Box Score MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Guard Buddy Boeheim scored 25 points to lead 11^th-seeded Syracuse to a 75-72 victory over third-seeded West Virginia in an NCAA Tournament Midwest regional game Sunday at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana.

"Buddy shot the ball extremely well," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said. "He had a stretch there were i think he made three consecutive 3s and we tried to catch up from then on."
 
In a matchup of old Big East rivals, Syracuse once again got the upper hand against West Virginia. Veteran Orange coach Jim Boeheim was 18-5 against the Mountaineers during their Big East days, and 22-6 overall.
 
Now he's 23-6.
 
Much like San Diego State on Friday night, West Virginia simply couldn't solve Syracuse's 2-3 zone defense. The Mountaineers shot 37.1% overall, and only 29.5% from inside the 3-point arc, and consequently, they spent the entire afternoon playing catch up.

"We ran what we need to run, we just didn't score," Huggins said. "How many shots inside of three-, four-feet did we miss to start the game? They had a lot to do with that."
 
Syracuse (18-9) jumped on WVU early and led by 14 at 26-12 and then at 30-16 on a Merek Dolezaj layup. But a couple of Sean McNeil 3s, and another 3 by Deuce McBride 3, cut the Orange advantage to eight with 1:06 left in the half.
 
Two Emmitt Matthews Jr. free throws with four seconds remaining made it a six-point deficit at intermission. Considering how poorly West Virginia handled the Syracuse zone missing shots and turning the ball over, the Mountaineers had to feel good about being down by only six.
 
However, Syracuse reestablished its double-digit advantage early in the second half on Quincy Guerrier and Boeheim 3s before West Virginia responded with a 9-0 run to make it a two-point game.
 
Back-to-back Boeheim 3s got the Syracuse margin back to eight, but McNeil answered with three-straight triples, his third coming in transition with 9:47 left to give the Mountaineers a 53-52 lead.
 
West Virginia's only lead was short-lived, though, when Boeheim answered in transition. 
 
Taz Sherman and McBride 3s kept it a one-point advantage with five minutes to go before a 10-point Syracuse flurry. Boeheim and Robert Braswell made 3s, and Dolezaj and Guerrier got close ones to push the Syracuse lead to 70-59.

"I thought we did a pretty good job getting back into the game," Huggins said. "We took a (one-point) lead and then we kept switching when we shouldn't have switched. We needed to keep the same defender on their best player.

"We stopped guarding and it goes from a tie game to them up nine," he added.
 
McNeil's seventh 3 and a Matthews layup with 44 seconds to go got the deficit to four, and some Mountaineer pressure led to a Gabe Osabuohien layup making it 74-72. But Syracuse managed to get the ball inbounds to Boeheim with two seconds left and his free throw was the game's final point.
 
Guerrier, Dolejaz and Joseph Girard III scored 12 points each for Syracuse, which advances to the round of 16 where it will meet the winner of tonight's Houston-Rutgers game.
 
McNeil led West Virginia with 23 points on eight-of-15 shooting, including seven-of-13 from 3. The rest of the team was just 18 of 55 for 32.7%. 
 
Matthews Jr. contributed 14 while Sherman and McBride added 11 each. McBride had 30 in Friday night's opening-round win over Morehead State. All-Big 12 forward Derek Culver finished with seven points and three rebounds while seeing just 21 minutes of court time.

"We were struggling to guard them and Gabe is our best inside defender," Huggins said of his decision to sit Culver for a good portion of the second half. "They were doubling Derek (offensively) and our timing getting the ball inside to him wasn't very good."
 
West Virginia concludes its season with a 19-10 record. Nine of the Mountaineers' 10 defeats this year were by five points or less.
 
WVU had advanced to the round of 16 in three out of its last four NCAA Tournament appearances dating back to 2015.