By Adam KilgoreSports Editor

NEW YORK – Two days after being named to the seven-player All-Big East Conference First Team, Hakim Warrick lay on the Madison Square Garden baseline in disbelief. For the second straight possession, Warrick had missed a shot that would have given the Syracuse men’s basketball team the lead in its Big East quarterfinal game against Boston College last Thursday. Syracuse, which had earned a bye by finishing fourth in the conference, lost, 57-54, to the fifth-seeded Eagles after building an 11-point first-half lead.’I just missed the shot, simple as that,’ Warrick said. ‘I felt real bad that I let my team down. That’s the way it happens, I guess.’While Warrick’s emotion at the time contradicted his glee at being named one of the Big East’s best, the loss to Boston College gave Syracuse (21-7, 11-6 Big East) any extra motivation it might need for its first-round game against Brigham Young in the NCAA Tournament.’It’s a wake-up call,’ SU center Craig Forth said Thursday. ‘We expected to be here until Saturday. If you lose, you go home. We need to keep that in mind for next week.’Said SU guard Gerry McNamara: ‘Whoever we play in the tournament – we’ll be ready.’Warrick, who scored nine points in the first half but finished with just 12, shot 4-for-13. His meltdown contradicted the dominance of BC’s Craig Smith, who finished with a game-high 22 points. Instead of trying to shoot over SU’s 2-3 zone, BC head coach Al Skinner stuck with his game plan of attacking SU’s defense from the inside. The Eagles pounded the ball to Smith, a 6-foot-7 thoroughbred, who, down the stretch, kept BC (23-8, 12-6) in the game by scoring nine straight points. Smith started his personal run with 10 minutes remaining and BC down six. By the time he finished, the Eagles had weathered a Syracuse mini-run and a McNamara 3-pointer and found themselves down only 50-46 with 4:47 left in the game. ‘We just tried to get it inside,’ Smith said as he smiled widely, revealing a mouthful of braces.When that method of muscling the Orangemen didn’t work, the Eagles usually went and got their misses. Boston College outrebounded Syracuse, 24-9, in the second half. Forward Jared Dudley, a freshman, grabbed a game-high 11 and Smith snared 10. Josh Pace, a 6-foot-6 forward, led SU with seven rebounds. Warrick, at 6-foot-8, and the 7-foot Forth finished with four boards apiece. ‘They just killed us on the backboards in the second half,’ SU head coach Jim Boeheim said.By doing so, BC erased what was an eight-point deficit with 12 minutes remaining. After grabbing a deep rebound and taking it coast-to-coast for a 3-point play, BC guard Jermaine Watson tied the game with 2:51 left. Later, Dudley sank a pair of free throws to give BC its first lead of the game, one it wouldn’t relinquish.’We know that we had our opportunities to win the game,’ Pace said. ‘It wasn’t like we were down going into the last stretch. We made some mistakes mentally that cost us the game.’