{"id":64047,"date":"2025-11-25T07:31:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T07:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/64047\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T07:31:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T07:31:20","slug":"syracuse-basketball-lost-to-no-3-houston-without-its-leading-scorer-nobody-made-excuses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/64047\/","title":{"rendered":"Syracuse basketball lost to No. 3 Houston without its leading scorer. Nobody made excuses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Las Vegas \u2013 Syracuse players understood the mission.<\/p>\n

They would be without their leading scorer<\/a>, their second-leading rebounder here at the Players Era Festival. They would be facing the nation\u2019s No. 3 team, a physical squad that has earned its reputation as tough, unyielding defenders under Kelvin Sampson.<\/p>\n

Donnie Freeman, SU\u2019s 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\u2019s game last week against Monmouth.<\/p>\n

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

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.<\/p>\n

SU players and coaches would need to find a way to reconcile Freeman\u2019s absence. They would need to account for his missing 18 points and five rebounds per game.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, this is a family,\u201d SU coach Adrian Autry said after his Orange took Houston to overtime before losing 78-74 here<\/a>. \u201cThis is next man up. This is a team that\u2019s been put together to be able to pick each other up. This team is built that way. <\/p>\n

\u201cThese players believe in each other. We spent a lot of time on that. And so, you know, our game plan didn\u2019t change.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

1\/53<\/p>\n

Players Era Festival: Syracuse battles Houston at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas<\/p>\n

Houston\u2019s game plan changed. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Sampson, who is in his 37th season as a head coach, had never seen Freeman play in person. But he\u2019d watched him on tape and considered him a \u201cgood scorer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The way Syracuse played in Freeman\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Texas Tech went on to beat Houston, 82-81<\/a>, in overtime.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes guys band together and play better when they don\u2019t have a guy,\u201d Sampson said. \u201cThat 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Syracuse did not beat Houston Monday.<\/p>\n

But the Orange had a chance to defeat a perennial power in regulation without its star forward.<\/p>\n

William Kyle, the Orange center Sampson described as \u201ctough,\u201d said SU players talked with Freeman as the previous week progressed. <\/p>\n

Freeman kept encouraging his teammates, Kyle said. He kept reminding them of the fight, of the drive they possessed to beat Houston.<\/p>\n

All those messages resonated.<\/p>\n

But still.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt hurt. I mean, it hurts. That\u2019s your brother,\u201d Kyle said. \u201cSeeing 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, \u2018I believe in you guys.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Kyle said it was heartening to know how much Freeman \u201cwas still with us\u201d even though he could not play.<\/p>\n

Freeman\u2019s 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<\/a>, but Freeman fully healed from it and had been cleared to play for months.<\/p>\n

Autry said Monday he expects Freeman\u2019s latest injury to be \u201ca quick pause.\u201d He will be reevaluated when the Orange returns to Syracuse later this week. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have all the details,\u201d Autry said, \u201cbut this is not something that will be season-ending or anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nobody in a Syracuse uniform or on the Syracuse coaching staff was willing to claim a \u201cmoral victory\u201d (Autry\u2019s words) on Monday.<\/p>\n

But Sampson, in his frank and sometimes folksy postgame comments, assessed Syracuse this way:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure Coach Autry and his staff and the Syracuse kids are disappointed that they lost,\u201d Sampson said. \u201cThey should be. But they should not be disappointed with their effort and with how tough they played. They played good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Las Vegas \u2013 Syracuse players understood the mission. They would be without their leading scorer, their second-leading rebounder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[33244,56,58,57,188,33245,154,33246,33247,33248],"class_list":{"0":"post-64047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-editorial","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-headlines","11":"tag-houston-news","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-post-standard","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-syracuse","16":"tag-syracuse-com","17":"tag-trimble"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}