Perhaps the only person who came away from last season unimpressed with Gerry McNamara was Seton Hall point guard Andre Barrett.

‘He knocks down open shots. That’s what we’re supposed to do,’ Barrett said after the Syracuse men’s basketball team beat the Pirates, 83-65, in the Carrier Dome. ‘He just hits open shots, like we’re supposed to.’

‘He said that?’ McNamara asked after the game, surprised by Barrett’s challenge. ‘Well if all I do is hit open shots, then where the hell was he all night?’

Those verbal shots, fired almost exactly a year ago, will turn into jump shots tonight. Barrett and McNamara, two of the Big East’s elite guards, will renew their rivalry tonight at 7 at Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, N.J.

Even without the slight verbal sparring last year, the matchup would be intriguing enough. McNamara comes into the game averaging 17.9 points and shooting 42 percent from behind the 3-point arc.

Barrett, starting as Seton Hall’s point guard for the fourth year in a row, leads the Pirates with 18.5 points a game and has been even hotter from long range, draining 43 percent of his 3s. Barrett is ranked sixth in scoring in the Big East, while McNamara is 10th.

It’s a matchup made in a college hoops fans’ heaven. Maybe the only person not keyed up for it is McNamara himself.

‘You can’t go in there thinking it’s between Andre Barrett and Gerry McNamara,’ McNamara said. ‘I just have to go out there play like I do every other game. It did get to me a little bit after the game, because I thought I played a pretty decent game, and he came at me. I don’t have to worry about him. We just have to worry about Seton Hall.’

McNamara has a point, since a dynamic of the duel changed since one year ago. Both of last year’s games between Syracuse (13-1, 3-0 Big East) and Seton Hall (11-4, 1-2) came before Billy Edelin finished serving his 12-game suspension, meaning McNamara started at point guard. Now, Edelin is the starter at point while McNamara plays shooting guard.

But if and when Syracuse plays man-to-man defense, McNamara will guard Barrett, Edelin said. The key to that difficult task will be stopping the slashing Barrett’s penetration.

‘He’s of those guys who you’ve got to keep in front of you,’ Edelin said.

If not, Barrett will be free to either lay up an easy basket or dish it off to a teammate. His best choice for option No. 2 would be John Allen, a junior averaging 13 points a game. It wouldn’t be his only choice, though. Three other Pirates – Andre Sweet, Kelly Whitney and J.R. Morris – average double figures.

Problem is, all the other Pirates combined average just 16.3 points a game, which has caught up with Seton Hall in Big East play. SHU opened the season 11-2, losing only to Purdue and Louisville. But it has lost its last two games, to Boston College and Providence.

Syracuse has dealt with a similar issue, but hasn’t it hasn’t been a problem. Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim seems to have settled on a seven-man rotation during SU’s 13-game win streak, with only Louie McCroskey and Jeremy McNeil seeing time off the bench. The last time any other player received meaningful playing time off the bench was when Terrence Roberts played 12 minutes in Syracuse’s 87-70 win over Canisius on Dec. 30.

‘You get a timeout every four minutes,’ Boeheim said. ‘You get a rest. If you get six or seven guys who are playing well, that’s all you need. Our freshmen are pretty good, but they’re not quite ready.’

Boeheim is not sure if they’ll be ready tonight or not.

‘I don’t know who’s going to get in,’ he said. ‘You don’t coach a game before it starts.’

Published on January 19, 2004 at 12:00 pm