Paul Harris stood in the locker room, a white shirt concealing the sturdy frame he had thrown around with such recklessness all night.

There was something about this Connecticut game, he said, that made him want it more than any other this season.

And for his 39 minutes Wednesday night, Harris played like he wanted it. His 24 points and 11 rebounds were evidence enough of his willingness to challenge the Huskies inside on offense.

Problem was, not everybody showed the same abandon as Harris.

‘I think some of the guys didn’t play all out,’ Harris said. ‘We need everybody. We’re shorthanded, we need everybody. We can’t have no slacks or nothing like that. I just really thought we should have beat this team.’

Instead, Jonny Flynn’s last gasp effort from 30 feet away fell well short, and Syracuse lost to rival Connecticut, 63-61, Wednesday in front of 23,731 at the Carrier Dome.

The Orange (16-8, 6-5 Big East) were done in by a poor offensive performance in the second half, one which featured great efforts by Harris and Flynn but little support from the rest of the SU lineup.

The loss ended Syracuse’s three-game win streak and extended Connecticut’s win streak to six. It also allowed UConn head coach Jim Calhoun to momentarily pass SU head coach Jim Boeheim in career wins with 767, good for ninth place all-time.

The mood in the locker room was enough to clarify that any lingering momentum from SU’s three wins last week had vanished.

‘This is probably to me, one of the worst losses, only because it was like our hearts were taken away from it,’ Flynn said. ‘I felt like we were out there just feeble. Just weak. Like we weren’t ready to go out there and make plays. Not ready to make basketball plays.’

Flynn and Harris did their best to help SU keep pace. The duo, which combined to score 52 in Saturday’s win over Villanova, contributed 44 on Wednesday. Unfortunately, the rest of the SU offense never showed up, and the Orange as a team shot 37.9 percent (22-for-59) on the night.

Donte Greene had his worst offensive game for Syracuse, scoring just eight points on 2-for-15 from the field.

Meanwhile, Arinze Onuaku – playing against Connecticut’s 7-foot-3 center, Hasheem Thabeet – was at times non-existent. He scored just six points, none of those coming in a second half in which he got into foul trouble early and appeared to play tentatively the rest of the game.

‘(Arinze) just didn’t come to play tonight,’ Boeheim said. ‘… I didn’t think Arinze went to the basket hard the whole game.’

While Onuaku and Greene were off from the beginning, Syracuse’s offensive struggles were most acute in the second half. After the Orange used the fast break to take a 34-31 lead into halftime, the Huskies seemed intent on slowing the game down and making SU play a halfcourt style in the second half.

The Orange’s lack of offensive rhythm and disinterest in going strong to the basket caught up with it. When SU did try to go inside, Thabeet was there to deny any shot attempts. The center had seven blocks on the game, five of those in the second half.

By the game’s final television timeout at the 3:59 mark, the Orange trailed 55-46 and had tallied just 12 total points in the half on a miserable 5-for-26 from the field.

‘I’m very disappointed with our offense in the second half,’ Boeheim said. ‘Toward the end there we weren’t able to spot well, didn’t get good looks and took too many in- between shots that were blocked.

‘Our offense cost us the game.’

While Syracuse struggled, UConn’s duo of forward Jeff Adrien (19 points, 12 rebounds) and guard A.J Price (14 points, six assists), provided the Huskies with just enough offense to finally create some separation between the two teams.

Syracuse did mount a rally in the game’s final four minutes, eventually cutting the lead to two off a Flynn 3-pointer with 41.8 seconds left. On the ensuing UConn possession, SU forward Rick Jackson managed to tie-up forward Stanley Robinson, who had rebounded the UConn miss, thus forcing a jump ball and giving SU possession with 2.3 seconds remaining.

Yet all Syracuse could muster out of the inbounds was a Flynn prayer – a 3-pointer that fell short at the buzzer.

And with a week off until SU’s next game at South Florida, Harris and the Orange will have plenty of time ponder the offensive struggles that were the difference on Wednesday.

‘The West Virginia loss, we lost by 20,’ Harris said. ‘I’d rather have that than fight so hard and lose by two. We had the lead, we had UConn man. But we just gotta put it behind us.’

jsclayto@syr.edu

Published on February 6, 2008 at 12:00 pm