Entering play on Monday, the Syracuse University men's basketball team no longer holds the distinction as being the worst free-throw shooting team in the nation.

While the Orange still sit at 364th out of 365 teams, they have cracked the 60 percent mark (60.1 percent). The last spot in the nation? That now belongs to Little Rock, who is at 59.5 percent.

The Orange are 8-4 this season after beating Northeastern 91-83 on Saturday night, and they are actually showing improvement at the line.

Syracuse went 12-of-16 in a win over Mercyhurst and then went a whopping 34-of-48 on Saturday against the Huskies.

"We know that we're not the worst free-throw shooting team, we know the stats say that, but I think it just got to something being in our head, once we see that and now we're thinking when we get to the line, but as a team, we've just been putting in a lot of work at the free-throw line. We know we're better shooters than we have shown, so I think it's starting to show now," sophomore Tyler Betsey said after Saturday's win.

Naithan George went 12-of-14 in the victory to help lead the way.

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What's next

The Orange will finish out the non-conference portion of their schedule on Monday night when they host Stonehill (7 p.m ET) at the JMA Wireless Dome. Stonehill is 3-9 and 0-7 on the road, so the Orange will look for a decisive victory.

In an effort to get that? They'll look to play better defense. Allowing 83 points against Northeastern is not something that the Orange should be doing.

Head coach Adrian Autry spoke about the defensive issues on Saturday as well:

I thought today, Tyler Betsey, Nate George, Kiyan (Anthony) — those guys stepped up and made big free-throws when we needed it. But, like I’ve said all year, we said from the beginning, I’ve stressed defense — and not at the expense of our offense, where we put up some numbers today, but it was at the expense of our defense.

I personally — you know — it’s disappointing, our defensive effort. We’ve got to get back to the fundamentals, keeping people in front of us. I know we lost the ball, lost sight of the man when they killed their dribble. So just things that we’ve got to get back to. We just haven’t been able to get our defensive intensity sustained since we’ve been back — since the Tennessee game, to be honest with you.

So we’ve got to get that back. We’ve got to continue to work on that, get that grit, that toughness that we had, and again, keep improving on offense.

Also need to know

--Big man Donnie Freeman, who is slated to miss his ninth straight game with a right foot injury, is scheduled to be back on Dec. 31 for the conference opener against Clemson.

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