Atlanta – First ACC road game.
The Orange were there to play Georgia Tech in McCamish Pavilion, IMO one of the best arenas in the conference. It’s the perfect size for a school basketball.
It was a homecoming of sorts for Naithan George and Akira Souare, who played for the Yellow Jackets last season.
SU needed a win after a close loss to Clemson in the dome last week.
First half: Syracuse 44, Georgia Tech 30. Final: Syracuse 82, Georgia Tech 72.
The Orange endured a brutal stretch of turnovers and poor shooting in the late games.
And he still won.
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Syracuse Orange Mens Basketball 2025-26: Syracuse at Georgia Tech
What happened:
Syracuse moved the ball and themselves much better in the first half.
The Orange probed the Tech defense, found open players and fired. Kiyan Anthony scored 11 points in the first half to lead SU, but George and Donnie Freeman each had nine in the half.
My favorite play of the first half: George finds Anthony for a backdoor cut with a perfect rebound into the bucket.
Anthony’s 11 points including 2 of 4 from 3.
The Orange owned the paint 22-14, converting there lobs and passes and drives.
At the other endSyracuse was watching the Yellow Jackets.
Georgia Tech shot 11-of-31 overall and 1-of-8 from 3-point range. From the perimeter it looked very little.
Baye Ndongo, a 6-foot-9 Tech forward, fell into the lane of his own basketball with 4 minutes, 27 seconds left in the first half.
He finally got up and walked slowly to the Georgia Tech locker room and didn’t return for the rest of the half.
The Yellow Jackets were without the very big Mouhamed Sylla, who stands 6-foot-10 and weighs 240 pounds. He was a scratch before the game (thanks ACC injury news). Without two of its starting giants, it would be tough for GT.
Ndongo came out and started the second half, then promptly picked up three fouls in less than two minutes.
So he came out.
He returned with about 12 minutes left in the game. And Syracuse couldn’t foul him out of the game.
Ndongo finished with 20 points and nine rebounds. He scored 14 of those points in the second half, when he played with four fouls.
The first half was something ugly holiday with the big ones.
William Kyle picked up three fouls in the first half. I know Akira Souare.
And Georgia Tech, already reeling from having two big men at once, was able to play seven-foot-3, 300-pound freshman Peyton Marshall in just 6:19 in the half. He also had three fouls.
By the start of the second half, both Tech bigs were on the bench with four fouls. There were more than 17 minutes left in the game.
By then, Syracuse had opened up a 54-34 lead.
Donnie Freeman at one point scored nine straight points to open that advantage. His final shot — a 3 off a pass from George — drew a technical timeout. Freeman hit an 18-point plateau with 16:28 left in the game.
Without any size to guard him, he dominated.
And Georgia Tech kept fouling.
With 9:16 left in the game, four Yellow Jackets already had four fouls.
Ndongo guarded Freeman. Strangely, the ball rarely went to Freeman. Ndongo, remember, had four fouls and is one of Georgia Tech’s best players.
When they got it inside to Freeman, Ndongo knocked his shot out of the sky.
Ndongo proved to be much harder to score on than anyone else who covered Freeman in this game.
But Freeman still finished with a career-high 27 points in 34 minutes. There were moments in the second half when he looked gassed. (He just returned from a month off from basketball.)
George was acquitted quite well on his return to Atlanta. He played a very good first half, then faltered in the second.
George was booed when he was introduced as the SU starter. There weren’t many people, so the whistling was muffled at best. Whenever he touched him (and since he’s a defender, he touched him often) he was booed.
He didn’t seem to mind.
This was one of his better first half games as a Syracuse player. He was in control of the game for most of Tuesday’s first half. He threw himself into defense.
In addition to that pass to Anthony, he drove the baseline in the second half and flipped the ball to Freeman, who continued his assault on the Yellow Jackets and the scoreboard by finishing off that shot.
Then he found Tyler Betsey for a corner 3.
Souare made a miracle play in the second half when he drove, fell, threw a shot that somehow went in and was fouled.
Souare was fine defensively on a day when Kyle ran into early fouls. But he fouled out with 6:21 left in the game.
But George turned it around a ton in the second half. (He ended up with six.)
However, he is an excellent free throw shooter. He was 10 for 10 in that game and finished with 17 points. SU had the ball in their hands at the end of the game and delivered on the line.
Syracuse led by 20 in the second half.
But Orange continues to take these bizarre, mind-numbing turns. SU committed just four turnovers in the first half. It ended on the 15th.
Do the math.
After George made a turnover and Ndongo scored in transition, SU led 69-55.
Adrian Autry called the clock with 8:38 left.
Syracuse went about four minutes without a field goal. There were turnovers, bad (contested) shots. There were back-to-back plays where the Orange tried to lob the ball to Souare with terrible results.
Syracuse went nearly six minutes without a field goal before JJ Starling drove in to finish. Then Freeman drove, was stripped, and Tech went the other way to score. That bucket put the Yellow Jackets up 72-61.
Suddenly it was a game.
Starling missed two runs, Nate Kingz got the ball. It went on and on.
When Ndongo scored inside after Starling’s second missed drive, the Yellow Jackets led 29-14.
Starling was 2-for-10 from the field at that point. He’s had some tough matches.
Freeman’s drive and dunk with 1:25 left sealed it for SU. That put him at a career-high 25.
But it was a brutal last 10 minutes for Orange. After the first half of a solid performance, the bike somehow fell off.
COMMENT: There were many orange shirts in the building for this game. “Let’s Go Orange” cheers broke out at several points in this game. The last came with SU leading 73-67 with 2:15 left.
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