SOUTH BEND, Ind. — With 3:02 remaining, any doubt was erased from Scoop Jardine’s mind. This was just not Syracuse’s game.

The senior point guard for the Orange sliced down the lane for a right-handed layup in a desperate attempt to keep the team’s perfect season intact. But after careening off the backboard, Jardine’s shot attempt hung on the rim momentarily.

A made shot would have given Jardine a chance for a three-point play to cut the Notre Dame lead to seven. It would have kept some semblance of hope in a game where SU trailed by as many as 18.

Instead, it fell cruelly off the rim, and he made only one free throw.

‘It was one of those type of nights, you knew it,’ Jardine said. ‘That’s what I was thinking in my head. It’s one of those type of nights where it just didn’t drop for me.’

Jardine’s struggles were representative of the entire Syracuse team during Saturday’s 67-58 loss to Notre Dame on the road at the Joyce Center. The Orange (20-1, 7-1 Big East) shot its worst percentage all season — 34 percent — and failed to find any rhythm offensively against a Fighting Irish defense that limited transition opportunities. And on a night in which Notre Dame (12-8, 4-3) was highly efficient, SU simply couldn’t keep up.

Not even three minutes into the game, Syracuse was faced with its largest deficit of the season. Before Saturday, the Orange trailed by eight points on the road at North Carolina State — a game Syracuse rallied back to win.

But after missing three of its first four shots of the game, SU found itself behind 11-2 at the 17:22 mark of the first half. Jardine missed a layup off the opening tip, Kris Joseph missed a makeable short jumper and C.J. Fair couldn’t connect on a contested jumper from the left elbow.

All that coming after a warm-up session in which Dion Waiters said the team was ‘hitting everything.’

‘Coming out for the first half, everybody felt pretty good about shooting,’ Waiters said. ‘Then we get out there, and nothing wanted to fall in the basket. The ball was going in and out.’

Compounding the problem for the Orange was Notre Dame’s ability to limit fast-break points. So many times this year Syracuse has run its opponents out of the gym by forcing turnovers defensively and with superior athleticism at the other end.

And though SU forced 17 turnovers on Saturday, it managed a startling zero fast-break points.

‘Even when we got out, they got back — at least one guy back and we couldn’t convert,’ junior guard Brandon Triche said.

That was the case in the first half when Triche missed a jumper at the 11:42 mark. He snagged a long defensive rebound and raced down court in an attempt to reach the basket on the right side. But standing in his path was Scott Martin, who forced Triche into a contested short jumper — he missed.

Later in the first half, Jardine saw his lob pass to Fair broken up as the sophomore forward was fouled in midair by Martin. A thunderous dunk could have turned the momentum late in the first half with Syracuse trailing 32-16. Instead, Martin’s defense yielded only a split pair of free throws.

‘Opening half I thought we had some good shots, some good looks,’ SU head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘We couldn’t get anything to go down, and when you don’t make anything, it’s very difficult.’

Trailing by double-digits at halftime, the Orange was forced to turn to the perimeter in the second half. A 4-of-13 shooting performance from beyond the arc in the first half became worse in the second: 3-of-10.

Trailing by eight with 2:54 to go, Triche and Waiters began forcing the issue to no avail. The pair missed three consecutive 3s in a span of 1:20 as the undefeated season drifted away.

Waiters missed on a pull-up from just left of the circle. Triche missed from an identical spot on the floor two possessions later. And Waiters missed again from the right side.

‘When you’re making shots, it gets you energized,’ Jardine said. ‘And tonight we didn’t make enough shots.’

So by the time James Southerland finally connected on a 3 with 53 seconds left, cutting the lead to just six, it was too little too late. The highest scoring offense in the Big East had finally stalled.

‘This was an offensive game,’ Boeheim said. ‘We didn’t play very well, and they did.’

mjcohe02@syr.edu 

Published on January 21, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Michael: mjcohe02@syr.edu | @Michael_Cohen13