Editor’s Note: The Daily Orange decided not to drive to Charlottesville, Virginia for Sunday night’s game between Syracuse and Virginia due to safety concerns stemming from the snowstorm.

Syracuse and Virginia traded baskets, the John Paul Jones Arena screaming then silencing, over and over, until Malachi Richardson found himself trapped in the corner by the Syracuse bench.

Pressured by Malcolm Brogdon after fumbling a mid-range jumper in mid-air, Richardson blindly chucked the ball over his shoulder to no one in particular. Virginia’s London Perrantes caught it as if he were fielding a punt in football, and Anthony Gill’s dunk moments later bumped the Cavaliers’ lead to seven with 1:03 to play.

The Orange (13-8, 3-5 Atlantic Coast) hit two late 3s to tease a comeback, but it wasn’t sharp enough in the most important moments of a 73-65 loss to No. 13 Virginia (15-4, 4-3) on Sunday. It marked Virginia’s 15th straight home victory and snapped a three-game winning streak for Syracuse. SU was paced by 24 points from Michael Gbinije and 23 from Richardson, but no other Orange player scored in double-figures against UVA’s stingy pack-line defense.

Virginia, led by 21 points from Brogdon, scored 30 points in the paint to SU’s 12 and ultimately won the game around the basket.

“We struggled inside the whole game, but we really struggled in the first half,” SU head coach Jim Boeheim said in his postgame press conference, posted on Cuse.com. “You know our perimeter defense was OK, we struggled inside.”

Both teams got off to a slow offensive start before Virginia attacked Syracuse’s zone through the low post. The Cavaliers assisted on 12 of their 14 buckets before halftime, and were paced by 12 first-half points from Anthony Gill, all of them coming in the paint. Perrantes also contributed to UVA’s 37 points at the break, making three 3s on five attempts and collecting five assists.

But the Orange stayed in it, trailing 37-29 after 20 minutes, thanks in large part to Richardson. The freshman scored 11 first-half points while no other SU player had more than five, shooting 4-of-5 from the field and 3-of-4 from beyond the arc.

After the break, though, it was Gbinije carrying the Orange. He made three deep 3s — the last with an outstretched Brogdon in his face — and scored Syracuse’s first 11 points of the second half. Then Richardson went on a personal 5-0 run, hitting a mid-range jump shot and a 3 off the dribble, before a Tyler Roberson second-chance layup knotted the game at 47 with 8:19 to play.

To that point, SU had made 8-of-18 3s to stick with a Virginia team shooting 50 percent but increasingly bothered by the 2-3 zone. The Cavaliers missed their first six 3s of the second half. They committed a turnover on four straight possessions to let the Orange creep back into the game. Like it did against Duke on Monday — and Wake Forest before that, and Boston College before that — Syracuse forced UVA into uncomfortable shots and uncharacteristic mistakes.

From there the teams settled into a back-and-forth contest. Brogdon hit back-to-back 3s to put the Cavaliers up by seven. Richardson answered with a 3 to cut it to four. A transition 3 from Cooney later cut the lead to three. A Perrantes 3 pushed it back to three. A Gbinije 3 chopped it in half, 60-57 Virginia with two minutes left.

But then Virginia scored four points without an Orange answer, and that’s what did the Orange in.

“We’ve played really good basketball throughout this three-game road trip, I thought we played well enough tonight to certainly have a chance,” Boeheim said. “Brogdon, that’s what good players do, make those shots, and that was the difference in the game.”

Published on January 24, 2016 at 9:05 pm

Contact Jesse: jcdoug01@syr.edu | @dougherty_jesse