Poor first half dooms Hawks, lose season opener to Syracuse

Over 13 straight minutes ticked off the game clock in the first half, and Lehigh men’s basketball couldn’t score a single bucket.

Coach Brett Reed knew what he was getting his team into when he developed a difficult non-conference schedule, the first of those a trip to the Carrier Dome against Hall of Fame coach Jim Boeheim and the Syracuse University Orange.

It wasn’t easy, but a second half comeback allowed Lehigh men’s basketball to keep the final score relatively close, eventually falling 57-47 Friday night in its season opener.

Syracuse, which made the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament as recent as three seasons ago and hasn’t had a losing record since the 1960s, showed its dominance early on, particularly on the defensive side of the ball.

The Orange’s 2-3 zone completely shut down the Hawks in the first half, forcing a high volume of turnovers and bad passes and very little actual points.

Going into the second half as well, Lehigh went a span of 16:17 without making a field goal. At halftime, the Mountain Hawks were shooting an abysmal 8.7 percent from the field, scoring on just two of their 23 shots.

“That was a terrible, terrible half of basketball, in every sense of the word,” Reed said. “We would’ve put ourselves in a good position if we wouldn’t have imploded as much during that first 20 minutes.”

Syracuse went into the half already holding a 20-point lead. Reed said that it was difficult to replicate Syracuse’s defense and therefore made it a tougher matchup in the actual game.

“Our guys can’t get the experience of what (the Syracuse defense) is going to be like, and unfortunately, they didn’t really do a lot of things that we were talking about,” Reed said.

Junior forward/center Tim Kempton added that he thought the team wasn’t quite ready for Syracuse’s unique zone defense, which forced Lehigh to play on its heels.

“We seemed to play passive and played scared throughout the whole first half, especially on the offensive end,” he said.

However, Lehigh came out in the second half much more efficient and effective, moving the ball quicker and not turning the ball over as frequently. After 12 turnovers in the first half, Lehigh had just three in the second half.

The Hawks went on an 18-4 run to open the half and closed the gap to just six points. Kempton was the anchor of this comeback, finishing the game with 16 points and 12 rebounds.

Reed said the difference of halves was more a product of Lehigh just playing better as opposed to the team changing its game plan. He pointed out the team’s meaningless ball movement around the perimeter in the first half as something that the team eliminated in the second half, allowing the Hawks to be more effective.

Limited depth was a question going into the game with a small roster and multiple injuries, but Reed was impressed with the performances of guys who haven’t had a lot of game experience.

“They will get better as they get more experience, and they will continue to improve,” Reed said. “But I thought there were some individual sparks from each and every one of those guys where we know moving forward that they’re going to play an important role for us in games.”

However, even though Lehigh outscored Syracuse in the second half, it was still Lehigh’s lowest scoring game since Nov. 23, 2014 against Columbia University when the team scored just 44 points.

Offensive production will be necessary moving forward, as the team shot just 29 percent overall from the field and 12 percent from 3.

Kempton said that the team’s biggest focus is not accumulating too many losses early on, citing last year’s 0-4 start.

“We actually have to learn from this game and learn that we can’t start every game in the hole,” he said. “We can’t continue to have these starts and try to come back and win games like that, because that’s just not a good recipe for success.”