The odds were awful — nearly as high as a novice gambler emerging from Turning Stone Casino with a profit — but Jim Boeheim had to do something.

With 6:33 left in Monday night’s game and Syracuse trailing Connecticut, 57-49, the Syracuse men’s basketball team’s head coach turned to his press defense to close the gap. He gambled and lost. His defensive switch turned the Huskies loose.

‘It was an eight-to-10 point game, and we had to pressure,’ Boeheim said after Syracuse lost, 75-61. ‘We didn’t want to pressure them. That was the only hope left.”

UConn ravaged the Orangemen’s press, scoring easy field goals on three of four possessions against the press and making a pair of free throws on the other.

‘They’re a fast-breaking team,’ Syracuse freshman Carmelo Anthony said. ‘They’ve got a lot of people who can score in transition.’

First, UConn freshman Denham Brown drove at Syracuse center Jeremy McNeil. Brown missed a lay-up but pulled McNeil out of position, so center Emeka Okafor could complete an easy put-back. On the next possession, point guard Ben Gordon pulled up in front of McNeil and hit a short jumper. On the third, forward Hilton Armstrong was fouled.

Though McNeil partially blocked a dunk by Brown on UConn’s final possession against the press, Brown’s momentum carried the ball into the basket, prompting a standing ovation from the Connecticut bench.

Syracuse struggled to explain the wrinkles in its press.

‘It was a lot of things,’ Syracuse sophomore Hakim Warrick said. ‘They’ve got some good ball-handlers, they move the ball around and they have the athletes who can finish.’

Against West Virginia on Saturday, Syracuse’s press was much more effective. Although McNeil received little help from teammates in either game — the Mountaineers often broke through to McNeil easily — his intimidating presence forced WVU to take awkward shots.

When McNeil wasn’t swatting lay-ups, the Mountaineers were contorting their bodies wildly to keep the ball from his reach.

Against West Virginia the press allowed the Orangemen to erase an early 15-point deficit and speed up the game’s pace. That made the Mountaineers uncomfortable. While WVU — inferior to the Orangemen athletically — prefers to slow down the game, SU forced them to play at breakneck speed.

The result: a 94-80 West Virginia loss, its third worst of the year.

‘We got in the press to speed the game up,’ Boeheim said Saturday. ‘We tried to get them out of their half-court set, where they were making shots.’

While SU’s press worked wonders against West Virginia, don’t expect the Orangemen to stray far from their traditional 2-3 zone unless, like in Connecticut, they fall far behind.

Syracuse’s next two opponents, Notre Dame, with Chris Thomas, and St. John’s, with Marcus Hatten, feature exceptional point-guard play. Notre Dame, like UConn, has plenty of offensive options, and Hatten is the quickest point guard in the Big East.

‘(UConn) is just better (than West Virginia),’ Boeheim said. ‘They finish better. They’re much better players.’

If the Orangemen are forced to press the Fighting Irish for an extended period of time Saturday, chances are, Syracuse will be muttering more of the same.

Published on February 11, 2003 at 12:00 pm