On a television screen in a dark room, the Syracuse men’s basketball team watched the scene repeat over and over.

It was torture. The Orangemen wanted to turn away, but head coach Jim Boeheim demanded fixation on the screen. Repeatedly, one player found soft spots against the SU defense, knocking down a barrage of 3-pointers.

To make his point — that SU needed to play tighter perimeter defense — Boeheim just pushed play. It must have worked, because last night, SU beat up on West Virginia, 89-51, in front of 19,484 at the Carrier Dome.

‘Coach didn’t let us see the end of it,’ SU forward Carmelo Anthony said of the tape, which showed Michigan State’s Chris Hill dropping 10 3-pointers on the Orangemen last Sunday. ‘They cut it up, and we were just watching him. They just made a tape of all his shots. We knew we had to do better.’

The No. 15 Orangemen (20-4, 10-3 Big East) held West Virginia’s primary scoring threats, Kevin Pittsnogle and Drew Schifino, to 19 combined points. The Mountaineer perimeter experts made only 7 of 29 shots, including 2 of 8 from 3-point range.

Schifino was particularly ineffective. The sophomore, who averages 21 points, managed a season-low 10. In the first half, he shot 1 of 9, allowing Syracuse to take a 35-17 halftime lead. Despite his low output, Schifino still led the Mountaineers in scoring.

The 17 points were a season-low for an SU opponent in a half.

‘God, that’s awful,’ Schifino said as he perused his stats. ‘That’s awful. That’s the worst game I’ve ever played.’

Schifino has Syracuse’s tenacious man-to-man defense to thank. After West Virginia started with a pair of 3-pointers against the traditional 2-3 zone, Boeheim banished center Craig Forth to the bench, bringing in freshman Billy Edelin and a new defensive alignment.

Forth and fellow center Jeremy McNeil couldn’t keep up with Pittsnogle. Hakim Warrick, though, could. Employing a lineup with no centers, Boeheim placed Warrick on Pittsnogle and senior Kueth Duany on Schifino.

The small lineup harassed the Mountaineers into nine first-half turnovers and 21 percent shooting.

‘We can speed them up with the man-to-man,’ Boeheim said. ‘You can force some turnovers and not allow them to use all the shot clock. I didn’t know we’d play that much man-to-man. Defensively, this was a tremendous effort.’

Three times in the first half, WVU failed to score a point during four-minute stretches. With the score 20-14 at the 6:30 mark, Syracuse used the final streak to extend a manageable lead into an insurmountable one.

Anthony began the run, hitting a 3-pointer, but Hakim Warrick provided the capstone on the next possession.

Warrick took a pass from point guard Gerry McNamara, pulled the ball back nearly perpendicular with his body and hammered it through the basket. By the time West Virginia scored again, Syracuse had completed a 10-point run and the Mountaineers failed to get within double figures again.

‘When you have a team as inexperienced as ours and you see five shots blocked, five layups blocked, it affects our offense,’ West Virginia head coach John Beilein said. ‘They played very good defense. They don’t get nearly enough credit for that.’

By the start of the second half, the fluxomed Mountaineers rarely penetrated Syracuse’s defense. Instead, they became content hoisting 3-pointers, most of which missed. WVU finished 6 of 26 from 3-point range.

The Orangemen, meanwhile, made 14 of 34 shots in the first half. Anthony led Syracuse with 24 points, while Duany and Warrick each totaled 18.

Syracuse’s defense made up for an average first-half offensive performance, though.

‘That was the best man-to-man defense we’ve played in a long time,’ Boeheim said. ‘The defense really carried us.’

Published on February 26, 2003 at 12:00 pm