Tyler Lydon found his sweet spot on the floor. All four of his 3-pointers had come within a couple feet of the left wing and the top of the arc. Each time, he caught a pass, set his feet and watched as his 3-point attempt went through the back of the rim so the net hardly even swished.

Coming off of what Jim Boeheim called his worst performance of the season against Louisville, the freshman stretch-big man was doing his part in extending the Pittsburgh defense.

“Tyler Lydon shot the ball well in practice,” Boeheim said. “That’s not always an indication. But he certainly kept us in there tonight.”

Michael Gbinije, Trevor Cooney, Malachi Richardson and Tyler Roberson combine to average nearly 54 points per game. On Saturday, they totaled just 19 points. If not for the heroics of Lydon, who scored a career-high 21 points, Syracuse’s (18-10, 8-7 Atlantic Coast) 66-52 loss to Pittsburgh (19-7, 8-6) would have looked much worse than it already did.

Lydon scored a then-career-high 20 points vs. Boston College on Sunday, but followed that up with a 2-of-7 performance against the Cardinals on Wednesday.

“I was trying not to even think about the Louisville game,” Lydon said. “Me and coach talked, he just said to move on. Everyone is going to have a bad game throughout the year … I didn’t think about it. I just tried to play hard tonight.”

He thrived on the defensive end, collecting two steals, and scored in the paint as well as from deep. Richardson found him cutting with a no look pass in the first half that ended in a Lydon dunk. And in the second, following a Dajuan Coleman block, Gbinije found Lydon cutting to the basket. He caught the pass and laid it in while being fouled.

Lydon gave Syracuse its first and only lead of the second half when he drained a 3 from the exact same spot on the wing as he’d relished shooting from in the first half. No one else for the Orange was able to get a groove, but Lydon had done enough to boost the strong SU defense.

“We struggled as a team,” Richardson said. “Except Tyler. Tyler played really good.”

That 3-pointer by Lydon came with 8:42 left to play in the game. It was the final points he would record. And afterward, Pittsburgh went on a 24-9 run and a one-point lead turned into a lopsided loss.

He scored 21 points in 31 minutes while everyone else scored a combined 31 points in a combined 169 minutes. It was a one-man show, and it was enough to sniff a win, but not actually get one.

“If you take Tyler Lydon out of there, we wouldn’t have scored 35 points tonight,” Boeheim said. “That’s about what we would have scored.”

Published on February 20, 2016 at 6:37 pm

Contact Sam: sblum@syr.edu | @SamBlum3