Fantasia Goodwin has a message for Georgetown.

‘We know we have something to prove,’ Goodwin said. ‘It was a fluke last time we played them, and we just got to redeem ourselves. We owe it to them, and we owe it to ourselves as well. … I think we got our mojo back’

Leave it to Syracuse’s vocal leader to say what everybody was already thinking. The Hoyas shocked the Orange down in Washington, D.C. earlier this month. Now Syracuse has the rare opportunity for a little revenge.

Thanks to the Big East scheduling, Syracuse (20-6, 8-5) has a second chance when it welcomes Georgetown (14-12, 4-9) to the Carrier Dome for a rematch tonight at 6 p.m. The Hoyas are the only conference opponent the Orange faces twice before the Big East tournament.

Syracuse concludes its regular season next week with games against No. 4 Rutgers and No. 13 West Virginia, so under other circumstances, tonight’s contest would have all the makings of another trap game. But SU head coach Quentin Hillsman is convinced that after the last time and Tuesday’s loss to lowly Providence that knocked Syracuse out of the top 25 for the first time since Jan. 21, his team has corrected its mistakes.

‘You can’t look ahead when somebody beat you, right?’ Hillsman said. ‘We’re ready for this game, and we’ve been looking forward to this game, coming back home and trying to redeem ourselves from what happened at Georgetown.’

When the Hoyas beat Syracuse on Feb. 2, they were 1-6 in the Big East, ahead of only Cincinnati in the conference standings. The Orange was alone in fifth place with a 5-2 record and was riding a three-game winning streak. The loss thwarted SU’s chances of cracking the top 20 for the first time in program history, instead setting them backward in the next week’s poll.

In that game, Georgetown shot remarkably well in the second half to turn a tie score at halftime into a 78-71 victory. The Hoyas went 14-of-24 (58.3 percent) in the game’s final 30 minutes, including 6-of-9 (66.7 percent) from 3-point range. Georgetown is currently shooting a measly 38.4 percent in Big East play.

After watching the tape, Hillsman blamed the loss not on his team’s defense, but the sheer shooting barrage by Georgetown. Though Syracuse worked this week in practice on tightening up its zone to get out quicker on shooters, Hillsman likes his chances this time – so long as the Hoyas come back to earth.

‘You never want to say, ‘No way,’ because they could come out and shoot better,’ Hillsman said. ‘I think that would be impossible, but they could. We just don’t want to take any chances.’

Perhaps all Syracuse needs to do is get off to a better start, something that’s eluded the Orange over the last few games. On Saturday against Cincinnati, the last-place team in the Big East, Syracuse went down by nine in the first 10 minutes of the game and even trailed at halftime before turning it around for a 10-point win.

Earlier that week against Providence, then the last place team in the conference, Syracuse scored just 27 first-half points en route to a 62-58 loss. The Orange even fell behind early against Seton Hall before a 51-point explosion in the second half, leading to a tidy nine-point victory.

Syracuse has led by more than two points at halftime just once since Jan. 26, a span of seven games. The Orange is 4-3 during that time frame.

‘I’ve done everything I know to do,’ Hillsman said. ‘We’ve gone lighter in shoot around. We’ve been going harder. We’ve gone the night before, we’ve not gone the night before. We’ve done everything possible to try to get off to good starts.’

Considering Syracuse’s losses to Georgetown and Providence and first-half struggles against Seton Hall and Cincinnati, the Orange has at times played down to its opponents.

If the Orange wants to get back in the polls, it better learn its lesson.

‘We’re sticking on Georgetown,’ Erica Morrow said. ‘We [ITALICS]gotta[/ITALICS] focus on Georgetown, man, we lost the last game. We’re not looking ahead.’

jediamon@syr.edu

Published on February 25, 2008 at 12:00 pm