The turnaround seemed to come after a discussion with Boeheim mid 2nd half:
From syracuse.com:
“I was trying to tell him to wake up and play basketball,” Jim Boeheim said later when asked what that meeting was all about.
Whatever transpired there, whatever words were spoken, something dramatic happened when play resumed. Griffin, who had scored four points until then and had been a somewhat invisible presence, suddenly emerged as the best player on the Carrier Dome court.
...
“He was just reminding me of how good a player I am,” Griffin said. “He fired me up. That’s all I can say. He fired me up. It was something I knew I could do inside of myself and he brought it out of me. It was in me to do it. We both knew that. And I don’t know what to say, it played out.”
Which, of course, makes the threads after the Northeastern games about how Boeheim is being a big meanie to AG look even more ridiculous now.