John Gillon at the Buzzer to Beat Duke

Well, that’s one way to beat Duke. We’re starting to see this more and more with Syracuse this year, especially at home against decent teams. They play a pretty sluggish first half and then come back in dramatic fashion in the second half. This was the case again tonight as Duke led by double digits before completely falling apart and John Gillon took over.

Now, to talk about the last couple of possessions – I got some serious problems with Duke and most notably Grayson Allen. First, he takes that 3 on the second to last possession- he clanked it. Now, shooting a three there is fine, if you’re not 1-7 from the night there and you have, you know Luke Kennard and Jayson Tatum on your team. The fact is Allen tried to do too much instead of deferring to better players. He shot them out of the lead.

Then on the final play, Kennard and Allen decided to stay way too deep here. No idea what they were doing and Gillon absolutely took advantage. The postgame interview with Gillon was even better though who said he just had a mentality that he was unstoppable – which he was tonight.

This likely puts Syracuse on the right side of the bubble, but only for now. There’s still a little bit of work, as you have to make sure you win at least 1 of your next 3 games (counting the first ACC Tournament game here) to feel pretty comfortable. Regardless that was a much needed win for Syracuse a great win to come back against a Duke team that’s been hot as of late, especially when you consider Andrew White and Tyler Lydon didn’t really show up.

The ACC Tournament is going to be so awesome.