Syracuse (1-0) opened up its season with a win against Cornell (0-1) on Friday night in the Carrier Dome, 77-45. Both sides struggled to shoot the ball in the first half — the two teams combined to go 16-of-59, good for 29.1 percent. The Orange went into the break with an 11-point lead and never looked back.

Here are superlatives from the game:

The Big Moment: Jimmy Boeheim knocks down a 3-pointer to start the game

Syracuse had defeated Cornell 37 times in a row coming into tonight and although the Orange didn’t look great early, there never seemed to be much concern that SU would lose the game.

Instead, one of the major storylines heading into the game was Jimmy Boeheim, the son of Orange head coach Jim Boeheim and a freshman forward for the Big Red. After Monday night’s exhibition, the elder Boeheim said he wasn’t trying to think about the matchup. The younger Boeheim got a nice hand from the SU crowd when he was introduced.

SU played solid defense on the first possession of the game after CU won the tip, forcing the ball to be passed along the perimeter. But as the shot clock wound down, CU found an opening, whipping the ball from the middle of the zone to the right wing and then to corner.

Jimmy Boeheim caught the ball there, directly in front of the Syracuse bench and his father, and calmly knocked the shot down for his first career college points.

Stud: Tyus Battle

The Orange’s second-year swingman was assertive throughout the night, scoring Syracuse’s first four points on pull-up, midrange jumpers.

It was clear the offense would run through Battle throughout the game, as he dominated possession of the ball while on the court. Battle ended with a game-high 18 points on 6-of-14 shooting and knocked down two 3-pointers in the game.

Dud: Howard Washington

The early portion of Syracuse’s schedule is going to be used to figure out the rotation. SU has nine available scholarship players and five of them played their first collegiate game on Friday.

If the win over Cornell was any indication, Washington is on the outside looking in of that rotation.

The freshman from Buffalo received the fewest minutes of any of the Orange’s players on Friday, playing just 10 minutes in the contest. He took just one shot in the game, missing a 3-pointer from the right wing in the first half. He picked up two assists but seemed to struggle on defense.

It’ll remain to be seen how the rotation unfolds for SU, but after tonight, it appears that Washington — who is stuck behind SU’s leaders in Battle and Frank Howard, as well as graduate transfer Geno Thorpe — might be squeezed out.

Highlight: Frank Howard’s no-look pass to Matthew Moyer

One of the key points of proof that both teams were playing poorly on offense was that there were no fastbreak points through nearly 30 minutes of the game. The highlight of the game, then, came on the first two.

Battle stole the ball and threw it up ahead to Howard who was running down the middle as Syracuse had a three-on-one. Howard picked up the ball looking like he might take a layup and looked to his left before dumping it off to his right to a trailing Matthew Moyer. Moyer took the pass in stride and rose up for a dunk.

Lowlight: Matthew Moyer dropping the ball right at halftime

Moyer racked up the boards for Syracuse, ending with game-high 10, but he had a rough end to the first half.

First, with 3:22 left in the first half, he got subbed out of the game and got an earful from Boeheim who constantly got in his face, upset with his rotations and a few balls that slipped through his hands on potential rebounds.

Moyer got subbed back in with a little more than 30 seconds to go in the half because Battle had picked up his third foul. As time ran down, Cornell shot a 3-pointer from the left corner. The ball missed everything, and on its way down, fell right through Moyer’s hands as time expired. A livid-looking Boeheim yelled at Moyer to catch the ball and glared at him as the teams walked back to the locker room.

Published on November 10, 2017 at 9:36 pm

Contact Tomer: tdlanger@syr.edu | @tomer_langer