Syracuse resume complete
NEW YORK -- Syracuse hadn't won a Big East tournament since 1992? Sure coulda fooled me.
Somehow it's in my head that the Orange are always contending for the Big East tournament championship. But, no, even when they won the national championship two years ago, they lost in the semifinals here in New York. There's been a little hole in the resume.
Well, they've got one now, and it was a pretty convincing triumph. They stomped all over Rutgers Thursday (81-57), they put the wood to UConn Friday (don't be fooled by the 67-63 final score), and they had their way with game West Virginia last night, moving to an 18-point lead before walking off with a 68-59 victory. The tournament performance just looked, well, appropriate.
"To win this thing is a tremendous accomplishment," said coach Jim Boeheim. "I'm really happy for them."
Does anything ever change up there in the Land That Never Sees The Sun? Year after year after year after year Jim Boeheim wins his 20-plus games and goes to the NCAA Tournament. As we've already noted, every once in a while they even win the whole thing. That, of course, remains the primary goal for a team in Syracuse's class, but no one ever wishes away an opportunity to cart home another nice trophy.
"It means a lot," said tourney MVP Hakim Warrick, whose last-second blocked shot preserved the aforementioned national title. "I realized we had never even made it to the finals. To win one Big East tournament is really important to us."
The record book will show that last night's game was for the championship, but the reality was that Syracuse won the 2005 Big East title Friday when it played an absolutely ferocious first half against UConn, a team that had blasted the Orange by an 88-70 score in Storrs six nights earlier. The story behind the story was that Boeheim was less than enthralled with his team's effort that night, and he let the team know how he felt in the locker room. There was no guarantee his club would be playing the Huskies at Madison Square Garden, but the squad was primed for a bit of revenge, just in case.
"The intensity of that first half began in that locker room a week ago," confided someone in a position to know.
An intense Syracuse squad is a fearsome fighting machine, because we are talking about some serious athletes here. Syracuse made its famed 2-3 zone look like a 2-3-3 zone in the first half of that UConn game. The Huskies were held to 8-for-33 shooting and a Syracuse defender seemed to have his hands on just about every other pass. And it goes without saying that every UConn shot was contested.
Foremost among the Syracuse players is Warrick, who really has no serious competition for the honor of being the best senior in the country. The 6-foot-10-inch frontcourt monster from Philadelphia had game highs in points (20) and rebounds (13) to give himself a double-double in all three tournament games. Once strictly a dunking machine, Warrick has broadened his repertoire significantly. He is able to put the ball on the floor and he now even steps out occasionally to shoot a three. Given his extraordinary quickness and body control -- he loves spinning maneuvers -- he is a major handful for defenders.
Then throw in his menacing defense and his steady rebounding. I mean, come on. It's not hardly fair to be that good.
Warrick was the league's regular-season MVP and he was likewise a very easy MVP selection here. The choice certainly made sense to Boeheim.
"I think he played like the best player in the league," Boeheim noted.
Anyone who hasn't seen the Orange in, oh, a week, would be a bit surprised at what they've become. Forget that loss at BC on Feb. 19. Forget, too, that March 5 UConn game. Syracuse has a different look now. A bigger look, to be specific.
The 'Cuse has taken off since Boeheim decided to insert 6-9 sophomore Terrence Roberts into the starting lineup. The high flyer has proven to be a nice inside complement to Warrick. Rebounding had been a problem, as anyone who saw BC control the boards against the Orange knows. Rebounding was not a problem this week.
Another big factor last evening was the play of 6-5 senior Josh Pace. The smooth southpaw scored 13 points last night on 6-for-9 shooting, and he did it with an assortment of leaners and floaters in the middle of the lane.
"When he gets in there," said Boeheim, "we win."
That's succinct enough.
Boeheim wouldn't be Boeheim if he didn't temper his enthusiasm over the victory. Yes, he said, it was nice to win. But he intimated all he really was looking for when he came here was to get to the semis, if only to keep the Syracuse fans off his back for another day or two. He has bigger things on his mind.
"My mind-set is that the only thing that matters in college basketball is next week," he said. "Maybe that shouldn't be my mind-set. I don't know."
He does know, you know. He means what he says. He's the one who's created the Syracuse monster. He's the one with the 703 career victories. He's the one who has made the Carrier Dome phenomenon one of the great athletic stories of our time. He's the one who has planted the idea in the heads of everyone up there in the Land That Never Sees The Sun that a national championship is a reasonable annual goal. So, sure, he is thinking more about where he'll be at this time next week than about what just took place here in Madison Square Garden.
"I think we're there," he said. "A week or two ago, people were asking, `When are you going to get there?' I think we're here now. We just have to stay there."
In the meantime, they can clear out a space up there in the Land That Never Sees The Sun for a fourth Big East championship trophy. Either that, or put it in Coach Boeheim's office and use it as a doorstop.
Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is ryan@globe.com.
