NEW YORK – Opponents don’t often play zone defense against Syracuse. Not with sharpshooters Jonny Flynn, Eric Devendorf and Andy Rautins manning the perimeter, anxious to fire away from 3-point range. So all season long, the Orange has faced man-to-man almost exclusively.

Apparently, somebody forgot to send Seton Hall the memo Wednesday in the second round of the Big East tournament.

The Pirates settled into a 2-3 zone the entire game. The result: a dominant 89-74 Syracuse victory, with the trio of Flynn, Devendorf and Rautins combining to shoot 9-of-18 from deep. The Orange will play No. 3 Connecticut in the quarterfinals Thursday at 9 p.m.

From Seton Hall’s first defensive possession Wednesday, the Syracuse players started salivating. When asked about the zone in the locker room afterward, even the normally stoic Rautins couldn’t contain a giant grin from creeping across his face.

‘Oh man. Your eyes just light up,’ Rautins said.

As well as the Orange shot against the Pirates’ loose zone, it passed the ball even better. Syracuse tied a Big East tournament record set by Georgetown in 1985 with 30 assists, led by Flynn with 11. In his postgame press conference, SU head coach Jim Boeheim quipped that Kristof Ongenaet’s career-high seven assists were more than he had all season (he had 27 entering the night).

‘It was beautiful,’ said Rautins, who scored 11 points and grabbed a team-high seven rebounds. ‘When we share the ball like that and we’re unselfish, we’re a tough team to beat. I don’t think there are many teams who can beat us when we do that.’

Syracuse came out early looking to feed the post to its big men, using a high-low game between Flynn and center Arinze Onuaku. With that strategy, the Orange had 22 first-half points in the paint, and big men Onuaku, Ongenaet and forward Rick Jackson combined for 15 of SU’s 36 points.

Since the Orange played so well down-low early on, the Pirates had no choice but to pack in the zone, hoping to stop the lob pass into the post. That opened up the 3-point arc after halftime, when Syracuse exploded for 53 points and shot 7-of-13 from deep. Devendorf alone hit five 3’s and scored all 19 of his points in the second half. Rautins called SU’s high-low presence in the first half the key to the game.

Throughout the second half, Seton Hall double-teamed the big men when they caught the ball on the block and they managed to kick it out to open shooters around the perimeter. On Wednesday, they didn’t miss very often.

‘Against the zone, it’s a one-two punch,’ said Onuaku, who finished with 15 points and six boards. ‘We got shooters on the outside, big men who can finish on the inside. When we see zone, we just get to the open spot, and we made the shots.’

Perhaps Syracuse’s success in the zone shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. After all, the SU program has specialized in the 2-3 for 33 years under Boeheim, who is personally associated with zone defense. To Boeheim, SU had no excuse for not having its way against the zone.

‘We don’t see that much zone,’ Boeheim said. ‘We do see it in practice every day, so we should be able to play against it.’

The players echoed their coach’s sentiments. All that work against the zone day after day in practice finally paid off in one of the biggest games of the season. As far as they are concerned, opponents can try zone all they want moving forward, starting with the Huskies Thursday night.

‘We see zone all the time in practice. We know the soft spots of the zone,’ Flynn said. ‘When we zone, it’s like kid in the candy store. Our eyes get big. We know exactly what we need to do to beat it.’

jediamon@syr.edu

Published on March 11, 2009 at 12:00 pm