MIAMI – Syracuse watched its lead, which had been pushed to as much as 15, deflate to just four with 6:35 remaining in Sunday’s second-round NCAA Tournament game. The Orange seemed unable to stop the ever-shrinking cushion that Arizona State continued to cut into. Three ASU buckets and two timeouts had passed since Syracuse’s last score, and the team’s Sweet 16 hopes seemed to be hanging in the balance.

Cue Andy Rautins.

The shooting guard nailed a 3-pointer from the right baseline corner, sparking the Orange’s 15-4 run and an eventual 78-67 win Sunday at American Airlines Arena. The win propelled Syracuse into its first Sweet 16 in five years. SU will take on No. 2 seed Oklahoma Friday in Memphis, Tenn., (7:30 p.m., CBS) where SU head coach Jim Boeheim will go for the 800th win of his career.

The unusual part is that Rautins almost didn’t take the shot that ultimately sparked the game-winning rally.

‘I got off the (screen) pretty quick, and I wasn’t too sure about taking the shot,’ Rautins said. ‘But I let it go, and it was good.’

After Rautins let it fly, Eric Devendorf followed suit. Devendorf drained back-to-back 3’s, the second of which put SU back up by double digits, as he posed with his right hand reaching for the sky in the opposite corner from where Rautins started the run.

‘When they cut it to four, Jonny (Flynn) made a great penetration and kicked it to Andy, and then he made a couple to get Eric the ball,’ Boeheim said. ‘They knocked down big shots. That was the difference.’

But a return to FedEx Forum in Memphis would have been canceled had Syracuse not kept its poise down the stretch against a rallying Arizona State squad. Syracuse had trailed for only 40 seconds the entire game, all of which came in the first three minutes of play. For 31 minutes, the Orange imposed its will upon ASU, but suddenly hit a drought during the most important stretch of the game.

‘We were going to go with a pick-and-roll and try to go inside or try to get the shooter in the corner,’ Boeheim said. ‘…They were pretty good at finding Andy, but he got just a little room, (ASU’s James) Harden was just a little late. Obviously, the way the momentum was, that was a big play.’

The shooting guard duo of Devendorf and Rautins combined to score 38 of the Orange’s 78 points on 8-of-18 shooting from deep. Devendorf led the way with a game-high 21 points, while Rautins had 17. As a whole, the Orange continued its offensive tear, shooting over 55 percent from the field. The SU defense, meanwhile, returned to its recent stranglehold form. Once Rautins’ shot fell to put SU up by eight, the Sun Devils didn’t make another field goal for the next 4:39. By the time the next ASU field goal fell through the net, SU led by 15 and the game was all but over. Syracuse’s 2-3 zone defense continued to give fits to the Sun Devils’ leading scorers. Harden, the team’s leading scorer, didn’t have a single point in the first half and was frustrated throughout the game, scoring 10 points, half his season average. Jeff Pendergraph, ASU’s second-leading scorer, put up nine points in a truncated game, fouling out with 10:19 remaining the game.

‘Our defense really had to buckle down there,’ SU point guard Jonny Flynn said. ‘When a team has confidence like that, they think they can do whatever. They went on an unbelievable run at that time, and we really forced them into a crucial turnover at that point.’ The Sun Devils made 13 3-pointers, tying for the most any opponent has made against the Orange. But many of those came as Harden and Pendergraph were absent offensively. The 3-point barrage led the run that stymied the Orange late, led by ASU’s Ty Abbott and Rihards Kuksiks, who both made six treys, tying an NCAA Tournament record for most 3’s in a game. But even that type of effort wasn’t enough to overwhelm the Orange down the stretch.

‘This is the NCAA Tournament, so we know every team is going to make a run at us,’ Devendorf said. ‘…They made a run, but the guys we have on our team – even though Jonny Flynn is a sophomore, he’s a veteran player, the best point guard in America, and Andy Rautins knocked down a big shot.’

mibonner@syr.edu

 

Published on March 22, 2009 at 12:00 pm