Without Matt Gorman, Mike Jones and a banged-up Terrence Roberts, it was Pittsburgh preseason All-American center Aaron Gray that had Syracuse most worried about going into Thursday night’s Big East opener vs. the No. 10 Panthers.

Afterwards, a hot shooting performance by Levance Fields and the rest of the Pittsburgh perimeter shooters had Jim Boeheim and the Orange shaking their heads.

‘We just couldn’t make a stop when we needed to,’ Boeheim said. ‘Coming down the stretch we had good momentum we just couldn’t make a stop and we couldn’t get back in.’

Despite playing with six players for much of the game, Syracuse stayed close with Pittsburgh, only to be buried by Fields’ career-high 24-point effort. The Panthers defeated Syracuse, 74-66, Thursday night in the teams’ Big East opener in front of 21,045 at the Carrier Dome.

It is the first time SU (11-4, 0-1) lost its Big East opener since 1998-99.

Sophomore guard Eric Devendorf led the Orange in scoring with 17 points, despite coming off the bench for the sixth game in a row. Darryl Watkins and Demetris Nichols both scored 11 apiece.

The Orange thought it made a crucial stop late in the game when it forced a Pitt inbounds pass with five seconds left on the shot clock. However, Ronald Ramon beat the tight inbounds defense with a corner 3-pointer that put the Panthers (13-2, 1-0) back up six, 68-62.

‘That was the big play of the game,’ freshman Paul Harris said. ‘That was real crucial. Five seconds on the clock you know they gotta rush the shot. We just slipped. We all make mistakes and they just hit it.’

Devendorf made a driving lay-up back on the other end to cut the lead to four, but it was as close as the Orange would get in the game’s waning moments. A couple of SU desperation 3’s would not fall and Pittsburgh made free throws to cushion the final advantage to eight.

‘We were too worried about the inside interior pass,’ Boeheim said. ‘We did a good job on that the whole game, we stole a couple and did a good job. One step out of the way and he got a good look.’

Watkins held Gray to nine points and nine rebounds, below his season averages of 15.6 and 10.9, respectively. The Orange outscored Pitt in the paint, 30-24, and equaled the Panthers’ 35 rebounds.

Syracuse never trailed in the first half and led by as many as six points when a Terrence Roberts lay-up put the Orange up 24-18. Still, Pitt ended the half within one point on a Fields lay-up as time expired. The Panthers scored the final four points of the first half and the first six of the second half to take a six-point lead with 18:51 left.

‘They’ve got shot-makers,’ Boeheim said. ‘The one thing they’ve got this year that they didn’t have last year, they have more guys who can shoot the ball from the perimeter. I think that was always their weakness.’

Fields was 9-of-15 from the field and 3-for-7 from beyond the arc. Antonio Graves was 3-for-6 from 3-point range and Ramon added 12 points on 4-of-8 shooting. As a whole, the Panthers shot 51.9 percent in the second half.

SU trailed by 11 at one point in the second half, but hung in against the physical Pittsburgh team, even with six players. Roberts went down in front of the Syracuse bench 1:22 into the second half after taking an inadvertent elbow to the mouth. He went right to the locker room and needed stitches to close the gash.

Already left with a short bench due to the departure of freshman Mike Jones from SU and an injured Matt Gorman, Syracuse played the next 14 minutes with just six players and had the game within five points when Roberts reentered with 4:10 remaining in the game.

Andy Rautins, starting his fifth game in a row, nailed two key shots in the second half to keep the Orange close, even without Nichols’ best effort. The Big East leading scorer was held to 4-of-15 shooting. Nichols’ 11 points represented his lowest output since Dec. 2 vs. Wichita State when he scored just six.

Harris said without a go-to man at the end of games, the Orange need to figure out how to play better down the stretch.

‘Honestly, I believe, if you look at all of the games we lost its turned out to be close games. We don’t know how to finish close games,’ Harris said. ‘We gotta find out how we’re going to finish a game out when it gets close. Are we going to run and hide or are we going to play to win it?’

Published on January 13, 2007 at 12:00 pm