Syracuse gets its first Big East win over a ranked opponent in its last regular season game, an overtime victory at #15 Marquette on their senior night. The win clinches the #6 seed for the Cuse thanks to Providence's loss on Thursday, giving us a 7 pm game on Wednesday in the 2nd round of the Big East tournament, against the winner of the 11/14 game (I'm not sure who's playing in that game yet). The Orange end up 23-8 and 11-7 in conference as the regular season comes to an end, closing with an impressive four game winning streak to salvage what was in late February a suddenly disappointing year, flirting with disaster. And they won tonight mostly without the services of Arinze Onuaku, who was in foul trouble and awful in the first half and only had a couple sporadic stretches of effectiveness in the second half. I thought they could not win a big game without AO, but Rick Jackson played great in his place, Jonny Flynn played like a superstar in the 2nd half, and Andy Rautins (shown, right) lit up the scoring in the overtime to carry us to victory.
The Orange started off lousy and disoriented and it looked for the first 10 minutes like this would be a standard Big East loss against a quality opponent, but they fought back to close to within 1 at halftime and came out storming to start the second half. They built a 10-point lead with less than 8 minutes to go before Marquette's defense clamped down and got back-to-back steals on a full-court press that closed the game to 1 with a few minutes to play. The Orange offense fell flat, Marquette continued on a 10-0 run and regained the lead 70-67 with a minute and a half left. Then, with the score 70-69, Jonny Flynn -- who played spectacularly late in this contest after sleeping through the first half -- made an amazing interception steal, got the layup and foul and we had a 72-70 lead with less than a minute to play. Marquette's own superstar Jerel McNeal followed with a deep three-pointer with Jonny in his face to take the lead with 16 seconds left. After a time out, Flynn drove the court and found a wide open Jackson under the basket, but Marquette wisely tackled him before he could shoot. No flagrant foul was called in a somewhat shaky but much better than usual refereeing job by the Big East officials, and Jackson -- a 52% foul shooter -- stepped to the line. He caught every piece of the rim on the first shot, but got the "shooter's" roll and it went in. He missed the second, Marquette missed a 3-pointer to win, and we were headed to overtime. I was breathing a sigh of relief (as was Boeheim, visibly), since once we fell down by 3 late in the game, I had no hope we'd come back. That's how down I've been on this team lately, despite the 3-game winning streak against some of the lesser Big East teams.
In overtime, it was the Andy Rautins show. He banged home two 3-pointers, made a spectacular driving layup, and also found Rick Jackson for an easy layup on a great pass. He even had a steal on a rebound of AO's two missed free throws and made the punch back layup. Actually, I think that was in regulation, but who's counting. Flynn was also great in overtime, but he did seem to run out of gas in the last minute, and Boeheim's decision to give him the ball on a clearout with a 3-point lead and 50 seconds to play -- as Boeheim always does even though it's only about 25% successful -- looked questionable when Flynn settled for a deep three that he front rimmed. But Marquette missed an attempted tying three -- against good defense -- before a held ball on the rebound in which Jackson was climbed, tackled, molested, and raped by a Marquette rebounder but no foul was called. Marquette got the ball out of bounds, down by three, 16 to play, but on the inbounds pass, McNeal tried to drive around a pinching Rautins and stepped on the sidelines and the officials called one in our favor finally and to give us the turnover. Flynn made two free throws to stretch it to five and the game ended 86-79 after two more by Rautins. A huge, impressive win by the Orange, even given that Marquette was without star point guard Dominic James. Yes, the Golden Eagles have lost 4 straight now since James went down -- but they were to UConn, Louisville, and Pitt -- and they almost beat the first two on that list. They're still an excellent team with three other senior starters and to win on their home court is a big, big win for the Cuse.
On to Wednesday and the Big East tournament. And regardless of how we do, I can say with convincing authority that for the first time in three years, we will be back in the NCAA tournament. We were robbed two years ago -- even the Big East announcers in today's game (who spent about 95% of their time talking about Marquette on their senior night -- they even took 8 minutes of the first half, during game action!!, to speak with Dominic James on air live) mentioned how Syracuse should have made it two years ago. No one has forgotten. And I haven't forgiven. But now we will finally be able to avenge that disgrace and try to win a couple tournament games. I won't even try to figure out the seeding -- I'm sure it'll be at least two slots lower than we deserve, but if we're higher than an 8, I'll probably be happy. Go ORANGE!
Team Page
Starters
PTS
REB
AST
PF
J. Flynn
24
2
6
1
R. Jackson
17
8
0
4
E. Devendorf
12
5
6
4
P. Harris
9
5
6
1
A. Onuaku
2
8
3
3
Bench
PTS
REB
AST
PF
A. Rautins
20
6
2
4
K. Ongenaet
2
1
0
1
Hope you are back in time Wed. night to watch the game
Posted by: switsky | March 08, 2009 at 09:57 AM
Sweet last minute jump shots. He made serious performance. Keep doing your job in this way. Any news about lockout this season in NBA?
Posted by: olympic games accommodation | October 03, 2011 at 03:29 AM