With about seven minutes left in his Senior Day game, Scoop Jardine had to deal with former Syracuse star Derrick Coleman poking fun at him.

Coleman playfully let Jardine know he still had yet to score on a day that was supposed to celebrate the senior point guard’s career at SU.

Jardine gave him a simple response: ‘But we’re winning.’

‘That’s how I am,’ Jardine said. ‘It doesn’t matter. We won. At the end of the day, I’m the starting point guard and I’m a leader, and I’m the heart and soul of the No. 2 team in the country that 17-1 (in the Big East) and 30-1 overall.’

Jardine failed to score in his final game at the Carrier Dome but No. 2 Syracuse (30-1, 17-1 Big East) still knocked off No. 19 Louisville (22-9, 10-8 Big East) on Senior Day on Saturday. The point guard played just 18 minutes and finished with three assists, three turnovers, a rebound and a block. But for Jardine, the game was about more than just statistics.

‘I don’t care about scoring,’ he said. ‘I never did. But when they need me to make plays, I’m there. Everybody knows that. Through my career, you’ve seen that. Today wasn’t my day. But the most important part was we got the win.’

It was the second time this year Jardine has failed to score against the Cardinals. Head coach Jim Boeheim said Saturday’s lack of scoring may have been a result of the Senior Day hype.

‘Seniors sometimes put a little bit too much pressure on themselves in their last game,’ he said. ‘I think that’s what happened tonight.’

Jardine missed two 3s and turned the ball over before subbing out just six minutes in. Fellow guards Brandon Triche and Dion Waiters sparked the Orange on the offensive end, making Jardine a spectator for much of the game.

His three assists, however, all came on 3-pointers — two by Triche at the start of the second half and one by Waiters that started a 12-0 run in the first.

It was the ninth time this year Jardine has scored five points or less in a game, but his teammates agreed that their point guard’s contributions don’t always show up in the box score.

‘People will remember him as a leader,’ Triche said. ‘He’s a guy who matured over (five) years. He’s been through a lot of ups and downs.’

And for Jardine, even though he failed to score, he will still look back and know he got a win in his final game at the Dome.

‘I’ll always remember these moments and cherish this because you only get this once,’ he said. ‘And I’m happy for it, and I’m going to cherish every moment.’

Tournament talk

With the win over Louisville on Saturday, Syracuse capped off the best regular season in program history. The Orange is the Big East’s No. 1 seed for the conference tournament and has a double-bye before playing in the quarterfinals Thursday.

As Dion Waiters put it, there’s no reason the Orange shouldn’t be looking to win the Big East tournament title, too.

‘That’s the biggest thing for us is to try and win everything,’ Waiters said. ‘We didn’t come this far to come up short. We might as well try to win everything now.’

Syracuse will play West Virginia, Connecticut or DePaul depending on who wins the first- and second-round games Tuesday and Wednesday. Head coach Jim Boeheim said earlier this year that he does not like the double-bye, but his point guard Jardine said the extra two days off shouldn’t affect the Orange.

‘We just have to play basketball,’ Jardine said. ‘When the lights go on and the ball goes in the air, we still have to play basketball. It doesn’t matter if we have a double-bye or if we’re playing every day. We just have to play Syracuse basketball, play the right way and it shouldn’t matter.’

Waiters echoed those sentiments and said the Big East tournament should prepare SU for the NCAA Tournament in two weeks. If the Orange can pull out the championship, he said it would set Syracuse up nicely for the following week.

‘It’s the momentum going into the NCAA Tournament,’ Waiters said. ‘You win that, you’re confidence is at an all-time high. If we win the Big East tournament, it’d give us a huge boost.’

zjbrown@syr.edu

Published on March 4, 2012 at 12:00 pm