CHICAGO – The style of offense Virginia predicated its dominance on, the kind that dismantled, dissected and chewed apart every piece of the zone for over 30 minutes, was fading. And fading fast.

The Cavaliers built a 16-point lead that seemed insurmountable. A lead sure to shatter Syracuse’s glass slipper with Virginia’s methodical execution of threading passes and slipping cuts through a zone whose cracks were stretched open wider than in any of the Orange’s prior three games.

So with under 10 minutes remaining in the second half and SU trailing by double digits, its Cinderella run on the brink, Syracuse started to press. It had to. Against a team who is arguably the best in the country at doing what SU was trying to force it not to.

“We weren’t going to cut a 15-point lead against Virginia down by playing half court,” Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said. “The best we could hope for is lose the game by seven, six or seven, if we play well…if we play well.”

One of the first times Syracuse picked up full court, Virginia easily broke the press for a seamless layup, proving its code wouldn’t crack like the defense Syracuse predicates its own success on did. But slowly, the Orange chipped away. With each steal, each forced shot, each sped-up possession, the Cavaliers were inched out of their method of dominance and into a defensive mode. Not defense like the stringent kind that ranked second-best in the country this season, but a defense that was slowly crumbling at the hands of a raging Syracuse offense that threatened to make a comeback once unimaginable.

When London Perrantes missed a layup in transition with just less than six minutes left and Malachi Richardson converted an acrobatic layup at the other end, Syracuse took a 59-58 lead less than three minutes after it trailed by double digits. Now it was Syracuse dictating the pace and Virginia on its heels, a stark contrast that defied the logic of everything in the game up to that point. The 10th-seeded Orange (23-13, 9-9 Atlantic Coast) held onto that lead and somehow, some way, flipped the game on its head to pull off a stunning 68-62 upset of top-seeded Virginia (29-8, 13-5) and advance to the Final Four.

“They’re a tough team to press…good guards and old experienced guards,” Trevor Cooney said. “It just worked for us and some things just fall into place.”

Perrantes, a 48-percent 3-point shooter coming into Sunday, hit five 3-pointers in the first half and dictated a game separated by 14 at the break. He’s a junior. Malcolm Brogdon, one of four finalists for the 2016 Naismith Award given to the country’s best player, began the second half receiving passes at the foul line and orchestrating an offense that had an answer for any rotation, trap or pressure Syracuse put on. He’s a senior.

The two pioneering Virginia along a seemingly clear path to the Final Four now had a challenge that, on the surface, was elementary. Especially after one Syracuse stop was quickly followed with a transition layup, the Cavaliers affirmed its wherewithal to break Syracuse’s last resort that allowed it to barely escape against Gonzaga.

But a 2-on-1 fastbreak was nullified when Anthony Gill stutter-stepped and was called for traveling. Richardson finished at the other end to cut the lead to nine. The emotional turn of the game came when Virginia tried to beat the press over the top but Richardson intercepted the arching ball before throwing it off an opponent, diving over the scorer’s table and earning SU a possession, much like many down the stretch, that granted it just another breath.

“The inbounds pass was a little too far for him and I knew I could get to it but I was probably going to end up going out of bounds,” Richardson said. “I knew once I threw it back at him I wanted to get out of the way of it. I think I did fall into a monitor. I just wanted to make sure it didn’t hit me once I threw it off him.”

It seemed buried in the tale of the freshman who scored 21 second-half points and shouldered the offensive tirade for Syracuse. But most of his second-half outburst was jumpstarted by an SU defense that made plays far less spectacular than Richardson’s circus act near midcourt.

Sometimes, Syracuse didn’t force turnovers. Others, the Orange didn’t heavily contest a Virginia shot. A formula that, on paper, would be destined for failure on any night against a Cavaliers team that rarely leaves openings unexploited. But not on this night, not when Syracuse refused to fade.

“A few times, even though we didn’t get turnovers, we forced early shots, we did a pretty good job in transition at contesting vertically,” assistant coach Gerry McNamara said. “It just changed the pace of the game.”

That pace, the one that ended Virginia’s season and kept Syracuse’s alive, only slowed when SU inbounded the ball with two seconds left, finally able to walk out the waning seconds of a game it wasn’t supposed to win.

Then the pace vastly changed for one last time, even with nothing left on the clock. This time, it was Syracuse’s bench dictating it as the players charged onto the court, ones that had been slouched until the start of an improbable run that added one more chapter to an improbable season.

Published on March 28, 2016 at 12:24 am

Contact Matt: mcschnei@syr.edu | @matt_schneidman