It was one of those days for C.J. Fair. The jump shots that normally go down didn’t fall. His drives to the rim were uncharacteristically out of control.

St. Francis decided to faceguard the Atlantic Coast Conference preseason Player of the Year and it neutralized Syracuse’s most potent weapon.

“They basically guarded me 94 feet,” the forward said. “It was tough because I couldn’t really find a rhythm, so once I didn’t have a rhythm and then they’re playing that kind of defense I couldn’t get going.”

Fair scored just seven points of 2-of-13 shooting in the No. 9 Orange’s (4-0) 56-50 win over St. Francis (N.Y.) in front of 23,117 in the Carrier Dome on Monday. The Terriers (2-2) rotated a handful of defenders on Fair, mixing up smaller guards and lengthier forwards, but the common thread was the style in which they marked the star.

They stayed in his face and tried to deny him the ball — something Fair hadn’t seen since SU traveled to face Carleton University in Canada this summer.

It frustrated the small forward early and left him out of sorts as the game dragged on.

“They faceguarded C.J.,” Boeheim said. “They made it hard for him to get anything but tough shots the whole night.”

Most of the shots, then, weren’t his usual mid-range fare. He had to settle for off-balance drives to the rim, soaring through crowds of limbs guarding the hoop.

He turned the ball over on Syracuse’s second and third possessions and missed a typically automatic mid-range jumper on the fifth. He grabbed boards, six in all, but the Orange’s most reliable scoring threat struggled to enter the points column.

“Everything they played on the ball side, they denied hard. They didn’t let me pop off for anything,” Fair said. “They just tried to do everything in their power to make my job hard.”

Even without the forward’s usual contributions, though, SU was able to escape with a win. And when the game was close at the end, Fair was still there to remedy one of Syracuse’s greatest concerns: free throws.

His freebie with 2:39 remaining pulled the Orange within two. The pair he sunk just more than two minutes later iced SU’s 56-50 victory.

“I’m not going to have my best game every night,” Fair said, “so this is one of those games where I can improve a lot and since we won I’m glad I had this type of game early where I can improve on because I can expect other teams to play me the same way.”

Published on November 19, 2013 at 2:58 am

Contact David: dbwilson@syr.edu | @DBWilson2