NEW YORK CITY – Turns out this Syracuse men’s basketball team is mortal, after all.

The top-seeded Orangemen lost for the first time in eight games last night, falling, 80-67, to second-seeded Connecticut in front of 19,528 at Madison Square Garden in the Big East Championship semifinals. Having been ousted from the conference tournament, SU will learn Sunday how much the loss hurts its NCAA Tournament seeding.

Connecticut, meanwhile, will face No. 2-seeded Pittsburgh tonight at 8 in the finals. The Panthers downed top-seeded Boston College, 61-48, last night to advance.

‘This was the first game our youth really showed,’ SU head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘We’ll learn from this.’

The Orangemen failed to learn from their regular-season game against the Huskies.

On Feb. 10, Connecticut handed Syracuse its most lopsided loss of the season, 75-61, in Hartford, Conn. The Huskies had four players score in double figures to overcome a then-career-high 29 points from SU freshman Carmelo Anthony.

The same theme developed last night. Again, Anthony scored 29, and again, four Huskies scored in double figures. Rashad Anderson led UConn with 21 points.

Of Syracuse’s 80 shots, Anthony tried 28, hitting nine. He also collected 15 rebounds.

The rest of the Orangemen combined to shoot 14 of 52. Among the worst offenders were guards Gerry McNamara (1 of 7) and Kueth Duany (2 of 10).

Duany, SU’s lone senior, had sparked Syracuse against Georgetown a night earlier, scoring 16 points. But like the rest of the Orangemen, he struggled against a physical UConn defense.

‘We tried to take away everything else,’ Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun said, ‘and do the best we could on Carmelo Anthony.’

Offensively, Connecticut hurried the pace, quickly transitioning Syracuse misses and rarely setting up a half-court offense.

In the first half, the Orangemen’s press slowed the Huskies. But in the second, Connecticut ran through it, posting 24 points in less than nine minutes.

‘They just have good ball-handlers,’ Duany said. ‘It’s tough to press a team that has three guards who can handle the ball.’

‘We tried to be real aggressive pushing the ball up and getting easy baskets,’ UConn guard Taliek Brown said. ‘We tried to not even get in a half court. We figured if we could get easy baskets, why not?’

SU center Jeremy McNeil did his best to limit UConn’s easy baskets, blocking a Big East tournament-record eight shots. But he picked up his fourth foul with 10:59 remaining and had to be removed.

Soon after, the game spiraled out of the Orangemen’s reach, as the Huskies pushed the lead to 66-47 midway through the second half.

‘They didn’t really attack us like we thought they would,’ Brown said. ‘That made it easier.’

It looked like it might not be so easy for the Huskies following a Jekyll-and-Hyde first half that was, for each team, part horror show, part highlight reel. UConn led 36-27 at the break.

The Huskies spurted first, tearing off a 19-4 run that jolted them to a 26-10 advantage. Syracuse scored just one field goal during UConn’s run, an Anthony layup that made the score 16-9.

Anthony tried to take control, attempting 15 first-half shots. But he hit just four for 11 points.

Overall, SU shot 21.4 percent in the first half. For Syracuse, only Anthony converted more than one field goal, as the rest of the Orangemen combined for 5-of-27 shooting.

When SU pressed following a timeout with 7:36 left, though, it threw off the Huskies. McNamara started Syracuse’s retaliation with a steal that led to an Anthony dunk. Two possessions later, McNamara buried a 3-pointer after the Syracuse press forced Connecticut to throw a pass out of bounds.

‘We did as good a job as we could in our press to fight back,’ Boeheim said, ‘but we probably had to expend a lot of energy doing it.’

With 2:38 remaining, the Orangemen had closed the score to 28-24 thanks to a 14-2 run. But UConn responded with a 5-0 spurt to end the half.

‘We’ve got some young guys playing in their first Big East tournament,’ Boeheim said. ‘We didn’t play well either night here. That’s not unusual for a young team.’

Published on March 14, 2003 at 12:00 pm