WASHINGTON – When it was finally over, and he finally could relax, Mike Hopkins took respite on a stool in the visiting team’s locker room. SU’s assistant coach decompressed, eyeballed a stat sheet and it hit.

Offensively, this may have been Syracuse’s best game of the season.

‘To come on the road in this league against a quality opponent like Georgetown – a Top 10-caliber team – is obviously huge,’ SU’s assistant coach said. ‘It says, ‘You guys are for real.”

Four days after collapsing against Louisville, the Orange’s offense recharged in its 75-71 win over Georgetown. With Wes Johnson inching closer to 100 percent, the offense showed no hangover from its uninspired effort against Louisville. For one 30-minute stretch, trapped inside a hostile atmosphere, Syracuse scored at will.

The difference was movement. Syracuse was active every possession and, as a result, made the Hoyas pay.

‘Louisville made us stand still more,’ Jardine said. ‘Today we got a lot of movement. We’ve worked on that in practice. I don’t think you’ll see us stand still like that anymore. Andy hit shots and that got everybody going.’

At the time of Syracuse’s 60-37 lead in the second half, SU was shooting 52 percent from the field (17-of-33) and 95 percent (19-of-20) from the line. The Verizon Center may as well have been the ‘Melo Center.

Keying the turnaround was Johnson. He broke out of a four-game funk with 16 points, eight rebounds and five blocks to build Syracuse’s lead. More importantly, he provided snapshots of his pre-injury explosion.

Before foul trouble reined in his aggressiveness, Johnson was his old self.

With a minute and a half left in the first half, Kris Joseph pulled up for a jumper on the baseline as Johnson anticipated and timed the miss perfectly. Skying in from the top, Johnson grabbed the ball out of midair and hammered it through the hoop. He swung around on the rim, cracked a smile, and the Orange took a 42-26 lead.

Working with trainers regularly, Johnson is still recouping from a nasty head-over-heels spill against Providence and a hand injury against Connecticut. After struggling to even nick the rim in practice the day prior, Johnson also drilled a pair of 3s during Syracuse’s scoring surge.

‘I’m coming along. I’m getting a lot better,’ Johnson said. ‘I should be back fully by our next game.’

At his best, Johnson takes Syracuse’s offense to a new level.

‘This is the first game I felt he’s been himself,’ head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘We’re a different team when he plays like this. Since the fall he has not played well at all. He has been sore and hurt. His body got a little better, and then he hurt his hand. It’s still swollen. He hasn’t been able to practice as much as he needs to.’

Granted, the wheels nearly came off of Syracuse’s offense. In foul trouble, Rick Jackson and Arinze Onuaku were rendered to a cruel game of musical chairs on the bench. The lack of an inside presence coincided with a cold streak from outside.

And the Hoyas muscled their way back into the game.

It wasn’t a shock, of course. Wes Johnson had a feeling this would happen, that Georgetown would somehow scratch and claw back into the game. His teammates did, too. But nobody dared to say anything.

‘We knew they were going to come back with a vengeance,’ Johnson said. ‘We knew they had a roll in them.’

Only it wasn’t enough. Lost in the late-game headache of fouls was the fact that Syracuse’s offense dominated arguably the best defense in the Big East – in their building. With Johnson getting healthier and March right around the corner, that’s a good sign for the Orange.

‘We played tremendously for 32 minutes,’ Boeheim said. ‘We played about as good as we can play.’

thdunne@syr.edu

Published on February 21, 2010 at 12:00 pm