After Saturday night’s 65-60 loss to Boston College, a reporter asked Syracuse senior Hakim Warrick if the team was down after suffering back-to-back losses for the first time in more than a year.

‘It definitely is,’ Warrick said. ‘Two losses back-to-back. Four of our last six. We definitely have to regroup.’

Regroup is exactly what the Orange will try to do tonight when it hosts St. John’s at the Carrier Dome at 7. Syracuse defeated the Red Storm, 79-65, on Jan. 5 at Madison Square Garden.

Syracuse, down to No. 15 in the latest AP poll, has three regular season games remaining and the Orange hopes to finish strong heading into the Big East tournament. Syracuse is in third place in the conference with a 9-4 record, a half game ahead of Pittsburgh. The Panthers have a game in hand, though, and hold the tiebreaker over Syracuse with two wins over SU.

‘We have to protect our home court,’ Syracuse junior guard Gerry McNamara said. ‘That’s going to be key down the stretch. Get those wins at home and try to steal one at (Connecticut on March 5).’

Said Warrick: ‘You definitely want to go out there and return the favor. Win these next three games and hopefully win the Big East tournament. That’d change the whole season around.’

While Syracuse (22-5) has struggled to play consistently lately, St. John’s entire season has been a struggle to find consistency.

The Red Storm (9-14, 3-10 Big East) ended a four-game losing streak with a 76-67 win over Georgetown on Sunday and also defeated No. 17 North Carolina State, 63-45, in December. Prior to the win over the Hoyas, though, St. John’s had lost seven of eight games, including three loses by a combined 10 points to Notre Dame, Boston College and Pittsburgh.

If Syracuse wants to find a recipe for success, it could look at its first win against the Red Storm when it used a balanced scoring attack – 10 players scored at least a point – to win. As a team, Syracuse shot 56 percent. McNamara and Warrick combined for 41 points, and Josh Pace added 12 points to go along with Louie McCroskey’s 11.

The win over St. John’s was one of Syracuse’s most complete efforts. But lately, finding the same level of play for 40 minutes has been difficult for the Orange.

McCroskey has been angered by the Orange’s play late in games, where Syracuse has struggled to either pull ahead of teams when it leads, or like in the BC game, fail to overtake a lead.

‘We just can’t seem to get better at the right times,’ McCroskey said. ‘I can understand if we just get blown out three times like last year because that means the other team is definitely better than us.’

A few adjustments and Syracuse could have easily won at least a few of those four losses.

Instead, SU has lost four of six and beaten just one ranked team (Villanova) in its past six tries.

‘It was pretty much the same,’ Warrick said of the loss to Boston College. ‘We just didn’t make plays down the stretch.’

Tonight, Warrick and the Orange hope to change that. Another loss would not only give SU a three-game losing streak for the first time since 2002, it might further damage Syracuse’s psyche.

‘We need a win after any loss – you always want to win,’ Pace said. ‘It’s not urgency. But we need to get ourselves going, going into the Big East tournament and going into the NCAAs.’

Published on February 21, 2005 at 12:00 pm