MIAMI — Exactly five years after its last NCAA tournament win, Syracuse took a dominant route back to the second round.
Jonny Flynn scored 16 points, Rick Jackson and Arinze Onuaku each added 12 and the third-seeded Orange cruised past NCAA first-timer Stephen F. Austin 59-44 Friday in a South regional matchup.
Syracuse (27-9) ran out to a 20-4 lead, never letting the Southland Conference champions get anything going, and will meet either Arizona State or Temple in Sunday’s second round.
Benson Akpan led Stephen F. Austin (24-8) with 12 points, with Nick Shaw adding 10. The Lumberjacks missed 12 of their first 13 shots, and didn’t connect from 3-point range until Walt Harris hit from the left wing with 11:25 remaining — on their 16th try from beyond the arc.
They finished 2-for-21 from 3-point range, and that played perfectly into Syracuse’s hands.
By the end, the only drama remaining was if Syracuse would turn in its best defensive showing in NCAA history. In 80 games, Syracuse’s all-time low for NCAA points allowed was 43 against Princeton in 1992 — and Jereal Scott made sure it stayed that way, hitting two free throws for the Lumberjacks with 12.9 seconds left to close the scoring.
Syracuse’s 2-3 zone frustrated the Lumberjacks from the outset. Stephen F. Austin didn’t score on any of the first six possessions where it tried to score from the post; combine that with the frigid shooting from the outside, and the Lumberjacks’ first NCAA trip was destined to be a short one.
That, and they didn’t have any answer for Jackson and Onuaku inside.
The Lumberjacks didn’t get on the floor from their final pre-game locker room chat until about 1 minute before the starting lineups were announced.
Considering the way the opening minutes went, they might have wanted to head back into their dressing room quickly.
Jackson set the tone immediately, blocking Matt Kingsley’s shot on the first possession of the game, then setting up Onuaku with a pass from the high post for an easy score that got the Orange on the board a few seconds later.
If there was any hope for another 14-over-3-seed upset like the one Southland member Northwestern State pulled over Iowa three years ago, it quickly vanished.
Flynn got his first score with 17:06 left in the half, making it 6-0, then took his spot atop the Syracuse zone, clapped his hands three times and yelled to no one in particular, “Turn it up.”
The Orange responded.
Playing without top reserve Kristof Ongenaet — sidelined by a flu bug that hit some members of the Syracuse travel party — the Orange were still never threatened. Harris and Jackson were too big for the Lumberjacks to handle, Flynn freed himself from defenders several times with an array of crossover dribbles and ball fakes, and Syracuse led by 26 early in the second half.
Stephen F. Austin led the nation in 3-point field goal defense this year, and lived up to that billing. The Orange were 2-for-16 from long range, plus committed 21 turnovers to the Lumberjacks’ six.
It didn’t matter, thanks to a 51-32 edge in rebounding and holding Stephen F. Austin to 25 percent shooting on the afternoon.
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