Seven minutes into the game, Jim Boeheim decided he saw enough of the Syracuse 2-3 zone defense against the sizzling 3-point shooting of Notre Dame.

After he called timeout at 13:03, with the Orange trailing 25-15, SU switched to man-to-man defense in an attempt to surrender fewer open looks on the perimeter.

In the next three minutes, Syracuse went on an 11-3 run to close the Irish lead to two points, 28-26, emphatically capped by a Demetris Nichols 3-pointer at 10:34.

That was as close as the Orange came Tuesday night. Turns out, the man-to-man was no match for the Irish either.

‘There’s no excuse for the level of defense we played in the first half tonight,’ Boeheim said. ‘Really, I’d like to give Notre Dame credit. They are a good offensive team, but your guys who can shoot, if they’re open, they’re gonna make shots.’

Notre Dame finished the first half on a 33-16 run to take a 19-point halftime lead, and it didn’t matter what defensive scheme SU threw at the Irish shooters. They simply made their shots en route to an impressive 12-point win.

The Irish shot an astounding 10-of-17 from beyond the arc in the first half. Coming off screens, the ND shooters generally found uncontested looks and buried them with frequency.

‘We made a lot of mental mistakes,’ SU forward Terrence Roberts said. ‘We fell asleep off a lot of screens and that’s what really killed us.’

After making 10 3-pointers in the first, the Irish didn’t even need to take shots from beyond the arc in the second half. They made 1-of-6, and only 7-of-21 overall from the field after halftime. But the first half was plenty enough for the Irish to emerge victorious.

It was the first time since Feb. 15, 1992, Syracuse allowed an opponent to score more than 100 points at the Carrier Dome. Coincidentally, that opponent was Notre Dame, who defeated Syracuse, 101-98.

In the zone defense, SU was beat because of Notre Dame’s exemplary passing skills and ability to always find the open man. Normally in the zone defense, the hole is in the corner, and Notre Dame was able to exploit it.

‘They haven’t been successful against the zone but they’re better attacking it and they’ve been shooting the ball,’ Boeheim said. ‘The time we did try to play zone, the four or five times we played zone, they scored. The zone was not going to be a winner tonight.’

Still, Boeheim said after the game the zone defense likely gave SU a better chance to win.

‘Certainly, we probably would have done better if we stayed all zone,’ Boeheim said, ‘but we would have been behind and you would always look back and say, ‘What if you played man-to-man?’ and that’s what everybody likes to do anyways.’

Though Boeheim didn’t switch to the man defense to simply appease his critics, the zone defense has kept Syracuse afloat in most games, including the team’s previous two losses at St. John’s and Louisville.

Coming into Tuesday night’s contest, Syracuse was fifth in the Big East in 3-point field goal percentage defense at 31.2 percent. That, Boeheim said, is because of the zone.

‘The reason we were in the Louisville game, the reason we were in the St. John’s game was because we played zone,’ Boeheim said. ‘I don’t think people have a comprehension of that. They think if we play man-to-man, we’re going to win those games. In reality, if we play man we probably would have been beaten by 25. At least by playing zone, we gave ourselves a chance to win.’

The only time Syracuse has been forced to use man-to-man exclusively was against Villanova, one of the season’s best all-around efforts.

Against the Wildcats, the Orange man defense held Villanova’s top two outside scorers, Scottie Reynolds and Mike Nardi, to 4-of-20 from beyond the arc, combined.

Tuesday night, Notre Dame just had too many options from deep.

‘We were just hoping that some of the shots they weren’t going to knock down because we can’t stop all their shots and open looks,’ Andy Rautins said. ‘They were on point tonight, they were hitting everything.’

With Roberts, Darryl Watkins and Matt Gorman in limbo because of the shooters and the inside presence of the Irish, Syracuse could never get situated in a defensive scheme that worked in the first half, and much of the second – the difference in the game.

‘It hasn’t been our defense in those two games,’ Boeheim said, ‘but it was our defense tonight.’

Published on January 30, 2007 at 12:00 pm