Call it blissful ignorance, or maybe just youthful exuberance. But either way, Wes Johnson is still positive his roommate, Kris Joseph, knows what he did was against the rules.

With a little more than 12 minutes remaining in the second half Saturday, Syracuse needed something big. Something to swing the momentum and put a pesky Marquette team out of contention for good. Joseph saw this opportunity in a Jimmy Butler jump shot.

Surging over from the weak side, Joseph swatted the jumper away from the rim as his teammates waited for the impending whistle to signal goaltending — but nothing ever came. In transition, Johnson rocketed a pass down low to a driving Arinze Onuaku for the jam. The crowd went wild. Marquette retreated into a shell and fell victim to a devastating Orange run to follow.

No foul, no harm.

‘I mean, he came out of nowhere and blocked it, and I was like ‘Whoa,” Johnson said. ‘And I thought the ref was going to blow it but he didn’t, so good block.’

Regardless of its legality, Syracuse used the big play to its advantage in the second half in a 76-71 victory over Marquette. In a game where the Golden Eagles never seemed to go away, the No. 5 Orange (19-1, 6-1 Big East) buckled down in a strong second to grind out yet another victory.

The win is the Orange’s sixth straight since a Jan. 2 loss to Pittsburgh. Five of those six wins have come against Big East opponents.

‘We played probably the best basketball offensively and defensively we’ve played all year for that 15 or 16 minutes in the second half,’ Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said.

In the early going, Marquette was doing everything in its power to throw a spoke in Syracuse’s methodical run-and-gun game plan. Playing a triangle-and-two defense, the Golden Eagles draped defenders all over Johnson and Andy Rautins, SU’s two leading scorers.

The pressure forced errant turnovers — 12 in all for the half — and rendered Rautins scoreless for the game.

‘You make a couple mistakes, and all of a sudden you’re down 5-0,’ Boeheim said. ‘It took us almost the entire half to dig out of that.’

Meanwhile, Maurice Acker and Darius Johnson-Odom dropped 3-pointer after 3-pointer over the SU zone, combining for 19 total points on 5-of-9 shooting from long distance in the first half. Golden Eagles’ versatile forward Lazar Hayward forced mismatches both inside and out, chipping in seven points and four boards before the break to force a 34-34 tie heading into halftime.

But like it had done many times before, SU responded in the second half and flexed its muscles. The triangle-and-two became a non-issue as big men Rick Jackson and Arinze Onuaku — who each scored in double figures — found a way to exploit it. The quirky defense left the big men in one-on-one situations and allowed them to impose a drive-and-dish game against their undersized defenders.

‘You have to make adjustments,’ Rautins said. ‘By halftime we equaled up the score and we made adjustments, and for the first 15 minutes of the second half we played great basketball in the half-court set and our defense was great.’

With Marquette reeling and trying to reconfigure its defense, Syracuse delivered blow after blow. At the 11:37 mark, Onuaku grabbed the rebound and hit Joseph near half court. Just two dribbles later, Joseph found a streaking Johnson for the alley-oop.

A few possessions later, Scoop Jardine hit Joseph for a huge dunk that put the Orange up by 14 with seven minutes to play. Another team had devised a defensive game plan to take out the Orange, and another plan had all but failed.

‘There was numerous plays in the second half that got the crowd into it,’ Rautins said. ‘You know, we fed off that energy.’

Save for a minor hiccup when facing Marquette’s full-court press, which allowed the Golden Eagles to get back within five, the Orange was able to coast from its second-half run.

Garnering momentum out of nowhere and using it to propel its frantic offense has become a specialty for the Orange this year. Strong second halves after difficult openings have become all but inevitable.

Even if it means going the extra mile to manufacture that momentum, as Joseph did, because, as Wes said, it wasn’t just a happy accident.

‘Nah,’ Johnson said laughing. ‘He knows what happened.’

ctorr@syr.edu

Published on January 24, 2010 at 12:00 pm