Despite 86-71 win, Syracuse’s poor defensive effort allows Monmouth to hang in

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At its best, Syracuse’s defense stood tall when cornering Monmouth’s guards against the baseline, drawing one of 14 turnovers, locking down one of the most inexperienced teams in the country. At its worst, it stood still.

With 2:45 left in the first half, the Orange sat in a position they neve thought they’d be in Monday night — down three points to the Hawks and looking down the barrel of another possible upset. They were in the midst of allowing a 56.7% shooting performance from the field against a team that hardly shot 45% entering the game.

Then, Maliq Brown punched out a pass inside the paint to Tahron Allen, but didn’t chase after the ball as it dribbled up into the hands of Jakari Spence at the top of the key. Spence kicked out to Jack Collins and he overdrew a long 3-pointer. But the long rebound darted past Jesse Edwards and scooted by Joe Girard III at the free throw line. Benny Williams was so out of position that he could hardly reach out to touch Spence when he finally got the ball and pulled up to make a long two-pointer. Head coach Jim Boeheim threw his arms down and started barking at his players as the Orange fell to their largest deficit of the night.

Syracuse managed to come out of halftime with better success. Monmouth was physical down low. Far more than Georgetown and Notre Dame, according to Boeheim. Syracuse could find success against the teams that didn’t push its forwards around. The Orange (7-4, 1-0 Atlantic Coast) ultimately won 86-71 over the Hawks (1-10, 0-0 Colonial Athletic), but played a poor defensive game, allowing one of the worst shooting teams in Division I to finish firing 48.2% from the field.

“We’re not winning playing basketball like this,” Boeheim said. “We have to play some defense. If we played some defense, it would have been a close game, but we would have been up eight or 10. We were lucky to be ahead at halftime.”

The Orange started off slow, quickly falling behind 10-5 off of 3-pointers from both Myles Ruth and Collins. Boeheim said that Monmouth is one of the better teams against the zone because it passes better and is able to get quick shots from the outside despite averaging just 30.1% from the field. But not even Boeheim thought the Hawks could shoot above 50% from both in and outside the arc. It didn’t help that the Orange were leaving the team’s best 3-point shooter, Collins, open from range either.

Slow starts have become commonplace for Syracuse, even in wins, with the most egregious examples coming in the last two games against woefully inferior opponents. Against both Monmouth and Georgetown, SU allowed its opponent to hang in the game throughout most of the first half. In both starts, the Orange allowed their opponent to shoot over 40% from the field and 35% from deep.

“On defense, we tend to stand sometimes,” Williams said. “We get beat on backdoors, get face cut. We just got to stay active and stay on our toes.”

Even after an 8-0 run towards the end of the first half, Syracuse almost let Monmouth draw level going into the halftime break. Beginning with a bounce pass at the top of the key from Jack Holmstrom to Myles Foster that split between Judah Mintz and Girard, Foster grabbed the pass and cut to his left past Edwards before shooting. Chris Bell didn’t bite on the layup attempt, leading John Bol Ajak one-on-one. Foster simply ducked underneath the center and got the layup, drawing a light foul on Ajak in the process.

Monmouth was the worst team on Syracuse’s schedule, per KenPom, a team with an average experience of 0.56 years of collegiate ball. It was coming off of a 37-point loss to Princeton and only shot as well as it did from the field against the Orange twice before.

“Some players, it’s hard to get up for these games,” Williams said. “Monmouth’s 1-9, players come into this game thinking we’re just gonna go by them.”

The defense was standing instead of stopping cuts, and the guards were allowing too many “high-post touches,” according to Mintz. Boeheim has also been adamant that players like Bell, Brown and Williams don’t want to rebound, singling out Bell and Brown after Monday’s win. Despite Edwards averaging 11.3 rebounds per game, SU only outrebounded Monmouth on offensive rebounds 13-11.

Syracuse won, Mintz said, that’s all that matters. The Orange are 7-4, six wins coming in non-conference play and have rattled off four straight victories. Their defense improved in the second half, holding the Hawks to 38.5% from the field and 3-of-12 on 3-pointers. Boeheim credited Mintz and Girard for stepping up to help mitigate the forwards who “have not wanted to play this year.”

But coming out of the under-16 timeout in the second half, Monmouth was down just two points. Had it not been for an eventual 19-4 run that took place from the 12-minute mark on, the Hawks could have forced the Orange down to the wire. SU had a lineup with Williams at the small forward, Ajak at power forward and Edwards at center. Boeheim said having Ajak in the mix wasn’t an ideal lineup — he’s simply in there for more height. Ajak played on the outer arc of the 2-3 zone, where he let a pass from Allen to Foster penetrate the paint behind him.

He tried to readjust and help Edwards, but a spin move from Foster caught Edwards reaching. Edwards fouled Foster as he hit a close-range fadeaway and headed to the charity stripe in hopes of giving the Hawks the lead. He did, but it lasted just one possession before SU reclaimed the lead and finally clamped down on defense to close out Monmouth.

“It’s just a matter of not playing to somebody’s record,” Mintz said. “We get up for games like Georgetown, and we kind of lay back in the beginning of the game against (teams) like Monmouth.”