#6 Syracuse Gets Embarrassed by Pitt

It was a rather depressing day for the Orangemen squadron as they walked into Peterson Events Center to play one of their Big East rivals, the Pittsburgh Panthers. Syracuse was coming off of a loss to Villi nova, and figured well Pitt is un ranked so they're probably not that good. Even though Pitt really is not very good, the Orangemen made them look like a Top 25 team, turning the ball over 14 times. Syracuse may not have handled the ball very well, but they caused some havoc on the other end causing 19 turnovers for the opposing team. Well if you just look at those numbers then you would say, how could they have lost by 10 points. The bottom line was that shots were not falling for the Orangemen and they were falling for Pittsburgh. Shooting 36% from the floor was not going to cut it against a team shooting 48% from the floor. At the end of the first half it was only a 2 point game. Things became out of hand in the second half where the Panthers took over and ended up defeating Syracuse by a final score of 65-55. In the second half especially the missing presence of James Southerland was felt. The academically intelligible senior could have stopped Pittsburgh from grabbing offensive rebounds and could have shut down Pitts big man. C.J Fair really did everything he could to keep the team into the game finishing up with 20 points and 3 steals. Michael Carter-Williams had a bit of an off game, only dishing out 2 assists as opposed to the 9 that he averages. Brandon Triche scored 14, but he was the main cause for all the turnovers throwing the ball away 6 times in the game. Overall the Orangemen did not have the worst game ever, but the poor shooting  the turnovers, and the missing James Southerland, really hurt them against a fellow Big East team. 

C.J Fair, forward for Syracuse.