It’s great to have two Player of the Year candidates on your team, but as Syracuse found out in a loss against Pittsburgh last Saturday, a team is more than two players.

For the second straight game, the Orange offense was a two-man show. Where there needed to be balance, there was Hakim Warrick and Gerry McNamara. The duo combined for 42 of the Orange’s 57 points, including 20 of the last 21 points in SU’s 60-57 win over Notre Dame on Saturday at the Carrier Dome.

‘You cannot win in this league against the good teams with two guys,’ SU head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘We’ve gotta find somebody else.’

Warrick and McNamara accounted for 51 of the SU’s 69 points in the 76-69 loss at Pittsburgh on Jan. 29. The difference in the Orange’s win against Notre Dame was clutch shooting down the stretch and some key mistakes by the Irish.

Senior Josh Pace contributed eight first-half points, but like the rest of the team, he was barely heard from in the second half. Starters Louie McCroskey and Craig Forth scored four points and zero points, respectively.

‘Josh really carried us in that first half,’ Warrick said. ‘He really stepped up. I think Terrence (Roberts) was aggressive and Louie hit some shots for us. Those guys want to step up there and they stepped up. Craig is going to have games like that, but he missed a couple of shots out there that he’s normally making.

Entering Saturday’s game against Notre Dame, Syracuse guards knew they had to shut down the Irish’s three hot-shooting guards – Chris Thomas, Chris Quinn and Collin Falls.

That’s exactly what SU’s 2-3 zone defense did. While in past meetings, the Irish guards have burned the Orange, the trio had no such luck Saturday.

Syracuse held Notre Dame to 30 percent 3-point shooting and 41.5 percent shooting from the field. This season, the Fighting Irish have shot 38 percent from 3-point range. Only three times this season has Notre Dame shot worse than 30 percent from long range.

The worst performance of all may have come from Thomas, Notre Dame’s senior leader, who contemplated entering the NBA Draft after last season. The 6-foot-1 guard scored just five points on 2-of-12 shooting. He shot just 1 of 6 from 3-point range and missed all three of his free-throw attempts.

Thomas has struggled repeatedly against SU. In the team’s first meeting this year, a 70-61 Notre Dame loss, Thomas finished 1-of-14 and scored just four points.

‘We really did a good job with their 3-point shooters,’ Boeheim said. ‘We did a tremendous job with them on Thomas. We’ve had two games in a row where we’ve held him in check and he’s a really good player.’

While the record-setting crowd of 33,199 certainly didn’t help the Orange’s play early on, it clearly helped SU and hurt Notre Dame throughout the game. The Fighting Irish committed two 35-second shot clock violations and Quinn committed a five-second violation for holding the ball too long.

Notre Dame’s Jordan Cornette and head coach Mike Brey each picked up a technical foul, also.

‘It’s strange that they got some 35-second violations,’ SU guard Gerry McNamara said. ‘Notre Dame doesn’t really … that shot’s usually up pretty quickly. But we did some good things. We tried not to let the shooters shoot.’

The win also kept SU’s perfect season at home intact, and extended the Orange’s home-court winning streak to 18. Beginning with Monday’s 7 p.m. game against Connecticut, SU has four more home games. Only once in the Carrier Dome’s history, the 2002-03 national championship season, has the Orange won every home game.

McNamara can’t help but ignore that and a few other parallels between this year and the championship season.

‘I try not to think too much about it,’ McNamara said. ‘There’s so many similar things from my freshman year to this year. Playing Memphis at the Garden, so many strange little things you think about but you don’t want to think about. I thought about things like that, trying to stay undefeated at home.

‘That’s something we should do. You’re going to have to win at home and if you don’t, you’re going to be in trouble.’

Some creative signs drew attention around the Carrier Dome. One read, ‘Julie Boeheim, Will you marry me?’ One problem: It’s spelled Juli. … After shooting 33.3 percent in the first half, SU shot 57.9 percent in the second half. … Notre Dame didn’t make a free throw in the first half and shot just 35 percent from the free-throw line during the game.

Published on February 6, 2005 at 12:00 pm