PITTSBURGH – In preparation for its game with Pittsburgh, the Syracuse men’s basketball team hoped the Panthers would play a zone defense. SU head coach Jim Boeheim – the zone’s master architect – figured his team would have its best chance for victory against a defense that it employs, and practices against, regularly.

And just as the Orange hoped, Pittsburgh eventually used a zone Saturday night at the Petersen Events Center.

The one problem being, the Orange couldn’t score against it.

After Syracuse squandered a first-half lead that ballooned to 17 points, Pitt switched to a zone defense for which SU had no answers. Ultimately, Orange players watched the Panthers snap off a 13-0 second-half run across a six-minute span. That scoreless spout sent No. 20 Pittsburgh to a 76-69 victory over No. 4 Syracuse in front of 12,508, handing the Orange its first Big East loss and ending a 13-game Syracuse winning streak.

‘We didn’t attack the zone,’ Boeheim said. ‘When you don’t make shots against the zone, you’re not going to beat it. Offensively, we didn’t play well enough to win on the road.’

Most of the credit for SU’s offensive ineptitude goes to Pitt’s defensive ferocity. After a blinding start that saw the Orange (20-2, 7-1) jump to a 22-5 lead, Syracuse looked poised to become the first team to win twice at this building, where only two other opponents have left victorious.

But just as the Orange learned last Monday when it stormed back from an 18-point halftime deficit for a victory at Rutgers, early leads are rarely safe. Pittsburgh knew the lesson well itself, coming back from a 12-point second-half deficit to win at Connecticut last Saturday.

Last night, this time in front of a rowdy, sold out home crowd, Pitt (14-3, 4-2) repeated the comeback. After a cold-shooting start, Panther shots eventually began to fall, and the zone defense stifled SU’s scoring.

At halftime, Syracuse led just 34-29.

‘It was a gradual thing,’ junior guard Gerry McNamara said. ‘It was just a letdown for us. They did a good job and kept prying, and we just let down.’

In the second half, Syracuse’s offense further stagnated. Making things worse, Pitt’s two most dangerous offensive weapons, senior forward Chevon Troutman and junior guard Carl Krauser, came alive after poor first halves. Krauser led Pitt with 19 points, all coming in the second half.

A Krauser 3-pointer knotted the score at 38 with 15:45 remaining. But Syracuse answered with a 6-0 run of its own. Demetris Nichols’ lay-up with 13:54 remaining capped the short spurt.

Pitt called timeout, and the Orange never regained its rhythm. Against the Panthers’ zone, Syracuse didn’t score again until 7:28 remained. In that six-and-a-half-minute span, Pitt turned a six-point deficit into a seven-point lead, igniting a crowd that spent most of the first half silent.

‘I can’t remember the last time,’ senior forward Hakim Warrick said when asked to recall a drought of the same extent. ‘We expect to go out and score every time. It happens to the best of us.’

SU had its share of opportunities during the drought. Open looks didn’t fall. Eight second-half turnovers cost SU possessions. Most importantly, no SU player other than Warrick or McNamara scored more than four points.

Even so, SU’s high-scoring duo was far from superb. Though McNamara led all scorers with 26 points and Warrick chipped in 25, much of the scoring came in junk time with the game out of reach.

But as the zone silenced McNamara and Warrick, SU’s bench players – most notably sophomores Louie McCroskey and Nichols – failed to hit open shots.

‘If they made (the change from man to zone) so someone else would have to beat them, it worked,’ McNamara said.

SU’s failure against the zone brings to light an alarming trend. Few teams have tried a zone against the Orange, a team that has turned the zone into its longstanding trademark. Boeheim commented that, earlier in the season, lesser teams caused SU problems by using a zone defense.

And now, Syracuse’s apparent weakness has been exposed by a Big East rival.

‘You can really ask 100 questions for an hour,’ Boeheim said. ‘But that was it. That was the ballgame. We didn’t attack the zone very well and when we got open shots, we didn’t make them.’

Published on January 29, 2005 at 12:00 pm