Syracuse men’s basketball crumbles 77-62 to Louisville for its seventh consecutive road loss.

As the season winds down, the light at the end of the tunnel grows near for SU men’s basketball. But that same light dulls with every defeat. In its second to last game of the season, Syracuse men’s basketball (15-15, 6-11 Atlantic Coast Conference) was burnt out for the fourth straight game, 77-62, against Louisville (21-9, 10-7 Atlantic Coast Conference).

Syracuse head coach Adrian Autry posts an 8-23 record on the road with the loss.

“The deficit in the first half was just too big,” Autry said. If we made a couple of those shots… I think the game could have been a little bit different.“

SU trudged back to the locker room at the break trailing by 18 points, its largest halftime deficit all season. The mountain of a deficit was built from the three point line: Louisville’s dominance beyond it and Syracuse’s contrasting misfires.

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Louisville entered the contest averaging more three pointers attempted per game than two pointers. The halftime buzzer sounded and the Cardinals had fired off 32 field goal attempts, 17 of which were threes, 6 of them fell (35%). The Orange weren’t as fortunate. Syracuse sidled to the locker room 0-11 from three; its first half all season without a triple.

“I thought we got a lot of good looks in the first half, we just didn’t make them,” said Autry.

These dry heaves came just a few days after SU laced 10 threes in the first half against Wake Forest, its most in a half all season. Before Syracuse’s clash against Louisville, we spoke with Syracuse assistant coach Allen Griffin on the Redev CNY Construction Coaches Report and asked if that performance was “something you could take and try to snowball” or was it “just a hot game?”

Griffin answered, “It’s something we can take and snowball…Those are the shots that we need to take. We’ll make a majority of those shots.”

Against the Demon Deacons, Syracuse forward Donnie Freeman and guard Nate Kingz combined for nine three pointers. But in Louisville, the pair totaled two triples.

Still searching for the bottom of the net from deep, The Orange came back from the locker room with a mountain to climb and made a mild ascent. SU won the second half by three points. This year for the Orange, it’s been the exact opposite:

SU posts about a +1 point margin throughout first halves this year. But when it comes to the final 20 minutes, Syracuse averages four less points than its opponents. Winning the second half against a Power 5 team is a special occasion for SU: Against Power 5 teams this year, Syracuse loses over 75% of second halves and just over 50% of first halves. While the Orange were able to flip that script against the Cardinals, it was, and has been, too little, too late.

Syracuse’s tumultuous season comes to a close on Saturday against Pittsburgh for its final game at 4:30 p.m. WAER’s coverage of SU’s season finale begins with McClurg Remodeling Countdown to Tipoff at 4:00. You can tune into 88.3 FM or right here on waer.org.