Brandon Triche and his teammates emerged from the locker room with a clear game plan. Cincinnati’s Dion Dixon had drilled four of his team’s nine first half 3-pointers, which was the sole reason Syracuse was barely clinging to a four-point halftime advantage.

The plan was to simply get out on Dixon and force Cincy’s shooters to fire away from NBA-range if they intended to bust SU’s 2-3 zone. With that in mind, SU forward James Southerland swatted away Dixon’s first shot of the second half, leading to a Triche jumper on the other end and the first of 16 consecutive points to start the half.

Like clockwork and behind its latest second half rally No. 4 Syracuse (18-0, 5-0 Big East) furthered its unbeaten mark, putting away No. 25 Cincinnati (16-2, 3-2 Big East), 67-52, in front of the largest crowd of the season inside the Carrier Dome — and the largest crowd in college basketball this season. Within minutes following Triche’s bucket, SU had raced to a double-digit lead it would not relinquish with 24,338 cheering the Orange on.

‘We’re a much better team in the second half because we tend to adjust to what they’re doing,’ Triche said. ‘If they’re making a lot of 3s, we make sure we get out to their shooters. Once we stop their game plan, that’s when we go on our runs.’

Runs to start each half proved to be the biggest difference for the Orange, who also reeled off an 18-3 run to start the game. Keeping Cincy in it was a run of its own late in the first half. Behind Dixon’s hot hand, the Bearcats scorched the Orange from behind the arc, leading to a 25-15 run.

‘You can’t win these type of games if you get down 16 in the Carrier Dome,’ Cincinnati head coach Mick Cronin said. ‘It’s too much. They’re too good of a team.

‘In the beginning of the game and the beginning of the second half, both those five minute stretches beat us today.’

The win sets up a showdown between top-five teams when the Orange travels to No. 5 Pittsburgh for a nationally televised game Monday.

To enter that game unscathed, SU was forced to keep imposing its will on a Bearcats squad that seemed up to the challenge for at least the first half.

But when the 3s weren’t falling for UC, taking it inside did no good, either. In the end, the Bearcats managed just 6-of-23 from inside the arc in the second half and couldn’t put enough points on the board.

‘It usually takes us one half, if someone is having success, to figure out what they’re doing,’ Triche said. ‘In the first half, nine out of their 10 field goals were 3-pointers, so we knew that if we stopped them from shooting the 3-pointer, they were going to struggle. They did, and that’s how we went on that 16-0 run.’

Leading scorer Kris Joseph stayed inside the locker room for the entirety of the second half after hitting his head on a hard fall, but it didn’t matter. With each basket of his team’s run, the momentum multiplied in favor of SU. Fab Melo had arguably his best game in a Syracuse uniform, as did the Syracuse bench, collectively.

After the game, Boeheim said Joseph was ‘unlikely’ to play Monday at Pittsburgh.

‘Kris went down hard,’ he said. ‘I don’t have any idea what’s going on. We won’t know anything for sure. It’s obviously unlikely he won’t be able to turn around. He got banged pretty good when he hit the floor.’

But keyed by the impressive defensive effort that kept the Bearcats scoreless for more than six minutes, Syracuse showed off its own ability on offense with an inside-outside scoring combination.

And the surge couldn’t have come at a better moment. Putting in shot after shot and holding the Bearcats scoreless, the Orange took what was a very close game at halftime and put it to bed at the outset of the second half.

With one of six games against ranked Big East teams in the books and with Pitt up next Boeheim has seen the Jekyll and Hyde of his team. If Saturday’s second-half performance of near offensive perfection can carry over to Monday, the head coach would certainly be pleased.

Said Boeheim of the second half run: ‘(That’s) as well as I think we can play offensively.’

aljohn@syr.edu

Published on January 14, 2011 at 12:00 pm