Every team plays with its own tempo. For No. 10 North Carolina and its high-octane offense — with an average possession length of 15.5 seconds — there was just one speed: fast. For SU and its harassing 2-3 zone, it’s about slowing the game down and forcing opponents to look for second and third options.

And in a back-and-forth game that came down to the final minutes, the true winner was speed. Early on, UNC made precision passes faster than SU’s zone could rotate. On one possession after a made Orange shot, UNC shot the ball nine seconds into the possession. It missed, grabbed the offensive rebound and kicked out for 3-pointer shot three seconds later that went in.

Syracuse (18-10, 7-8 Atlantic Coast) needed to be near perfect to pull off a win against arguably the hottest team in the conference. It needed to be near perfect to boost an NCAA tournament resume that came off life support with recent wins at Louisville and Miami. And while the Orange had good spurts of play all night, even tying the game with two minutes left, the Tar Heels (22-7, 11-5) showed the complete package in a 78-74 win in the Carrier Dome on Wednesday night.

“We did everything we could to get back in it,” head coach Jim Boeheim said. “These guys played their hearts out … North Carolina’s a tremendous team.”

The matchup against the Tar Heels felt bigger than any other game this year. It felt bigger during the day on Wednesday, when assistant strength coach and former player Eric Devendorf tweeted out that “these are the games we lace ’em up for.” It felt bigger during the national anthem — the Carrier Dome exploded on the line “land of the free,” forcing the singer to pause before continuing. And it was confirmed to be bigger when SU announced a season-high attendance of 27,165.

SU’s recent surge placed the team firmly on the Tournament bubble with four games to go in the regular season, which made this game against UNC so important. The Tar Heels simultaneously were SU’s toughest opponent but the biggest potential resume-booster since playing then-No. 2 Virginia at the start of the month.

The Orange does have a matchup against No. 5 Duke on Saturday on the road. This was Syracuse’s chance to slay a Top 10 opponent, the reigning national champion and a college basketball powerhouse on its own home floor as both teams hit the final stretch of the season.

For much of the night, though, North Carolina was surgical on offense. When SU collapsed toward the middle, North Carolina rained 3s from the wings. When the Orange spread out, Luke Maye turned and hit shots from all over the high post.

After the game, Matthew Moyer shook his head in disbelief when asked about how quickly North Carolina’s offense moved. He said that SU struggled tonight with getting to its spots as UNC swung the ball around.

“The middle in general,” Moyer said about the spot where North Carolina broke down the zone the most. “When to the ball got middle, not necessarily saying they made all the shots in the middle, but when the ball go to the middle, shooters on the perimeter and they kept moving the ball, high-low … they attacked the zone well.”

The Orange would make an occasional play to try and stay in the game, like when Frank Howard hit a fall-away 3-pointer with two seconds on the shot clock off an out-of-bounds set. But the Tar Heels had a counter for every Syracuse attack.

If UNC didn’t make the shot right away on the next possession, it would grab an offensive rebound and make it then. UNC grabbed 15 offensive rebounds, the fifth most SU has allowed this season.

UNC was cruising, going as fast as it wanted to with nothing in its path. Syracuse was stuck trying to catch up.

Down by nine with nine minutes left, Syracuse saw its bid at an upset, and an impressive Top 10 win, slipping away. So it countered the speed it was facing with more speed, turning to its press.

UNC routinely broke it, getting to half court relatively easily. Instead of holding the ball, though, the Tar Heels kept going. UNC’s lead was cut down to four, and on the next two possessions, North Carolina broke the press and kept charging straight at the rim, taking out of control layups that were either altered by Paschal Chukwu.

“Our press didn’t work except that they went to the basket and missed three or four shots, so it worked in that sense,” Boeheim said with a smile. “But we never did get a steal. But we got them going to the basket and they didn’t finish.”

North Carolina had tried to go fast all night. In the process, it momentarily lost control.

That allowed Syracuse to attack. Howard, Tyus Battle and Oshae Brissett combined for 66 points, taking turns leading the offense throughout the night.

Battle led the team down the stretch, though. He made the free throws that cut the lead to four. Then he curled to the rim for a tough layup, and followed up with a pure midrange jumper that ripped through the net.

“Eleven, 23, 25. That’s what we all talked about and they were all great,” UNC head coach Roy Williams said. “Brissett, the freshman, is really good, Howard’s good, but Tyus was a man possessed in the second half.”

Over the last few weeks, the Orange shifted the narrative of its season. The start of ACC play was rough for SU, as its only ACC wins were against winless-in-conference Pittsburgh and bottom-five Boston College. It dropped matchups against Wake Forest, Notre Dame and Georgia Tech, all bottom-five ACC teams.

The impressive road wins over the last two weeks vaulted the Orange back into Tournament consideration, with many bracketologists listing SU among the “last four in.”

But the same speed that threw North Carolina off its course to a surefire victory came back to catch Syracuse.

In the heat of arguably the biggest moment of the season, center Paschal Chukwu had the ball ripped away from him and UNC’s Joel Berry converted on the other end for a layup. Then, when SU wanted to run a pin-down for Battle coming out of a timeout with 30 seconds left, Chukwu set the wrong screen. A desperation Frank Howard 3 missed badly and UNC iced the game at the line.

The Tar Heels had nearly spun out, but they took back control. It left Syracuse skidding backward, further away from the potentially season-validating win it knew was so close.

“You’re not going to beat a team like Carolina unless you play really good and you can’t make a mistake at the end of the game,” Boeheim said. “We made two terrible mistakes at the end of the game.”

Published on February 21, 2018 at 9:20 pm

Contact Tomer: tdlanger@syr.edu | @tomer_langer