Jan. 19, 3:40 p.m. — In the end, it was too much. Three Syracuse starters had four fouls each with eight minutes to go and scoring options were sparse. Jonny Flynn and Scoop Jardine willed the Orange to stay neck-and-neck with No. 25 Villanova, but that was all the freshman backcourt could do.

Syracuse’s best scorer, Donte Greene, mired in foul trouble all game, could only bang his hands on the court as he laid in a tangled heap, having committed his fifth foul with 5:25 left in the game. There was nothing he could do.

The home court advantage that so many Big East teams have enjoyed during the early conference season was gone.

Syracuse could not overcome its foul trouble as Villanova recovered from a poor-shooting first half to down the Orange, 81-71, Saturday at the Carrier Dome in front of 26,494, the largest on-campus crowd in the NCAA this season.

Now Syracuse (13-6, 3-3 Big East) faces a daunting trip to Big East leader, No. 5 Georgetown, on Monday night (7 p.m., ESPN).

Villanova (13-3, 3-2) star guard Scottie Reynolds scored 25 points – 16 in the second half. The final score could have been worse – the Wildcats missed 13 free throws.

Flynn and Jardine combined for 38 points, but it was not enough to overcome the lack of production from Greene and starting center Arinze Onuaku. Greene scored 12 points, while Onuaku had 10. The duo averaged 32.6 points combined in conference play before Saturday.

‘We’re on a fine line,’ Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘We can’t afford to lose either guy. We’ve got to avoid foul trouble.’

Injuries and defections have depleted Syracuse’s normal rotation to seven players. By the time the final horn sounded, the Orange had two players foul out (Greene and Jardine), and three players with four fouls each (Onuaku, Paul Harris and Rick Jackson).

Syracuse doesn’t have the depth to play games in foul trouble. And it doesn’t have the offense to make up for not having Greene and Onuaku.

‘(Losing) one of them is tough enough,’ Flynn said. ‘When you have both of your horses down there in foul trouble, it almost makes things – you don’t want to say impossible – but it makes it so hard to keep up the intensity.’

Syracuse saw a four-point halftime lead disappear in less than three minutes. Then Greene was whistled for his fourth foul with 17:04 left.

Greene and Onuaku re-entered the game with 9:27 left and Syracuse down, 57-53. Instantly, the 6-foot-11 freshman Greene tried to carry the Orange. On SU’s next possession, he scooped inside for a lay-up to make it a two-point game. A minute later, he drilled a jumper that kept the Villanova lead at three.

And when Reynolds had his fast-break lay-up swatted away emphatically by Harris, Greene was fouled inside and made both of his free throws to keep SU within four. It was a four-point swing that had everyone in the Dome thinking comeback.

‘The tempo was definitely getting up to where it needed to be at,’ Greene said. ‘Everything was coming toward our side and my fifth foul killed us.’

Greene was caught underneath as Antonio Pena drove to the net. Greene thought it was a charge. The referees called the block on Greene and he sat on the floor as a symbol of protest. He also claimed his fourth foul should have never been whistled for.

‘You gotta play through that,’ Greene said. ‘This is the Big East, man. We’re not playing in the WAC, or something. This is a tough conference. You can’t call terrible calls like that.’

Without two of Syracuse’s best scoring options, Flynn was forced to make the plays. He finished the first half making four of his last five shots, but shot only 2-for-9 in the second half. When Flynn hit a jumper to cut the Villanova lead to 53-51 with 11:39 remaining, Wildcats head coach Jay Wright yelled first at his bench and then at his players coming off the court for a media timeout.

Villanova used double teams on Flynn after that to limit the freshman guard, who was effectively Syracuse’s lone consistent scoring option because of the fouls.

‘We just have to learn how to not foul people,’ Flynn said. ‘Some of the fouls, we do our little cheap thing, when we miss a shot and just grab somebody else. Fouls like that add up in the end and came back and bit us.’

After Villanova jumped out to a 10-3 lead at the first TV timeout, the Wildcats struggled to score points. Villanova shooters were 9-for-31 from the field (29 percent) in the first half, mostly because the 3-point shot wouldn’t fall. In the second half, that changed. Villanova shot 51.9 percent from the field and 4-of-7 from deep.

With the trip to Georgetown looming, Syracuse knows now it will have to steal a road game if it is to finish at least .500 in the conference.

Said Boeheim: ‘It’s a tremendous challenge for us and we have one day to get ready for it.’

Published on January 20, 2008 at 12:00 pm