Just like it has all season, Syracuse found a way to win at the end of the game. But for the first time all season, it wasn’t due to its offensive execution.

Rakeem Christmas stole the ball with 13 seconds left and SU down one. He dished it to Tyler Ennis, who found a slashing C.J. Fair. Fair laid it in with 6.7 seconds to go in what SU head coach Jim Boeheim said was the only way the Orange could possibly score to beat North Carolina State.

“Even though we’ve been in these situations, our luck will run out at some point,” Fair said. “We’ve just got to be better on offense.”

No. 1 Syracuse (25-0, 12-0 Atlantic Coast) shot just 35.2 percent from the field, eking out a 56-55 win over N.C. State (16-9, 6-6) in front of 31,572 at the Carrier Dome on Saturday night. Though the final result has been the same all season, SU is barely escaping and isn’t playing well in the process.

Saturday was the latest example, as the Orange was outplayed the entire game and struggled to generate any offensive consistency.

“Our offense wasn’t that great tonight and our defense was OK,” guard Trevor Cooney said. “You can’t do that, especially in the ACC.”

The past four games have been a blur. Since a flawless performance on the offensive end against Duke, Syracuse has been woefully inefficient.

SU scored 61 against Notre Dame, needing a late-game push to fend off the Fighting Irish. Then it needed a miraculous heave from Tyler Ennis to survive against Pittsburgh on Wednesday.

In those games, Syracuse played poorly all game but thrived in the final minutes. On Saturday, Boeheim said it was the first time his players made bad plays down the stretch until the final seconds.

The Orange was finally outplayed late in the game.

“When you’ve had a stretch like we have you’re going to have some games where you don’t make good plays,” Boeheim said. “Tonight was that game.”

Once again, Syracuse prevailed, but it did so thanks to some fortuitous bounces and timely traps.

The first trap forced Desmond Lee to lose the ball out of bounds, giving SU a chance to take the lead. After Ennis was called for an offensive foul, the Orange needed another stop.

Then came the game-winner. A simple play. One that SU desperately needed because it couldn’t muster up anything else.

Syracuse was sloppy the whole game, particularly in the final minutes. The offensive woes weren’t a fluke, but rather epitomized what’s been happening of late.

Boeheim said that’s been the case since Duke. He’s surprised his team doesn’t have five losses — never mind one.

“I feel like we’ve played overall well enough to be 20-5,” Boeheim said. “I think that’s really what we are. We haven’t played better than that.”

Neither Fair nor Ennis played well against the Wolfpack. All five of Fair’s field goals came in the paint. He said his legs were tired. When he watched himself shoot on tape, he saw that he was shooting only with his upper body.

He even air-balled a shot he usually drains. Twice.

Ennis was uncharacteristically lackadaisical with the ball, turning it over four times.

“Tyler’s made nothing but good plays,” Boeheim said. “He made a couple bad ones tonight, which is really what you expect a freshman to do.”

Boeheim’s said the same thing multiple times this season. He said it when Syracuse squeaked out a win over St. John’s at Madison Square Garden. He knows his team keeps winning, but he insists SU still isn’t a good team and has lots of work to do.

The toughest games on the schedule are still to come, Boeheim said. If the Orange keeps playing as poorly as it did against N.C. State, he’s confident the undefeated season everyone’s talking about will soon disappear.

Cooney just laughed when asked how his team pulled out yet another win.

“I have no idea,” he said. “Especially today, I have no idea. We did get really lucky toward the end.

“You can’t keep doing this.”

Published on February 15, 2014 at 9:23 pm

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