CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Tyler Roberson did all he could to clean up Syracuse’s messes. He stood under the basket as Malachi Richardson heaved up a 3 in the opening minute of the second half, with North Carolina’s lead boosted up to seven.

The shot clanked off the iron and rested into his Roberson’s hands. He quickly dished it out to Michael Gbinije, also trying to predicate Syracuse’s hopeful comeback on long-ball attempts. Gbinije’s prayer wasn’t answered from behind the arc, and Roberson couldn’t get between Dajuan Coleman and his third personal foul.

The 6-foot-8 forward could only get between the Tar Heels and 11 missed shots, and his team-leading effort still wasn’t enough to get in the way of a third loss in four games.

“I thought (Roberson) was good,” head coach Jim Boeheim said. “This was a perfect game for him, they don’t block out so he’ll go and get some rebounds and he did that tonight.”

Nine days after Roberson’s head coach said he wouldn’t play a minute if Boeheim had “anyone else,” and two days after playing a season-low 14 minutes, Roberson stayed on the court for 34. As the Orange (19-11, 9-8 Atlantic Coast) repeatedly missed from deep in a 75-70 loss to No. 7 North Carolina (24-6, 13-4) on Monday night, Roberson reemerged as a presence under the basket.

He corralled a game-high 11 rebounds, his most in six games when he posted 15 rebounds against Virginia Tech on Feb. 2. Roberson wasn’t inspired, and publicly said he wasn’t swayed by Boeheim’s stern words. But after missing the first shot of the game for Syracuse, he smothered a Trevor Cooney missed 3 and laid in his own shot.

He rebounded in every sense of the word, and turned his season back around after Boeheim provided a dead end.

“It’s all mental,” Roberson said. “You’ve got to keep playing hard and tell yourself you got to like take it to another level. I think if you do that you’ll be fine, and that’s what I tried to do.”

The Orange only shot 5-of-20 from behind the arc, and started the game as cold as it ended, missing three open looks in the opening two and a half minutes. Roberson grabbed the missed Cooney 3, but couldn’t beat UNC’s Justin Jackson on the subsequent rebound attempt off a Tyler Lydon miss.

But he recovered to corral Brice Johnson’s miss on the other end, contributing to his positive sequence opening the game and seven total rebounds through just over the opening eight minutes. It equaled his total combined from the past two games.

As Syracuse continued to hang with the Tar Heels in the early going, Roberson nabbed another Lydon shot that clanked off the iron. Instead of looking outside the perimeter to dish the ball, he lifted the ball high above his head and reached for the basket.

Kennedy Meeks bodied up against Roberson as he rose toward the basket, and fouled the SU forward as the ball sunk through the net to give SU its first lead of the game.

“He just battled tonight,” Michael Gbinije said. “He gave us an inside presence at times … and it’s nice to just have some interior scoring.”

Against the Tar Heels’ dynamic offense, Syracuse tried compensating for its inability to slow down UNC in the second half by shooting quicker and more frequently.

He fed Richardson for a corner 3 midway through the second half, and immediately took off across the baseline to reach the basket. His hands met Richardson’s miss almost simultaneously, but he ended up turning the ball over.

Roberson caught up to Richardson’s miss, but even with a game-high six offensive rebounds, couldn’t keep up with the frequency of misses. He single-handedly couldn’t chase down the lead. But what he could do was rebound. And he rebounded to keep SU within reach, and once again grab ahold of his season.

“That’s what he’s been doing all year for us,” Richardson said of Roberson’s performance. “I think he got away from it these past few games. I think it was a wake-up call, and we need him to do that.

“We need him to do that every game for us.”

 

Published on February 29, 2016 at 11:33 pm

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