Syracuse (15-8, 4-6 Atlantic Coast) visits Louisville (16-7, 6-4) just two days after losing at home to No. 2 Virginia. The Orange has also won just one of its last six contests against the Cardinals. See if our beat writers think SU can overcome the quick turnaround and lack of success against the UofL.

Matthew Gutierrez (20-3)

Move along
Louisville 63, Syracuse 54

Syracuse may win on the road only one or two times this season (Wake Forest? North Carolina State?), and Monday night against Louisville is certainly not one of them. The Orange is coming off its worst offensive game at home in nearly 60 years, while the Cardinals are shooting the lights out recently, including a 50-percent shooting performance against Virginia (bravo), a 51-percent performance in a rout of Wake Forest and a 42.9-percent 3-point shooting outing against Florida State on Saturday. SU will run with its thin lineup on about 48 hours rest, a strenuous period made no easier when you consider this: SU has lost five of its last six to UofL. With just eight more games left on the schedule, chalk this up as a third-consecutive loss.

Sam Fortier (18-5)

UofSyracuseLs
Louisville 66, Syracuse 52

Louisville is great on defense and solid on offense. Syracuse is great on defense and “horrible,” as Jim Boeheim said, on offense. The Cardinals’ recent hot-shooting and their length should be all UofL needs to coast over a struggling Orange squad that hasn’t been great on the road this season anyway. Now, SU is seeing its postseason chances slip further and further away.

Tomer Langer (17-6)

Not in the Cards
Louisville 65, Syracuse 54

There are so many different factors working against the Orange in this one. It’s a road game, it’s being played two days after SU’s last game (which happened to be against the No. 2 team in the country), and Bourama Sidibe might not be available again given the short turnaround and the fact that he couldn’t go on Saturday because of his knee injury. Meanwhile, SU center Paschal Chukwu has had arguably his worst stretch of the season. If he doesn’t play up to par, SU will have a hard time contending with 7-foot, 215-pound UofL center Anas Mahmoud. For SU to win this game, we’d need to see a replica of the team that beat BC, because every other performance since 2018 started (including two wins over lowly Pittsburgh) hasn’t been good enough.

Published on February 5, 2018 at 3:05 pm