PHILADELPHIA – The consensus is clear: Dante Cunningham was a bad matchup for Syracuse.

It was clear on the postgame stat sheet. Cunningham tied a career high with 31 points on 12-of-15 shooting, leading a high-scoring Villanova offense in its 102-85 win over Syracuse Saturday afternoon.

It was clear on the floor of the Wachovia Center, where for two hours Cunningham picked apart multiple Syracuse defensive schemes and personnel matchups in a dominating performance.

It was clear in the words of Syracuse team members after the game, which painted Cunningham as a force it simply couldn’t handle.

‘He’s a real hard matchup because we’ve got two centers, and we have to really take the two centers out of the game if we’re going to play man-to-man,’ SU head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘That’s why we play zone against them.’

With no clear player to match up against Cunningham, Syracuse started the game in its 2-3 zone. But Cunningham still dominated the middle, as his teammates continually fed the ball down low, and the 6-foot-8 forward had his way. He scored 18 points on 7-of-8 shooting, and made all four of his free throws in the first half.

Villanova, meanwhile, jumped out to an immediate lead that reached as much as 21 points in that time.

‘We always do that against the zone,’ Villanova coach Jay Wright said of feeding the ball to Cunningham. ‘Dante is learning how to be a really confident offensive player. In the past we’ve done that, and if he misses one or two he won’t take them anymore. I was really happy he just kept shooting the ball, and that’s been a big part of our development against the zone.’

The Orange changed strategies to start the second half and went with a man-to-man defense. And at first, it worked: Syracuse cut the deficit from 15 to 10 in the first four minutes, while SU forward Kristof Ongenaet held Cunningham to one field goal.

But then the familiar fallacy of the man-defense – foul trouble – reared its head. After collecting one foul in the first half, Ongenaet had picked up his second, third and fourth fouls by the 13:04 mark of the second half. He was forced to sit after his fourth, and the Wildcats went on another run, increasing their lead from 12 points to 18 in less than two minutes.

Ongenaet fouled out with 5:50 left in the game. All five of his fouls were against Cunningham, four of which came during his 10 minutes of second-half playing time.

‘Cunningham was a really bad matchup for us,’ Ongenaet said. ‘I tried to stop him a little bit and it worked, but then we had a problem getting defensive rebounds. So it was just really hard for our bigs to defend their forward. That was a problem for us.’

In the first half, it seemed SU forward Rick Jackson might be able to counteract the numbers that Cunningham was putting up. Jackson scored 12 first-half points of his own to lead Syracuse.

But foul trouble struck Jackson, too. He picked up his fourth less than a minute into the second half, and was out with less than six minutes left. By the end of the game, the SU frontcourt was a shell of what it once was.

‘We need Ricky in the game,’ SU forward Paul Harris said. ‘He picked up his fourth, that kind of forced us to go smaller. We really didn’t have an answer for Cunningham. He lit us up in the zone and the man-to-man.’

For Boeheim, the bottom line was that Cunningham – a slimmer, more mobile player than Jackson or SU center Arinze Onuaku – was something SU did not have the personnel to match up against.

‘We play zone against Villanova because we just have no matchup in man-to-man with Arinze and Ricky,’ Boeheim said. ‘They can’t guard Cunningham. He’s really improved, he’s a tremendous player. He’s a forward. You can’t play him man-to-man with a center.’

kbaustin@syr.edu

Published on February 8, 2009 at 12:00 pm