Seven points in 17 seconds.

Brandon Triche said he’d seen it in high school but never since the junior guard came to Syracuse. James Southerland hadn’t seen anything like it since Reggie Miller scored eight points in nine seconds against the New York Knicks in the 1995 NBA Eastern Conference semifinals.

That one only involved one steal of an inbounds pass.

Syracuse stole four straight inbounds passes from Colgate in the midst of scoring 14 straight points and breaking the game open in the first half. In the run, Southerland scored seven points in 17 seconds. And it was the full-court press, a defense Syracuse hasn’t typically used in seasons past, that created the steals.

‘SU, we usually just play the zone and back off,’ Triche said. ‘But now that we’re a faster team, we’re able to use our athleticism a little bit better to score points.’

Colgate’s struggles to get the ball cleanly in play were part of seven straight possessions for the Red Raiders that ended in turnovers. And that was the stretch that ultimately allowed No. 5 Syracuse (4-0) to run away with a 92-47 win in front of 21,084 in the Carrier Dome Saturday. SU ended the first half on a 32-6 run that was started by the Red Raiders’ (1-2) offensive miscues.

The win came in the Orange’s first game since Syracuse police began an investigation of molestation allegations against SU associate head coach Bernie Fine Thursday. Fine was placed on administrative leave, but the team left a seat open on the bench where Fine normally sits as a tribute to the SU coach.

The Orange’s next game comes in the semifinals of the NIT Season Tip-Off in New York City against Virginia Tech on Wednesday.

‘We really couldn’t block out what’s going on,’ Orange senior Scoop Jardine said. ‘It’s all over the TVs, all over everywhere. But the main thing is just to be there for coach. The main thing he would want us to do is focus on basketball and continue to play the game that we learned to do.’

Syracuse had no trouble playing its game against an overmatched Colgate squad. SU rotated its defenses between the 2-3 zone, man-to-man and a full-court press and shut down the Red Raiders attack.

Colgate managed to hang around early on, only trailing by seven 11 minutes into the action. But then came the decisive stretch of Syracuse steals that led to the Orange’s offensive explosion to end the half.

‘I think it just broke the game open,’ Triche said of the key spurt. ‘We got into our press pretty well. We’d been having trouble so the last few practices, we’ve been focusing on it.’

That extra attention paid off.

The run started when Colgate guard Mike Venezia picked up his dribble along the SU baseline. He tried to pass to the opposite corner, but Southerland stepped in front and intercepted the pass. On the ensuing possession, the Orange junior buried a deep jumper to put the score at 22-13.

C.J. Fair then stole Colgate’s inbounds pass and hit a contested jumper in the paint. Colgate called a timeout to try and halt Syracuse’s momentum, but Southerland again stole the inbounds pass.

SU set up its offense with the extra possession and the Orange forward buried a 3-pointer to put the lead at 27-13. Another turnover led to another Southerland bucket to put SU up 16 just 12 seconds later.

The Red Raiders woes continued on the ensuing inbounds play when Triche deflected the pass directly to Southerland underneath the basket. Southerland capitalized with an emphatic two-handed slam to make it 11 straight points without Colgate moving the ball past halfcourt.

‘Defense is always going to be the key here and our offense will always flow,’ Southerland said. ‘We have a lot of scorers so offense will always come. But defensively, we did a great job.’

Colgate called a timeout after the Southerland dunk and SU backed out of the full-court press after the stoppage. But the Red Raiders turned the ball over again against the Orange’s halfcourt defense, leading to a Fair putback with a foul.

The 14-0 run put SU up 34-13 and Syracuse extended that lead to 52-19 by halftime. Colgate never got the lead to less than 32 points in the second half.

‘Our motto this year is to be better than our last game,’ Jardine said. ‘That’s what coach has been preaching to us and no matter what the score is, we go out and we try to push and get deflections, get blocks and just keep imposing our will on teams.’

zjbrown@syr.edu 

Published on November 18, 2011 at 12:00 pm