NEWARK, N.J. — All Kris Joseph could do was shake his head.

He had never missed that many free throws in his life, he said. Nine of his 17 went awry, including three in the final 91 seconds.

‘No explanation,’ Joseph said.

In a game where SU held a distinct free-throw shooting advantage over Seton Hall, the No. 4 Orange could not take advantage and blow the contest open, despite an eventual 61-56 victory.

Syracuse took 36 foul shots, making 17 and missing 19. The Pirates made 11 of their 13 shots from the line. And Joseph typified the struggles, hitting only eight of the astounding 17 shots he took from the charity stripe.

‘We weren’t able to put our foot on (Seton Hall),’ said SU guard Brandon Triche, who went 1-of-2 from the line in the game. ‘And that was mainly because of free throws. We normally are a pretty good free-throw shooting team.’

After he was fouled on a 3-point attempt in the first half, Joseph missed the first two shots, only to swish the third and again shake his head as he jogged back to the other end of the court. Only in three of the Orange’s 19 trips to the line did it convert on two consecutive attempts.

Overall, the 47.2 percentage from the charity stripe marked the worst performance on the season for the Orange.

‘We started taking it to the basket and getting to the foul line,’ SU head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘But when you miss 19 free throws, it’s not a good sign.’

Those misses kept Syracuse from pulling away from a game that ended up being tight at the end. Joseph missed 1-of-2 with a chance to give his team a four-point lead with less than three minutes remaining. Jardine missed the end of a potential three-point play with another chance to give SU a four-point lead.

And all in all, SU went just 3-of-9 from the free-throw line in the last three minutes. In the end, it didn’t hurt the Orange Saturday. But Joseph knows that kind of performance can’t continue. So before SU’s game Wednesday against St. John’s, he knows where he’ll be spending a lot of extra time in practice.

‘I just have to go back in the gym,’ Joseph said. ‘Go back to the lab and put some free throws up.’

bplogiur@syr.edu

Published on January 7, 2011 at 12:00 pm