Las Vegas – Syracuse players understood the mission.

They would be without their leading scorer, their second-leading rebounder here at the Players Era Festival. They would be facing the nation’s No. 3 team, a physical squad that has earned its reputation as tough, unyielding defenders under Kelvin Sampson.

Donnie Freeman, SU’s 6-foot-9 sophomore forward, a player Orange coaches were thrilled to retain in this era of NCAA postseason free agency, sustained a lower-body injury in SU’s game last week against Monmouth.

Officially, Syracuse ruled him out on Monday, a little more than two hours before the Orange met Houston at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

But the signs were there for his teammates to witness. They all pointed to a week without a crucial player in Las Vegas, at what has become the biggest, glitziest Thanksgiving Week basketball extravaganza.

SU players and coaches would need to find a way to reconcile Freeman’s absence. They would need to account for his missing 18 points and five rebounds per game.

“Well, this is a family,” SU coach Adrian Autry said after his Orange took Houston to overtime before losing 78-74 here. “This is next man up. This is a team that’s been put together to be able to pick each other up. This team is built that way.

“These players believe in each other. We spent a lot of time on that. And so, you know, our game plan didn’t change.”

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Players Era Festival: Syracuse battles Houston at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas

Houston’s game plan changed.

Sampson said the Cougars prepared to face Freeman but scrapped their original blueprint for a different set of schematics once they learned he could not play.

Sampson, who is in his 37th season as a head coach, had never seen Freeman play in person. But he’d watched him on tape and considered him a “good scorer.”

The way Syracuse played in Freeman’s absence reminded Sampson of previous situations his teams have encountered. He referenced a situation from last season, when Texas Tech lost its star, JT Toppin, during its game with the Cougars.

Texas Tech went on to beat Houston, 82-81, in overtime.

“Sometimes guys band together and play better when they don’t have a guy,” Sampson said. “That happened to us last year with Texas Tech and JT Toppin. They lost him in a situation where they should have never kicked him out of the game. But they did. And I think that made Texas Tech better and they beat us.”

Syracuse did not beat Houston Monday.

But the Orange had a chance to defeat a perennial power in regulation without its star forward.

William Kyle, the Orange center Sampson described as “tough,” said SU players talked with Freeman as the previous week progressed.

Freeman kept encouraging his teammates, Kyle said. He kept reminding them of the fight, of the drive they possessed to beat Houston.

All those messages resonated.

But still.

“It hurt. I mean, it hurts. That’s your brother,” Kyle said. “Seeing him go down, I felt for him. But we were all encouraged as well because of his leadership. Donnie came up to me before the game. He came up to all these guys. He said, ‘I believe in you guys.’ ”

Kyle said it was heartening to know how much Freeman “was still with us” even though he could not play.

Freeman’s lower-body injury was not more fully explained, but SU spokesman Pete Moore said before the game that it was not related to the fifth metatarsal fracture he sustained last winter. That break eventually required surgery, but Freeman fully healed from it and had been cleared to play for months.

Autry said Monday he expects Freeman’s latest injury to be “a quick pause.” He will be reevaluated when the Orange returns to Syracuse later this week.

“I don’t have all the details,” Autry said, “but this is not something that will be season-ending or anything like that.”

Nobody in a Syracuse uniform or on the Syracuse coaching staff was willing to claim a “moral victory” (Autry’s words) on Monday.

But Sampson, in his frank and sometimes folksy postgame comments, assessed Syracuse this way:

“I’m sure Coach Autry and his staff and the Syracuse kids are disappointed that they lost,” Sampson said. “They should be. But they should not be disappointed with their effort and with how tough they played. They played good.”