Michael Carter-Williams continued to find C.J. Fair in the right spot for big buckets, and Fair continued to knock them down.

Fair was 7-for-12 from the field and hit seven free throws in his 22-point performance, and keyed a run in the second half that helped Syracuse start to pull away from Villanova for good in its 72-61 win over the Wildcats on Saturday. Of his 22 points, Fair scored 16 of them in the second half.

“Today I felt a rhythm early in the second half. Mike, he kept coming to me. He wanted to give me the ball, he wanted me to score,” Fair said. “When my point guard is running plays for me, that gives me confidence on making plays.”

With Syracuse down 31-27 in the first minute of the second half, Fair made a layup to pull the Orange to within two. On the Orange’s next possession, he drilled a 3-pointer from the left wing that gave Syracuse a 32-31 lead. And it wouldn’t lose the lead for the rest of the day because of Fair’s production in the second half.

He took over in the second half and scored 11 points during a 13-3 run for SU that lasted nearly six minutes.

Fair hit another jumper in the paint later in the second half to make it 55-47 Syracuse. Villanova hung around until the closing minutes of the game, but Fair came up big again.

He grabbed a rebound on a Villanova miss and drew a foul on the Wildcats’ James Bell. Fair hit both free throws to keep the Orange up by nine with 33 seconds left.

“The second half started, we wanted to go to C.J. and C.J. got us in front,” head coach Jim Boeheim said. “They were so concerned with C.J. we got two lob passes because C.J. was hurting them so much.”

Published on January 12, 2013 at 7:19 pm

Contact Chris: cjiseman@syr.edu | @chris_iseman