NEW YORK – There’s something about that third loss of the season at Madison Square Garden that seems to elevate Syracuse basketball to code-red status. St. John’s last year, Connecticut this year. Both games that an identity-seeking Orange team should’ve handily won on paper but somehow let slip away.

Last year, SU chalked up resume-boosting victories against then-No. 18 UConn and then-No. 25 Texas A&M before a dud against the Red Storm. They were wins that turned out to slide Jim Boeheim’s team into the NCAA Tournament (the selection committee chair cited Syracuse’s top-50 wins as the main deciding factor for including the Orange in the field).

This year, though, there are no such wins bolstering Syracuse’s first month. Winning out in nonconference play — with no potential victories that would aide SU’s NCAA Tournament case in March — is the only way to hold off the panic mode that seems imminent. But if anything, last season’s 180-degree turn should serve as a reminder this early in the calendar.

It’s not time to panic just yet.

“We don’t wanna panic too early, you know, shut down the season and have that hurt us,” sophomore point guard Frank Howard said. “We just wanna come in, turn up the urgency now and it’s time to clean everything up, time to try to play perfect.”

Right now, Syracuse is light years away from perfection. The Orange has scored 50 points twice in eight games, an offensive low SU didn’t sink to even once last season. No player has proven he can consistently create his own shot. And despite a defense that has allowed 65 points or less in 75 percent of its games, stagnating on the other side of the ball has been the anvil crushing any hope of this team reaching the expectations it entered the season with.

Still, rays of optimism provide hope this offense can mesh, however infrequently those rays are interspersed throughout the game. Against UConn, Tyler Lydon attacked the basket despite his 1-of-7 performance. Dajuan Coleman continued sinking his mid-range jumper. Howard is creating his own shot in the lane. It just didn’t fall on Monday night.

Those are all pieces Syracuse has searched for at some point this season. They’re starting to surface simultaneously and chances are they’ll strike in unison sooner or later.

“We got a few losses but I think we got enough talent to bounce back. I think our defense was good. We just gotta put some points on the board,” said Coleman, a fifth-year senior center. “You gotta fight through it. … I’ve been through a lot of adversity and you just can’t break down.”

Only half of Syracuse’s recent eight-man rotation experienced the roller-coaster ride from losing to St. John’s to winning at Duke to losing in the ACC tournament first round to making the Final Four. Syracuse’s newcomers can look to Lydon, Coleman, Howard and Tyler Roberson as a model for moving past this recent group of losses.

A loss to a wounded Connecticut team without three contributors due to season-ending injuries seems detrimental right now. So did the loss to the Red Storm and the four straight defeats to begin conference play. This most recent loss is bad, but it’s far from the nail in Syracuse’s coffin.

It can’t be, this early in the season. No matter how much the problems that plagued the Orange at MSG seem like they’ll persist in the future.

“We went through a big rough patch in the middle of last season and we made it to the Final Four,” Lydon said. “So anything’s possible.”

Matt Schneidman is a senior staff writer at The Daily Orange, where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at mcschnei@syr.edu or @matt_schneidman.

Published on December 6, 2016 at 10:06 pm