Syracuse\u2019s season has been a tale of ups and downs to this point.<\/p>\n
The Orange hope to rebound from a disappointing defeat when they host Mercyhurst in nonconference action Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Syracuse (6-4) began its season with four straight wins before absorbing an 0-3 record on its trip to Las Vegas. The team then recovered to notch two consecutive victories, including an upset of No. 13 Tennessee, before the pendulum swung the other way in Saturday\u2019s 70-69 home loss to Hofstra.<\/p>\n
J.J. Starling scored 15 points and William Kyle III added 13 for the Orange, who shot 9-of-16 from the foul line in the one-point loss.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s unacceptable for Syracuse,\u201d Kyle said. \u201cIt\u2019s unacceptable for everybody on the team. It\u2019s unacceptable for me \u2013 I\u2019ve got to do more as well. We just got to be a lot better, a lot better.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Orange trailed by 10 with under five minutes remaining before rallying to take the lead. Still, they came up short in the end, and they are running out of time to get things ironed out before ACC play begins on New Year\u2019s Eve.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis loss definitely put a dent in the Syracuse men\u2019s program, but I feel like it\u2019s always a chance to bounce back,\u201d said freshman guard Kiyan Anthony. \u201cWe\u2019re not even halfway through the season, so we still have a lot of games, a lot of big games we can win, and we\u2019ve proven that we can compete with these big teams.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mercyhurst (4-7) fell to 1-7 on the road with Saturday\u2019s 80-47 setback at Davidson. The Lakers trailed 36-15 at halftime and never recovered, despite 15 points from Bernie Blunt III.<\/p>\n
Blunt averages 16.6 points and has made a team-high 24 3-pointers on the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s our best player. He\u2019s our go-to guy,\u201d said Jake Lemelman, who chips in 12.2 points per game. \u201cAs much as we can help him and take the load off him, that\u2019s what we need to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Syracuse ranks last among 365 Division I teams in free-throw percentage (56.8), Mercyhurst isn\u2019t much better at 58.3%. The Lakers shot 7 of 16 from the foul line in the loss to Davidson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Syracuse\u2019s season has been a tale of ups and downs to this point. The Orange hope to rebound…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[136,138,137],"class_list":{"0":"post-63190","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-erie","8":"tag-erie","9":"tag-erie-headlines","10":"tag-erie-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}