Syracuse Shocks The World

This will go down in the books as one of the biggest upsets in the tournament. This was an Orange team that was a bubble team going into the tournament. I mean look at the way the season started. By early January, Syracuse had started the year off going 0-4 in ACC play, and were sitting at 10-7. They lost their last three games of the year, including an opening round loss of the ACC Tournament to Pitt. Now here they sit heading to the final four on the strength of a 68-62 win over the top seeded Virginia. How did that happen?

Malachi Richardson was a big reason for that. He scored 21 of his 23 points in the second half, helping the Orange overcome a 16 point deficit to beat the top seeded Cavaliers of Virginia. What makes this so impressive, where Syracuse will be playing next week, is that Syracuse was down by 16 at the start of the second half, overcame it, pulled out the win and became the first 10 seed to make it to the Final Four. Syracuse became just the fourth double-digit seed to accomplish the feat. It's the lowest-seeded team to reach the national semifinals since VCU, who was an 11 seed, did it in 2011. Syracuse trailed 54-39 before it ripped off 25 of the next 29 points, including 15 in a row. Virginia had no answer for Syracuse at all in the 2nd half. One of the biggest plays made in this game was the move made by Richardson late. He hit a driving layup made it 59-58 Orange with 5:47 remaining in the ballgame, giving Cuse their first lead since early in the first half. After London Perrantes missed a long 3, Richardson connected from deep and jogged up the court with a huge grin and Texas in his sights as the crowd roared. Tyler Lydon came off the bench with 11 points. It helped out the three Orange starters who hit in double digits. Richardson lead the way with 23, followed by Michael Gbinije, who had 11, and Tyler Roberson who had ten.

London Perrantes scored 15 of his 18 points in the first half for Virginia, which blew a 16-point lead in the second half. Malcolm Brogdon, the ACC player of the year, had 12 points on 2-of-14 shooting in the final game of his Cavaliers career. Anthony Gill was the only other Cavalier starter to hit double digits in points, as he finished the day with 10 points. Mike Tobey came off the bench to deliver 10 points for Virginia. Virginia had a lead and had a game in hand, all they had to do was play the same way and they had the ticket to Houston punched. That didn't happen. Syracuse came back and out flying and Virginia had no answer for it at all.

Some will say that Syracuse won the game, they did clearly by the score. I will go on to say that Virginia lost the game. Plain and simple the Cavaliers blew this one bigtime. Syracuse used a 2-3 zone and Virginia had no answer for it in the 2nd half. That Orange defense wore down Virginia, who shot only 35.7 percent in the second half. I mean come on, your a number one seed in your bracket, you had been dominating the game in the opening half, managing to hold Syracuse to 21 first half points. Syracuse then doubled its offensive output in the 2nd half and Virginia had no answer for it at all. Virginia had trouble hanging onto the basketball in this game, turning it over 13 times. Those turnovers lead to 15 points for the Orange. Virginia had a good year, there's no denying that, but it ends with a very sour taste in their mouth. Syracuse made the adjustment on defense, but Virginia's inability to effectively switch up its offense ended up killing them in the end. Cuse saw what was going on, made their changes and it worked out for them, Virginia couldn't do that. Thus it will go down as one of the greatest meltdowns in all of college basketball history.

The Orange were among the last teams to get into the NCAA tournament after a rough closing stretch, but slipped in as a 10 seed before storming to its first Final Four since 2013 and No. 6 overall. It comes at the end of a challenging season for coach Jim Boeheim, who was suspended for nine games as the result of an NCAA investigation.