As Dion Waiters’ free throw rattled around the rim and out, the sophomore guard’s frustration finally boiled over.

He turned around, bent down and slapped the Carrier Dome floor with both hands as he stepped off the line. Another look for Syracuse that just refused to drop.

‘I was mad,’ Waiters said. ‘It went in and out. It was crazy. I was kind of frustrated because I don’t miss foul shots. In a game like that, you want to make every shot. You want to try to be perfect.’

No. 3 SU (22-1, 9-1 Big East) was far from perfect on the offensive end in its 63-61 win over West Virginia (15-7, 5-4) Saturday in the Carrier Dome. Despite multiple open looks on the perimeter, the Orange shot just 4-of-20 from 3-point range. Five SU players took at least three 3-pointers in the game. Three of them failed to connect on any of their looks, while Scoop Jardine went 2-of-6 and Brandon Triche went 2-of-4. That appeared to frustrate the Orange throughout the game, and it allowed West Virginia to nearly pull off the upset.

‘We’re getting good looks,’ head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘I don’t think James (Southerland) can get better looks at 3 than he got. Scoop’s were good. Brandon’s were good. Dion’s were wide open. We’ve got to make some of those because we’re going to get beat on the boards a little bit. But we’ve got to make some of those shots.’

The struggles from long range started on SU’s second possession of the game. Jardine shook his defender with a crossover and pulled up for an open 3 from the top of the key. But the jumper bounced off the rim and West Virginia grabbed the rebound.

SU didn’t take another 3 for nearly five minutes before Jardine knocked down his second attempt of the game. But the Orange missed its next eight tries from beyond the arc. Southerland, Waiters, Jardine and Joseph all missed two triples in that span before Jardine finally knocked one down just before halftime.

‘At the end of the day, if you miss 10 straight, you’ve got to continue shooting,’ Waiters said. ‘That’s what we’re going to do. Every night is not going to be a great shooting night for us. But we’ve got to continue to keep shooting.’

The Orange’s shooting issues date back to the start of Big East play. Entering the game against West Virginia, Syracuse was 12th in the conference at 31.4 percent shooting from beyond the arc. In its last three games, including the win Saturday, SU is just 14-of-55 from deep for a measly 25.5 percent.

‘It’s open shots,’ Triche said. ‘We’re lining them up and just not hitting them. They look like they’re going in. They’re hitting back rim. We’re just going to keep shooting them.’

Triche was the only Orange player to have a good night from deep. He didn’t take a 3 in the first half but knocked down his first try just 40 seconds after halftime on a pull-up shot.

Like Jardine in the first half, Triche was the only one to hit a 3 in the second. But even though he went 2-of-4 on the night, his two misses also came on good looks.

Boeheim said after the game that he didn’t see a bad shot taken of the 20 3s SU attempted. Southerland said those looks typically go down in practice. But after a shooting performance like that, combined with a 41-20 rebounding disadvantage, he also said the Orange was lucky to come away with a win.As for solving the shooting issues, the Syracuse players agreed the answer is simple: just keep putting shots up, and eventually, they will start to fall.

‘It’s going to come,’ Waiters said. ‘That’s the best thing about it. You’re not going to always play a great game. You’re not going to always do good. If two or three of them shots went down, it’s a different story. But they didn’t and we still won.’

zjbrown@syr.edu

Published on January 27, 2012 at 12:00 pm