LOUISVILLE, Ky. – For 30 minutes, Syracuse played as well as it has all season. The problem is, there’s no way to get the final 10 minutes back.

Syracuse lost a 14-point second half lead and was outscored 24-6 in the final 9:45 of Saturday’s 76-71 loss to Louisville. It was a combination of an inability to rebound, a lack of offensive execution and Louisville making shots that it wasn’t making throughout the rest of the game that ultimately doomed the Orange.

‘I thought we played extremely well tonight for 34 minutes,’ said Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim, who lost in his 1,000th career game. ‘We just stopped rebounding the ball. We stopped them four possessions in a row, and they just got the rebound and put the ball back in. We just couldn’t rebound for those last five minutes.’

But the Orange’s (15-6, 4-3) woes were actually longer than the last five to six minutes. When Terrence Roberts had a big dunk to give SU a 14-point lead with 9:45 left in the game, Louisville head coach Rick Pitino called a timeout.

Whatever he did worked. Louisville (15-6, 5-2) held SU without a field goal for the next 9:39. SU’s only field goal in the final 9:45 was an inconsequential lay-up with six seconds left. During that span, Louisville hit six field goals – including two backbreaking 3-pointers by sophomore Terrence Williams within 43 seconds of each other to capture the Cardinals’ first lead in 28 minutes. Louisville also forced six turnovers in those final minutes.

‘They were just a little more hungry,’ SU guard Josh Wright said. ‘They had an aggressiveness and that willed them to the win. They took the win away from us.’

Wright’s last sentence summed up the feeling of the loss. SU appeared to have a win locked up when it held a 14-point lead and was clearly outplaying the Cardinals. The box score made it appear like SU played a good game, considering Demetris Nichols, Eric Devendorf and Terrence Roberts all finished with double figures in scoring. Devendorf led with 18 points, Roberts scored 16 and Nichols finished with 15. But Nichols had that total and Devendorf and Roberts had close to their totals with almost nine minutes remaining.

At the time, it looked like all three could finish with 20 or more points, or at least two of them. SU hasn’t had two players score 20 or more points together all season. With the way the offense was clicking and UL’s lack of execution, the Orange was on pace for the type of banner win that the NCAA Tournament committee could point to come the second Sunday of March.

Then the little things started happening, the type of moves that only become noticed when a game is significantly altered. Louisville moved Williams onto the ball instead of its other point guards because at 6 feet 6 inches tall, he could see over SU’s zone. SU center Darryl Watkins picked up his fourth foul with 9:02 left and was benched for the next three minutes and had to play safely for the next six.

‘It affected us a lot,’ Watkins said. ‘I had to go out of the game and that kind of killed us on the rebounds.’

It was also Louisville hitting shots. They finished the game shooting just 36.2 percent from the field and 25 percent from 3-point range. But they were 40 percent in the final 9:45 and 30 percent from 3-point land for the rest of the half, proving shots that weren’t falling in the beginning of the half were starting to drop at the end.

On defense, the Cardinals were switching looks between man-to-man and zone defense. Pitino’s teams generally switch between full-court man-to-man and zone defense depending on the situation.

‘Either we made a bad turnover or missed a shot; it was one or the other,’ Boeheim said. ‘They were back and fourth between man and zone and we either made a bad turnover or missed an easy shot.’

To add to it, Syracuse was making mistakes – turning over the ball, committing foolish fouls – and Louisville was keeping its wits.

‘The exciting thing for us is that we had one turnover in 20 minutes of play in the entire second half,’ Pitino said. ‘That is one of the reasons when you are down and every possession counts, if you don’t turn it over you get a legitimate shot at the basket or a legitimate shot at an offensive rebound.’

The latter of the two, the offensive rebounds, is what particularly had Boeheim frustrated after the game. Boeheim has preached throughout the season that no Big East game is easy. On Saturday, SU had a chance to pull off a pivotal conference win on the road and let it slip away.

‘I’m just disappointed that we played so well for so long and then just didn’t rebound the ball in the end,’ Boeheim said. ‘It was our offense in the last seven minutes and our efforts on the boards. It wasn’t good enough and that was the ballgame.’

Published on January 28, 2007 at 12:00 pm