As Syracuse and Louisville geared up for the Big East championship game on March 14, 2009, their paths to the final couldn’t have been more different.

Syracuse – fresh off the six-overtime marathon against Connecticut and the overtime thriller the next night against West Virginia – was exhausted. Between those two games, the Orange had played 115 minutes in less than 48 hours.

Louisville, on the other hand, had cruised to 18- and 14-point victories over eighth-seeded Providence and fourth-seeded Villanova, respectively.

Still, the Orange (26-9) came out strong out of the gate, and even held an eight-point lead at the half. That’s when fatigue started to set in, and the Cardinals (28-5) used a crushing 21-5 run to open the half, eventually taking control of the game and capturing the Big East crown, 76-66, in front of a crowd of 19,375 at Madison Square Garden.

‘You can’t even describe how good we played down here,’ SU head coach Jim Boeheim said after his team’s loss.

After the game, everyone on the Syracuse side insisted fatigue from those 115 minutes wasn’t a factor.

‘I wasn’t even fatigued,’ Flynn said. ‘I was feeling actually pretty good out on the court today but just made too many mistakes.’

One by one, the Orange dismissed the notion of fatigue. Forward Paul Harris said he wasn’t tired. Andy Rautins didn’t want to make excuses. Kristof Ongenaet said Louisville was simply a better team that night.

But Louisville’s Earl Clark thought differently.

‘You could see in their faces that they were getting tired,’ Clark said. ‘It happened in the middle of the second half when they started making turnovers. They usually don’t do that.’

If SU was worn down from fatigue, Louisville’s press certainly contributed to it. The Orange committed 10 of its 17 turnovers in the second half against Louisville’s press defense, and Louisville recorded 15 steals in the game.

The press was key to the Cardinals’ second-half comeback, and completely shifted momentum to their side.

‘It’s nonstop,’ Flynn said of the press. ‘To put it so you understand it, it’s like being chased by eight pit bulls and you’ve got to keep running for your life.’

Syracuse also looked a bit worn in the second half in the long-range shooting department.

The team struggled from beyond the arc in the second half, going 0-for-8 on 3-point attempts. On one possession, sharpshooters Andy Rautins and Eric Devendorf combined to miss five 3-pointers.

‘There was a point there where we got three, four open looks. You have to make shots against them,’ Boeheim said. ‘You have to make them, and when you don’t, they’re going to score on the other end.’

Flynn was the last piece of the puzzle that seemed to be affected by the two previous nights. He played 67 of 70 minutes against UConn and all 45 against WVU. And he wasn’t his usual self on this night. He scored just 11 points on 5-of-11 shooting and missed both of his 3-point attempts.

Still, he was named the tournament MVP for his overall tournament performance, the first player from a losing team to accomplish the feat since Georgetown’s Victor Page in 1996.

‘I would trade the trophy to win the Big East tournament any day. The team awards are way better,’ Flynn said. ‘I’m just very disappointed.’

Nonetheless, the Orange’s overall tournament performance moved the team from a low seed on the fringe of the NCAA Tournament bubble all the way to a No. 3 seed.

And Boeheim couldn’t have been prouder of his team’s effort.

‘I told our players that we won this thing the last two times we were in the finals,’ Boeheim said. ‘And I’m just as proud or maybe a little bit more proud of what they’ve done this week in New York even though we didn’t win.’

bplogiur@syr.edu

Published on February 11, 2010 at 12:00 pm