Slip Sliding Away?

And less than two months after it appeared the Big East Tournament would serve merely as an extravagant warm-up to the Big Dance, the Orange is in desperation mode in New York City.

SU (23-8, 11-7 in the Big East) is the No. 5 seed and received one bye in the Big East Tournament, which started Tuesday, March 12, at Madison Square Garden. The Orange will face the winner of Tuesday’s game between No. 12 Seton Hall and No. 13 South Florida at 2 p.m. Wednesday, March 13, on ESPN. (The New Times went to press before Tuesday’s games.)

SU is trying to bounce back from its worst loss of the season and one of the worst in its storied history. The Saturday, March 9, 61-39 debacle at Georgetown in the final regular-season Big East game between the two longtime rivals was horrific for the Orange for many reasons, not the least of which is that it gave former Hoyas coach John Thompson Jr. one last chance to open his big mouth and say the Hoyas can “kiss Syracuse goodbye.”

Worse than that, though, is the way SU has played in the past six weeks. Since starting the season 18-1 and being ranked No. 3 in the nation—that’s when it looked as if it wouldn’t matter what the Orange did in the Big East Tournament—SU is 5-7 with only one win against a team with a better-than-.500 record in Big East play (Notre Dame, on Feb. 4).

The season-opening 62-49 rout of then- No. 20 San Diego State on the retired aircraft carrier USS Midway on Nov. 11 seems like another season now. For the Orange to turn it around, they’re going to have to treat the Big East Tournament as the start of a new season, because the old one wasn’t turning out so hot.

“I feel as if, for every team, no matter what their record is, the first half of the season is over,” Orange senior James Southerland said. “Now it’s postseason play, and everyone knows it’s either win or go home. So no matter what you’ve done, it’s all in the past. This is when you have to see how mentally tough you are as a team and keep pushing.”

On several occasions in the closing weeks of the season, Southerland referenced the 2011 Connecticut Huskies, who entered the Big East Tournament with a 9-9 conference record and became the first school to win five tournament games in as many days to claim the title. The Huskies then won six more games to win the national championship.

The Huskies had a big-time star in Kemba Walker, but no one saw that coming, and now no one is expecting the Orange to go on a similar run except the people who count the most: the SU players.

“As long as we feel comfortable as a team, and we do what we need to do as a team, we’ll be fine,” Southerland said. “We can beat anyone in this country. We feel we’re a top team, so we’re going to go out there and give it everything we have.”

To do that, the Orange will have to shoot better. Against Georgetown, SU’s late-season shooting woes continued as it shot 31.9 percent (15-for-47) from the floor and 9.1 percent (1-for-11) from 3-point range. Southerland—usually SU’s best outside shooter—and senior guard Brandon Triche shot a combined 1-for-17 as SU scored its fewest points ever in 558 Big East games and had its lowest point total since a 36-35 win over Kent State on Dec. 1, 1962, when Dave Bing and Coach Jim Boeheim were Orange freshmen.

“The thing is, what has been consistent is our defense, which has been good all through this,” Boeheim said. “Offensively, we obviously need to play better.”

The Big East Tournament gives the Orange an opportunity to file away the regular-season stats and wipe the slate clean. And Wednesday’s game against either Seton Hall or South Florida should give the Orange players a chance to pad their stats and boost their confidence. The Orange defeated Seton Hall 76-65 and South Florida 55-44 in its only meetings with those teams this season.

(Disclaimer: We thought the March 6 win over DePaul would help in the confidence department, but SU followed that 21-point victory with the clunker at Georgetown).

“I think we are all looking forward to it {the Big East Tournament},” SU point guard Michael Carter-Williams said. “We will be playing for something big, and we are going to go out there and play as hard as we can.”

If the Orange wins Wednesday, it will face No. 4 seed Pittsburgh (24-7, 12-6) at 2 p.m. Thursday, March 14, in the quarterfinals on ESPN. A win over Pitt, and the Orange is looking at a rematch with No. 1 seed Georgetown Friday night, March 15.

Whatever happens in the Orange’s final Big East Tournament, SU will make the NCAA Tournament. SU’s seed in the Big Dance will in large part be determined this week in New York City, but at this point, that’s almost secondary.

Ultimately, whether the Orange continues to sink or starts to swim this postseason will be determined by the players’ ability to forget the past few weeks and start playing as they did earlier in the season.

“I told the players the regular season is to work on everything, get better and all of that, but it’s also to play good enough to get into the NCAA Tournament. That’s what it’s about,” Boeheim said after the DePaul game. “It’s always nice to finish higher in this league or any league, but the object is to get in the tournament and then once you go to New York, you want to play as well as you can. New York will be a great benefit for us because we need to go down there and try to play better.”