LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Hands on his hips, Scoop Jardine looked bewildered.

Louisville had just capped a furious first-half run with another 3-pointer. This one, from Preston Knowles, came from about 25 feet as the buzzer sounded. And Jardine had a hand in his face.

‘We let their best two shooters get hot,’ Jardine said of the Cardinals’ Knowles and Kyle Kuric. ‘That was the game.’

So Jardine expressed the 21-4 Cardinals run in the simplest of ways: hands on his hips. Trailing by seven at one point in the first half, No. 16 Louisville (19-6, 8-4 Big East) used that run to take a 10-point cushion into halftime. And in a game of seismic shifts and turns, No. 12 Syracuse (20-6, 7-6) couldn’t recover inside the KFC Yum! Center, falling 73-69 to the Cardinals in front of 22,755.

It was the second straight loss for the Orange and sixth in its last eight games. And it was Syracuse’s seventh consecutive defeat at the hands of the Cardinals. This one came as the result of a stunning turn of events — one Syracuse almost answered with a dramatic run of its own late in the game.

‘We had a bad end to the first half,’ SU head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘We didn’t find their shooters.’

That bad end started after the Orange built a comfortable 26-19 lead with just more than five minutes remaining in the first half. Then came the steady Louisville comeback, led by center Terrence Jennings. Then came the barrage of 3-pointers that would end in a 19-point swing in a little more than five minutes.

With six quick points from Jennings and a free throw by Preston Knowles, Louisville tied the score at 26-26 in two minutes. Then, a Knowles 3. Then, another. Then, a Kuric 3-pointer after a kicked ball went right into his arms.

In four minutes, Louisville now had a seven-point cushion. And the Cardinals weren’t done. After Jardine got into the lane for an easy, almost uncontested layup, Knowles raced down the floor. He pulled up with fewer than two seconds left on the clock and hit the 3-pointer that left Jardine stunned.

‘We dug ourselves into a hole when we basically had the game won in the first half,’ Jardine said. ‘We can’t get behind to Louisville, can’t get behind 10 points going into halftime. They shoot too well.’

And Louisville took that momentum and rode it into the second half, shooting just as well. Jennings opened the half with seven of Louisville’s first nine points. And a little later, two 3-pointers from Knowles and Kuric gave the Cardinals a 20-point lead.

Spanning 9:30 of game time, the finishing touch on a 38-11 Louisville run was that 3 from Kuric. At one point, the Cardinals scored on 15 consecutive possessions. Kuric had 23 points on 9-of-15 shooting, and Knowles finished with 22 on 7-of-14.

‘The objective was to not let them shoot,’ SU guard Brandon Triche said. ‘It was difficult for us. … They made us move as guards. They penetrated, and they sucked us in, and then they spread it out really well.

‘Sometimes, we went to the wrong shooter. We didn’t go to Kuric. We probably went to Chris Smith or the other guys and left one of their best shooters open. And they knocked them down.’

Syracuse nearly shocked an entire arena with what would ensue in the next eight-plus minutes. Starting with a Rick Jackson layup and ending with one from Triche, SU went on a 14-2 run to close a once 15-point gap to just three.

But the deficit was too much to overcome. Louisville secured the game by making free throws. Peyton Siva ended the game on the line. After he missed the second free-throw attempt, C.J. Fair’s errant pass to Jardine left the point guard in resignation. Hands on the ground, head down, as the clock expired.

In the Syracuse locker room after the game, Jardine displayed a similar emotion. Sunk in his locker, defeated, resigned and trying to look ahead. In a game of whirlwind emotions and twists, SU fell just short.

‘We can’t kill ourselves like that in the beginning of the game,’ Jardine said. ‘We have to come out ready. We have to match teams’ toughness. If we don’t do that, we’re not going to win any games in the Big East.’

bplogiur@syr.edu

Published on February 11, 2011 at 12:00 pm