Only four Syracuse players scored from the field against Clemson, a game in which Jim Boeheim sparingly turned to his two-deep bench.

It became easy to see why.

“Look at the stat sheet,” Boeheim said after the game.

Neither of his subs, Ron Patterson and B.J. Johnson, had scored. They tried with nine shots in their 13 minutes, but none of them went in. The game against Clemson was a particularly bad shooting performance for the entire team, but a lack of bench scoring is hardly a new problem.

SU has just 14 bench points in its last four games for an average of 3.5 points per game. It’s something Syracuse (13-5, 4-1 Atlantic Coast) will look to improve on as it moves deeper into its conference schedule at home against Boston College (8-8, 0-4) on Tuesday at 7 p.m.

In the past several years, Boeheim has tended not to use his bench very much. Since the 2006–07 season, SU has only ranked higher than 259th in the country in percentage of minutes played by its bench once, according to KenPom.com.

The Orange was 94th in the nation in bench minutes in 2011–12, when C.J. Fair, James Southerland, Michael-Carter Williams, Baye Moussa Keita came off the bench with Dion Waiters, who was taken fourth overall in that year’s NBA Draft.

It’s worth noting that SU has won 235 games since 2006. This issue isn’t minutes so much as points. Kaleb Joseph’s 12-point performance against Clemson was a bright spot in an ugly game for Syracuse. It was also a necessity.

“He has to really continue to do that because we’re getting no scoring out of Ronnie (Patterson) at all,” Boeheim said after the game. “He can’t make a shot. And we’ve got to get something going.”

Chris McCullough being out for the year is part of the problem. But his injury really just exacerbated a fundamental issue with this Syracuse team’s roster.

There is no dependable scoring option on the SU bench.

“McCullough’s a very good player. We miss him,” Boeheim said. “Earlier in the year he averaged 14, but he still averaged 10 points, seven rebounds a game for the year and you can’t replace that. We can’t … but there’s nothing we can do about that.”

Patterson shoots 23.4 percent from the field and has failed to consistently stretch the floor, shooting 17.1 percent from 3.

Johnson hadn’t appeared in conference play until McCullough was ruled out for the season. He’s shot 0-for-4 in nine minutes since and shoots 29.2 percent from the field overall.

Boeheim said he wasn’t concerned with bench scoring, instead looking to his team’s overall play. This team’s issues are more about scoring overall. It just shows worst at the bottom of the lineup.

“I don’t know if that makes it any harder or not,” Cooney said. “The bottom line is you just have to make shots.”

Published on January 20, 2015 at 12:15 am

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