Syracuse, N.Y. – He deleted Instagram and Twitter over the past few days.

Kiyan Anthony has 1.1 million Instagram followers and 21,000 Twitter followers. His social media visibility has made him an 18-year-old celebrity, his famous parents notwithstanding.

He appears in ads for national brands. Whenever Syracuse plays in a visiting city, people want to know which one of the Orange players is Carmelo’s kid.

But after his DNP in Virginia last week, Anthony’s in-boxes were flooded with messages. National media outlets reported about his first-ever absence from an SU game. Adrian Autry’s “coach’s decision” reverberated throughout the college basketball world.

Anthony was suddenly caught in a maelstrom of media for all the wrong reasons.

The “Virginia situation,” as Anthony called it, “matured me up a lot.”

“It came faster than I thought it would, but that situation in particular just made me be stronger, level-headed and stronger-minded,” Anthony said Saturday in Syracuse’s post-game locker room. “Being on a different scene than high school, it’s a lot more media, a lot more narratives.

“Everybody wants to put in their one or two cents. But you know, they would never know what it’s like just to walk in my shoes a little bit. So just not feeding into that and just kind of keep working.”

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Anthony was a pivotal part of Syracuse’s thrilling 79-78 win over SMU on Valentine’s Day in the JMA Wireless Dome. He came off the bench to score 13 points in almost 24 minutes. He played about 16 minutes in the crucial second half, when he scored all of his points.

A 23% shooter from the 3-point line, he made 2-of-4 from that distance on Saturday, one of the makes a deep, deadly bomb, one of the misses a desperation heave at the shot clock buzzer. He drove the ball. He sank a step-back jumper in the lane.

He grabbed two rebounds. The one he secured after boxing out 7-foot-2, 270-pound Samet Yigitoglu brought a post-game smile to Anthony’s face. (“That was a very tall big man they had.”)

“He made some big shots, some big drives, finished some plays,” Autry said. “And he played with the intensity that you need to play with. So, I was happy for him.”

It’s been just a week since the drama in Charlottesville, just a week since Autry did not play the son of a Syracuse legend.

Anthony said he visited Autry’s office “after the Virginia thing” to tell him he didn’t care about the narratives dominating the benching, the conspiracy theorists who perpetuated the notion that it was something more than a coach’s decision to sit a freshman who had struggled to guard and struggled to shoot.

Anthony said he wanted to assure Autry that “I don’t care about any of that stuff.” He would be ready to play, he said, whenever his name was called, regardless of how much court time that meant.

The conversation with his coach, Anthony said, touched upon his youth, his inexperience, particularly in the context of his veteran teammates.

“It was a clear conversation. It wasn’t anything back and forth or anything like that,” Anthony said. “I just let him know where I stand. He let me know where he stood. And we see eye-to-eye now.”

The main thing Anthony gleaned from that talk, he said, was that Autry had not lost faith in him, that his coach believed he could contribute.

For the past week or so, Anthony said, he’s lived in the gym. He’d wake up, head to the Melo Center to lift weights. He’d practice with his team. Then, later that night, he’d return to the gym to shoot.

The basketball work and that conversation with Autry helped soothe the sting of the “Virginia thing.”

So did Anthony’s social media avoidance and his focus on his family and friends.

“Everything is about opportunity. And when you get the opportunity, you got to go out there and you just got to do whatever you can to stay out there,” Anthony said. “And I feel like I did a good job of that today and hopefully we can take a step in the right direction and build off of this.”

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