MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – For the second straight game, SU head coach Jim Boeheim pinpointed an opposing player for his defense to key in on.

And for the second time in a row, it was that player that proved a big part of SU’s undoing.

On Wednesday’s loss to Cincinnati, it was Bearcats guard Deonta Vaughn that torched Syracuse for 29 points in a 74-66 loss. On Sunday it was West Virginia swingman Alex Ruoff who exploited gaps in the Syracuse defense.

The junior, who came into the game as his team’s top scorer at 16.2 points per game, scored 23 points on 8-for-12 shooting against a Syracuse defense that repeatedly suffered mental lapses in allowing Ruoff room to operate.

‘That’s the same thing we did against Cincinnati,’ Boeheim said. ‘There’s one guy on the other team you don’t want to shot the three. … We didn’t want Ruoff to be the guy that beat our zone.’

Like Vaughn before him, Ruoff hurt the Orange from beyond the arc. All but two of the Mountaineer guard’s points came via the 3-pointer, as Ruoff coolly nailed seven of his 11 trey attempts.

The baskets proved fatal for a Syracuse team that seemed to be fighting itself on the offensive end, committing 19 turnovers on the game and scoring just 20 points in the first half.

Ruoff hit two consecutive 3’s – his third and fourth of the half – during the Mountaineers 13-2 run to end the first half, a run that stretched West Virginia’s lead to 15 at the break. He scored five more quick points out of the locker room in the second half, including a 3-pointer at the 16:30 mark to extend the WVU lead to 22 points.

‘That hurt, that definitely killed us,’ SU forward Donte Greene said. ‘If we didn’t let him get off those 3’s and kept it under 10 going into halftime. … We just got to get out on the shooter.’

After starting the game in man and quickly switching to zone, Syracuse found some success early, limiting the Mountaineers to just 13 points in the game’s first 10 minutes. But after two Ruoff’s 3’s midway through the half, Boeheim made the switch out of the zone, which he said after the game had been successful up until Ruoff started to get hot.

From there, Syracuse switched between man-to-man and zone, but never was able to prevent West Virginia from getting inside, and as Syracuse frequently collapsed to stop the penetration, Ruoff was left open beyond the arc.

‘If we go inside out, which we did tonight, we get a lot of open looks,’ Ruoff said. ‘I think I had like three or four just off of (WVU guard Darris Nichols’) penetration, so key to him.’

Boeheim defends Flynn

Jim Boeheim could have easily criticized Jonny Flynn for his one assist, six-turnover performance against West Virginia.

Instead, he insisted the point guard’s stat-line reflected his teammates’ performance more than his own.

‘It really wasn’t his fault,’ Boeheim said. ‘Our wing guys weren’t doing a good job of getting open. We weren’t screening, and it ends up making Jonny get six turnovers and they’re not even his fault so much as the wing guys.’

Against West Virginia’s pressure defense that denied any passes to the wing, SU’s forwards seemed unable to move around and set screens to create open looks. Indeed, forward Paul Harris admitted he was ‘standing around’ at times and not doing what he needed to do in order to get open and help the SU guards out.

For his part, Flynn admitted to having been off his game the last two contests, shooting 2-for-15 for nine points against Cincinnati and scoring 11 against the Mountaineers to go along with his poor assist-turnover ratio.

‘Maybe I can take something away from this game,’ Flynn said. ‘Be more aggressive, instead of looking for a shot getting into the lane and kick it out to Donte or getting (Arinze Onuaku) an easy bucket down low when he’s not double-teamed.’

Published on January 14, 2008 at 12:00 pm