Wes Johnson doesn’t have an explanation for it. While the newly anointed No. 3 basketball team in the country did beat Georgetown and DePaul last week, it found itself trailing by double digits early in the first half of both games.

He just knows it has to change.

‘I just know we really just have to come out and play,’ Johnson said. ‘We can’t really do that the rest of the stretch of the season because it will come back to bite us. It’s starting to come back to bite us, but I think we’ll nip that in the butt real quick.’

Syracuse will look to end its two-game streak of sloppy first halves when it hosts Providence at 7 p.m. tonight in the Carrier Dome. Syracuse will look to win its ninth straight game, including its eighth in the last 10 tries against the Friars.

‘Hopefully, we’ll get by this,’ SU head coach Jim Boeheim said, referring to his team’s offensive struggles against DePaul Saturday. ‘If we play like this, we’ll get beat by 40.’

In its win against No. 7 Georgetown, Syracuse trailed 14-0 minutes into the contest. Saturday, in its win at DePaul, Syracuse trailed 33-15 more than halfway through the first half. Before Monday and Saturday’s contests, Syracuse had only trailed by more than nine twice on the year (a win at Seton Hall and loss versus Pittsburgh).

In both games, the opposing team came out firing and hitting shots as Syracuse’s zone lagged behind. Georgetown hit its first five shots of the game, including four 3-pointers, while DePaul went 8-of-10 from the field to start the game. Both teams passed the ball around the zone to find the open shot and took advantage.

DePaul even pushed the ball inside and had its way with the Orange frontcourt. Syracuse is rarely overmatched inside, but DePaul came out and dominated the paint to grab the early lead.

While Syracuse’s defense clamped down eventually in both games, this could present a problem if the other team has a hot shooting night. Neither Georgetown nor DePaul shot particularly well in either game, which certainly helped the Orange come back against both squads. Still, SU knows it has to amend the slow defensive start.

‘Teams are making shots early, and we aren’t getting to their rebounds or they’re getting second opportunities,’ Kris Joseph said following the win over DePaul. ‘Every possession should be a one-and-done for them, and we weren’t getting on the boards. They were beating us to loose balls, and that’s what we want to do in the following games – get to those loose balls.’

Offensively, the poised play that has been a staple of Syracuse has disappeared as the other teams have built their leads. In both contests, Syracuse turned the ball over in its first few possessions and the other team scored the first points in the game.

Against Georgetown, the Orange eventually was able to find its offensive rhythm after falling behind by 14, but against DePaul, it never came. The players didn’t hit the normal shots they often do, and it carried over for the rest of the game. Had Syracuse played pretty much any other team than DePaul Saturday, it could be 20-2.

The two aspects of SU’s slow start correlate with each other. With a better defensive effort early, Syracuse can get out and run the floor, which allows it to excel in its half-court game. That ended up making the difference in the DePaul game to Johnson.

‘We made plays and really just pressured them a lot, and they got out of sync a lot,’ Johnson said. ‘I think we really go to pressure the ball and tried to take (Will) Walker out of the game and force him to make tough shots. After that, I think we got the rebounds and we pushed it in transition and got easy buckets.’

Providence put up 100 points on the Orange last year, which surely will be on the players’ minds coming into this game. Syracuse can’t afford to get out to a slow start against a team desperate for a win to boost its NCAA Tournament resume.

It would help, though, if there were a concrete consensus on what has plagued the team.

‘I don’t know (why we struggled again). We come out pretty jacked up and at a high level,’ shooting guard Andy Rautins said after DePaul. ‘They get good looks at the basket and we have to limit their good looks, get a hand out and wall up inside – just come out more aggressive, bottom line.’

mrehalt@syr.edu

Published on February 1, 2010 at 12:00 pm