As blood squirted from C.J. Fair’s right cheek, the forward came alive.

Fair darted to the rim from the left elbow with four and a half minutes remaining in the first half. Austin Hollins swung his arm to contest the inevitable posterization. His arm found Fair’s right cheek. The ball found the bottom of the net on a thunderous tomahawk slam.

To that point, Fair had just two points, but the finish lit a fire.

“I cut down the lane and I went up for the dunk, and I felt like I hit my face,” Fair said during the postgame press conference. “Then as I came down I seen blood on my hand, and then from there I knew it was something bad.”

Fair went to the bench, but didn’t sit long. He received treatment during nearly every timeout the rest of the way and The Post-Standard reported that he would get stitches after the game. When he was on the floor, though, Fair and Syracuse (5-0) surged out in front of Minnesota (5-1) and to a 75-67 win in the quarterfinals of the EA Sports Maui Invitational in Lahaina, Hawaii. Fair had just two points on 1-of-5 shooting, plus three turnovers before the dunk, but finished with 16 and 10 to keep the No. 8 Orange unbeaten. Trevor Cooney chipped in 15 points — all on 3-pointers — to hand the Golden Gophers their first loss of the season.

SU will face California (5-0) in the tournament semifinals at 7 p.m. on Tuesday.

“I think they’re much better than they were last year, a much better team,” Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said of the Golden Bears during the postgame press conference. “I really was very impressed with how they played. It will be a tremendous challenge for us.”

In both frames, Cooney drilled a 3-pointer on the Orange’s first possession. He started SU with a 3 to open the game — one of four he hit during the first half as Syracuse’s most consistent offensive threat — and just 10 seconds into the second half, another long-range jumper that gave the Orange a six-point lead.

“They’re big momentum shifts,” Fair said.

Then it was Fair’s turn. With a bloody patch struggling to keep his cheek closed, the senior sparked SU’s best stretch of the game.

He traded jumpers with Minnesota guard DeAndre Mathieu and then attacked the rim to draw a foul and a pair of points at the line. A DaJuan Coleman miss on the next possession led to a tip-in opportunity for the senior forward and a 10-point lead.

Fellow forward Rakeem Christmas threw down a reverse dunk off a pair of missed free throws by Coleman two possessions later to give Syracuse a 12-point lead, its largest of the game.

“When you get dunks like that,” Cooney said during the postgame press conference, “it just pumps you up on defense and gets you motivation to get that next stop and keep going.”

But the Golden Gophers hung around. Malik Smith hit back-to-back 3s midway through the half to cut the Orange’s lead to 56-52. Four straight free throws by Austin and Andre Hollins sliced it to 67-65 with 2:14 remaining.

That was as close as Minnesota got. Tyler Ennis bailed Fair out after a near turnover at mid-court. Then Smith bailed out an Ennis miss with an overthrow in transition.

And then Fair hit a mid-range jumper with 1:45 remaining to stretch the lead back to four. A pair of Jerami Grant free throws sealed the victory for the Orange in one of its best offensive performances of the season.

Said Boeheim: “This was probably as good a win as we’ve had in a tournament.”

Published on November 25, 2013 at 8:00 pm

Contact David: dbwilson@syr.edu | @DBWilson2