SU in Thursday’s loss to Texas. After trailing by 16 early in the second half, the Orange went on a 19-4 run in less than eight minutes to put Syracuse down one. Defensively, SU forced nine missed shots from Texas in that stretch.

“It was the first time we really locked in and played defense,” Autry said when asked about that momentum shift. “I thought that was the difference in the second half. I thought we did a really good job in our man-to-man defense. We need to do it again.”

On the other side of the bracket, St. Joseph’s beat Texas Tech 78-77. After trailing 45-29 in the first half, the Red Raiders nearly made a full comeback, but the last shot from forward Darrion Williams to win it rimmed out.

The Hawks move on to battle the Longhorns in the Legends Classic Championship Friday night at 9. Syracuse and Texas Tech fight for third place before that game at 7 p.m. WAER’s coverage starts at 6:30 with Countdown to Tipoff.