Syracuse rode a career-high 34 points from Michael Gbinije to a 75-66 win over North Carolina State in the Carrier Dome on Saturday — a “needed” win for the Orange’s NCAA Tournament hopes.

N.C. State (14-15, 4-12 Atlantic Coast) shot just 4-of-17 from 3 and got a tepid 15 points from Anthony ‘Cat’ Barber, who came into the matchup as the ACC’s best scorer at 23.5 points per game. SU (19-10, 9-7) was led by a fifth-year senior on its annual senior day, and also received 13 points from Malachi Richardson.

Here’s what we learned about the Orange in its final home game of the regular season.

1. Michael Gbinije did two ‘smaller’ things that will greatly help Syracuse moving forward

Hitting 8-for-13 3s was the most impressive and efficient part of Gbinije’s performance. That’s also how he got to 34 points and, almost single-handedly, staved off an N.C. State comeback in the second half. But two finer points of his game on Saturday were very encouraging for Syracuse.

The first was Gbinije’s ability to get into the paint against a Wolfpack defense that switched on guard dribble hand-offs and hedged hard on on-ball screens by SU’s big men. A lot of teams have deployed the same defensive strategy against the Orange, which predicates its offense on ball screens and having its three playmakers (Gbinije, Richardson and Trevor Cooney) create for themselves and each other off of them.

N.C. State did a good job of taking that away for most of the game, but Gbinije salvaged two broken possessions late in the second half by driving and drawing two shooting fouls. His savviness in the halfcourt to create opportunities late in the shot clock is a direct counter to teams that defend the perimeter as hard as N.C. State and others have.

“He bailed us out a bunch of times,” Cooney said. “We didn’t really have the movement that we wanted and N.C. State took away what we were trying to do and we were able to get the ball to him and he took over from there, and he just made things happen.”

Gbinije’s second underlying contribution was a career-high three blocks, with two of them coming on the weak side while he was playing the wing of the Orange’s 2-3 zone. Gbinije regularly plays at the top of the zone with Cooney, but he gets bumped to the wing when Frank Howard, he and Cooney are all on the court.

North Carolina, which Syracuse visits on Monday, bullied SU in the short corner in a win in the Carrier Dome on Jan. 9. If Gbinije finds himself on the wing in any stretch of that game, his experience in the zone could help defend that spot of the court better this time around.

2. It’s not always about opportunity and aggression with Tyler Lydon

For much of this season, Lydon’s offensive results have been tightly tied to his own decisions of whether to be aggressive. On Saturday, Lydon got a lot of good looks — including three straight wide-open 3s in the second half — that just didn’t fall. He finished with 11 points while shooting 5-of-11 from the field and 1-for-7 from 3.

“They were fine looks, I don’t think I was thinking too much,” he said. “They all felt good off my hand and I’ll just keep shooting them.”

The 6-foot-8 freshman forward, who remains the Orange’s most efficient shooter from all distances, is certainly entitled to an off shooting day. But it was the first time in ACC play that Lydon took 10 or more shots and didn’t shoot at least 50 percent from the field. He finished 8-for-12 for a career-high 21 points against Pittsburgh last Saturday, 8-for-12 for 20 points at Boston College on Feb. 14 and 5-for-10 for 15 points against then-No. 25 Notre Dame on Jan. 28.

“I thought Tyler Lydon was really good tonight, the ball just didn’t go in,” SU head coach Jim Boeheim said. “If he makes a few more of those shots like he usually does he has a 20-something-point game. But that’s just the way it goes sometimes.”

3. Tyler Roberson’s struggles have extended to the defensive end

After falling to Pittsburgh last Saturday, Boeheim was harsh in saying that Roberson wouldn’t play if he had anybody else.

And one game later, Roberson played just 14 minutes while starting center Dajuan Coleman logged a season-high 35 minutes and Lydon played 32 off the bench against the Wolfpack. A week ago, it seemed that Boeheim’s criticism was centered around Roberson’s measly stat line against the Panthers: zero points and four rebounds in 25 minutes played. This Saturday — even as Roberson finished with just four points, three rebounds and two turnovers — it was centered around the junior forward’s spotty play on the wing of SU’s zone.

“Tyler Roberson wasn’t there, I think everybody… what you don’t understand, we’re up I think either 10 and (Maverick) Rowan comes in on his side and makes a jumper and then makes a 3,” Boeheim said after the game, and he’d spent the week leading up to it defending his post-Pittsburgh remarks.

“Well that’s on his side, that’s his position. Nobody sees that, because nobody really understands who is responsible for what. But unfortunately for him, I do know. So they get the two there then Barber gets in the corner and pulls up and shoots a 3 in his corner.

“… There were four defensive plays that he made that gave them 10 points, and you know we just can’t have that.”

Published on February 27, 2016 at 7:08 pm