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Alan Griffin rose at the same time Virginia Tech’s Tyrece Radford did, his hand tracking Radford’s shot in the air until it made contact and altered its path. Eight minutes remained in the second half when Syracuse sprinted up in transition, its lead already at 17 and threatening to grow, and that block was Griffin’s fourth.

The Orange’s fast-break sequence settled when the ball reached Quincy Guerrier near the foul line, backing down Radford, creating extra space step-by-step with his right arm and finishing through contact to put SU up 67-48. On Virginia Tech’s next possession, Griffin again swatted a Radford shot near the rim. That was block number five.

Those two possessions — both blocks by Griffin, both leading to interior baskets from Guerrier — reflected just how far Syracuse’s defense had come. Through its first 12 games, inconsistencies had, at times, undermined an efficient offense. There were collapses after halftime. The games in which the Orange missed Bourama Sidibe anchoring the 2-3 zone. The opponents who outmuscled SU in the paint and grabbed more than a dozen offensive rebounds. All of those flaws culminated last Saturday in Pittsburgh, when SU’s defense allowed 64 second-half points to the Panthers and was “the worst I’ve seen it since I’ve been here,” head coach Jim Boeheim said.

But two sound games defensively this week allowed SU (9-4, 3-3 Atlantic Coast) to win two games and flip its season’s outlook, the latest a 78-60 blowout against No. 16 Virginia Tech (11-3, 5-2). Griffin, who played limited minutes against Miami four days prior, finished with 10 rebounds and seven blocks and flashed the skillset Syracuse needs from him consistently going forward, Marek Dolezaj said. Behind their revitalized defense and Griffin’s performance, the Orange held the Hokies to just 26 points in the second half and cruised to a victory.

“He’s one of the best players we have here,” Dolezaj said. “And he needs to play a lot every single game. We need him on offense, but we need him on defense. Today he showed how he can play defense.”

Early on, Virginia Tech’s offense relied on balls entering through the high post and possessions ending with made 3-pointers by Nahiem Alleyne. And it worked. Griffin, along with Dolezaj and Guerrier, didn’t have the opportunity to disrupt shots inside. Alleyne scored 12 of the Hokies’ first 13 points, establishing a rhythm from beyond the arc on quick passes in and out of the paint.

Boeheim said postgame that he knew Virginia Tech was going to take 3s like that, and lots of them. Virginia Tech took more than 30 shots from beyond the arc in both games against SU last year and took 29 again in their only meeting this year. But when Syracuse started to build its defensive presence inside, led by Griffin, and combined that with sharp closeouts, that forced the Hokies into strings of misses, Boeheim said.

Alan Griffin finished with 10 rebounds and seven blocks, flashing the skillset Syracuse needs from him consistently going forward. Courtesy of Scott Schild | Syracuse.com

“They missed some that were open,” Boeheim said. “But after you’ve been contested a lot, then all of a sudden you do get an open one, it’s a little bit harder.”

Dolezaj said that, after the Pittsburgh loss on Jan. 16, after Syracuse broke down film and reflected on what, again, had gone wrong, the team concluded that defense had been the problem for the whole year, as Boeheim had hinted at throughout the season. One part of that was Griffin. After defeating Georgetown on Jan. 9, Boeheim said he wasn’t up on shooters enough, as well as closing out after shooters and presenting a challenge. With Sidibe out, Griffin became one of the Orange’s top rebounders, but he still disappeared at times on the court and lost minutes.

The latest example came Tuesday against Miami. He played just 16 minutes. He took only eight shots and made two of them. Syracuse easily defeated the Hurricanes, but it did so without Griffin. As Syracuse started to close the gaps in its zone after the early Virginia Tech 3s, though, Griffin helped key that. 

His first block came less than three minutes into the game, when he deflected a 3-point attempt from Alleyne. The next possession, he lifted himself toward the rim and denied Alleyne’s attempt again. SU only received one other block from someone besides Griffin, but it also forced 10 turnovers and didn’t allow the Hokies to re-establish their rhythm — even after they started to slow the game down and take possessions deep into shot clocks. 

After halftime, Virginia Tech opened the scoring with a hook shot from Keve Aluma inside, causing head coach Mike Young and one of his assistants to fist-bump on the bench after their first set worked. But then Syracuse’s defense forced a rushed 3-pointer that turned into a shot clock violation. Then, a travel. The Hokies didn’t score their next field goal for over five minutes, keeping the Syracuse lead at five and building the foundation for the Orange to go on their game-deciding burst. “The defense was just the difference,” Boeheim said postgame.

Griffin’s seventh and final block came on a Justyn Mutts shot with just over four minutes left. By that point, all those deflections, all those defensive stands had turned a back-and-forth game into a blowout. Syracuse forced Virginia Tech into a 31% shooting percentage in the second half, assembling the right defensive possessions when needed and doing it consistently for one of the first times this season against a ranked opponent. 

“We have five guys that can really score double digits,” Dolezaj said. “But if we can get stops, it’s really hard to beat us.”

Published on January 23, 2021 at 5:01 pm

Contact Andrew: [email protected] | @CraneAndrew