17 missed free throws deny Syracuse chance to upset No. 3 Houston
Syracuse missed a whopping 17 of its 29 free throws in its overtime loss against No. 3 Houston to open the Players Era Festival. Courtesy of Jeremiah Skillman
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LAS VEGAS — Let’s do some math.
Syracuse lost to No. 3 Houston by four points Monday in its first game of the 2025 Players Era Festival. The Orange also attempted 29 free throws and made 12 of them for a 41% clip. That’s 17 missed free throws — 17 free opportunities for SU to build a lead in a back-and-forth game. In theory, it only needed to convert 17-of-29 free throws to beat the Cougars. That’d still only be good for a 58.6% free-throw percentage, already an inexcusable number.
Yet, the Orange didn’t even come close to hitting that.
Free-throw struggles directly cost Syracuse (4-1, 0-0 Atlantic Coast) the chance to upset Houston (6-0, 0-0 Big 12) in its 78-74 overtime loss Monday. It was the most free throws the Orange have missed in a single game since at least Dec. 29, 2012, when they missed 16 times from the free-throw line against Alcorn State. It also somehow barely beat SU’s previous season-high of 14 from last Tuesday in its narrow 78-73 win over Monmouth.
Syracuse head coach Adrian Autry hammered home that this loss shouldn’t be seen as a “moral victory.” Especially considering the Orange possessed a Quad 1 win in their hands Monday, and one of the only things that stopped them was the 15 feet between the free-throw line and the hoop.
It’s a bad habit SU simply must break before it gets too late.
“I thought our culture gave us a chance to win this game. And we came up short,” Autry said. “We knew it was going to be a fight. We got ourselves off the ropes, we swung back, so we just got to continue to have that mentality.”
Rewinding to last week, when senior guard J.J. Starling lit into his own 2-for-5 free-throw game versus Monmouth, Syracuse vowed to be better from the charity stripe. Starling said, “the whole thing is just mental,” and beat himself up for the fact that “nobody’s guarding you” when taking a free throw. Kiyan Anthony — who’s shooting 46.2% from the stripe — has also discussed his struggles and says he’s constantly working on free throws before and after each game.
“If we made some (more) of our free throws, the game would be a little bit different,” Autry said after only beating Monmouth by five points, a sour result in his eyes.
But as Starling said, practice can only do so much if there’s a mental block hindering your free-throw shooting ability.
Before tipoff against Houston, Anthony and Starling stayed on the court for an extra couple of minutes to get some free throws up. Anthony didn’t miss any in the brief session. Starling didn’t, either.
Then the real game began. Anthony finished 4-of-9 from the charity stripe. Starling went 0-for-3 and displayed an awkward, highly hesitant shooting motion that isn’t how he typically shoots the ball.
Those types of misses are momentum killers. With 12:54 left in the first half Monday, Anthony penetrated the lane and out-muscled Cougars guard Isiah Harwell to convert a difficult layup through contact. Syracuse’s traveling fans in Las Vegas burst into jubilation while the MGM Grand Garden Arena jumbotron showed Carmelo Anthony in attendance, smiling and rapidly clapping his hands in excitement for his son.
Anthony responded by missing the ensuing and-1 free throw.
Early in the second half, Houston forward Chris Cenac Jr. fouled Starling hard at the rim on a missed poster dunk from SU’s guard. Starling went to the line with a chance to avenge his dunk attempt and get those two crucial points back.
Both of his free throws bounced off the rim.
It’s not just those two guards who were culprits of the dreaded missed free throw. Forwards were, too. William Kyle III went 4-of-9 from the line. Tyler Betsey finished 2-for-4. Sadiq White missed his lone free-throw attempt on the first leg of a 1-and-1.
Any additional made free throw in regulation could’ve been enough to lift Syracuse over Houston — math that’s tough to swallow for an SU team that played one of its best wire-to-wire games of the Autry era.
