As Syracuse clawed back from a double-digit deficit, Dion Waiters drove down into the offensive end of the court with a chance to cut the Villanova lead to five.

Instead of looking to create, though, he took the ball into the teeth of the Wildcats’ defense and forced a shot. Rick Jackson got the offensive rebound but promptly turned the ball over. And on the resulting trip down the court for Villanova, Corey Stokes made Waiters pay for rushing his shot. He drained a 3-pointer, one of 11 triples on the day for the Wildcats, and they were back to a double-digit lead.

It was a chain of events that typified the day for Syracuse.

‘They hit a lot of shots, man,’ Waiters said. ‘There’s not much else I can say about that.’

A Villanova (17-2, 5-1 Big East) 3-point shooting clinic, sprinkled with some costly Orange (18-2, 5-2) mistakes, led the No. 7 Wildcats to an 83-72 victory before 33,736 inside the Carrier Dome — the second-largest on-campus crowd in college basketball history.

It is Syracuse’s second consecutive conference loss after winning five in a row to open Big East play. And after the game, SU head coach Jim Boeheim assessed the reality of his team’s current situation. An opinion the head coach held at the beginning of the season that, after two losses in six days to two Top 10 teams, Boeheim said is now a fact.

‘I think they’re a top-five or top-six team in the country,’ Boeheim said of Villanova, ‘and right now, we’re not. We played two teams this week (that) I think are legitimate top-five or six teams in the country, and we weren’t good enough.’

The latest loss for SU came as Villanova jumped out to a double-digit first-half lead behind that shooting clinic led by sophomore guard Maalik Wayns. He hit 6-of-7 shots en route to 17 first-half points.

Syracuse’s 2-3 zone — designed to force opponents into taking perimeter shots — was beaten at its own game. Wayns, a 20 percent 3-point shooter on the season coming into the game, went 3-of-4 from beyond the arc. Fellow guard Corey Fisher, who came in shooting 32.1 percent from 3-point range, made all three of his first-half 3-pointers against the No. 3 team in the nation.

That happened, Boeheim said, because the Syracuse defense left the Wildcats with too many open shots. Syracuse point guard Scoop Jardine said that although he thought SU contested shots, its intensity wasn’t the same for a team that came into the game allowing its opponents to shoot 28.4 percent from beyond the arc.

‘Our defensive energy wasn’t there,’ Jardine said. ‘We were there contesting the 3s, but there’s a difference when you’re going out there with a high hand and when you’re moving them off their spot. That’s a different shot.’

Villanova posted a whopping 40 first-half points against an Orange defense that allows 60.1 points per game to its opponents, and SU found itself down 11.

The Wildcats cooled off in the second, hitting only 3-of-11 from 3-point territory. Two in a row from Stokes made Jardine throw up his hands, but SU began to creep back as the Wildcats couldn’t hit with nearly the same efficiency down the stretch.

‘Wayns is a (20) percent 3-point shooter. He made his first 3,’ Boeheim said. ‘Sometimes that happens. After we started guarding them a bit better, those other guys went (0-for-5) in the second half. Except Stokes.’

As Villanova struggled relative to the first half, Kris Joseph — back from the concussion that forced him to miss Monday’s game at Pittsburgh — led the Orange’s comeback attempt. Sixteen of his game-high 23 points came in the second half.

But it wasn’t enough. Villanova thwarted both SU second-half rallies. The first came as Stokes hit the 3. The last came as SU tried to complete a furious comeback from 13 down with a little more than five minutes to play.

At one point, a Joseph dunk brought Syracuse back to within four at 69-65. But Brandon Triche airballed a 3 with a chance to cut the lead to three, and two Wildcat free throws put the game nearly out of reach at 73-65.

And afterward, Triche realized why SU couldn’t mount a complete comeback: the one adjustment it needed came 20 minutes too late.

Said Triche: ‘It took us a whole half to be able to stop Villanova from shooting the 3.’

bplogiur@syr.edu

Published on January 21, 2011 at 12:00 pm