STORRS, Conn. – To Kristof Ongenaet, one sequence epitomized what made Syracuse’s 63-49 loss to No. 1 Connecticut Wednesday night so frustrating.

With about 13 minutes remaining and the Orange trailing by just four, Ongenaet, the SU forward, made a steal, creating a fast-break opportunity. Point guard Jonny Flynn had a layup attempt. He missed. Center Arinze Onuaku, backing the play up, had a layup try of his own. He missed. Another offensive rebound led to a 3-point attempt for shooting guard Andy Rautins. He missed, too.

On the ensuing Huskies possession, UConn guard A.J. Price was fouled shooting a 3 and hit all the free throws to give his squad a seven-point lead. It would never be closer again. Syracuse had three attempts to cut the deficit to two points, including a pair of layups, and no points to show for it.

Missed opportunities plagued the Orange all night. Syracuse had the lead for much of the first half, but was never able to maintain a consistent rhythm. A silly turnover here, a blown fast break there, all of which seemingly unimportant individually, but collectively made quite a difference.

Especially against a team like UConn, which has now won 12 straight.

‘If you want to beat the No. 1 team in the country, you have to finish those,’ Ongenaet said. ‘You can’t make mistakes like that.’

For a half, Syracuse played well enough to stay with the consensus top team in the nation. In fact, it possibly put together the best 20-minute stretch of defense of the season, constantly diving on the floor and holding the Huskies to 30 points before halftime.

The Orange led for about eight minutes in the first half, but never by more than five points – a number that could have been increased, if not for a series of missed chances in transition.

In one two-minute stretch, forward Paul Harris missed a layup and a dunk, and Flynn missed an uncontested layup, all of which came on the fast break. Flynn’s chance came when he was momentarily the only player on that side of the court, but he could not finish. A basket there would have given SU a six-point lead. Flynn also uncharacteristically missed three free throws in the first half.

‘We had two or three fast breaks that we didn’t convert,’ SU head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘Just pretty easy plays, and you have to convert those plays when you’re playing (a team) as good as Connecticut and you’re playing on the road. You’ve got to make those plays.’

As the second half wore on, the opportunities stopped coming. Connecticut, one of the best defensive teams in the country, clamped down. Heading into the night, the Huskies had the best opponent field-goal percentage in the Big East, at 37.9 percent.

UConn’s defensive prowess showed. Center Hasheem Thabeet took over the game in the paint, finishing with seven blocks. Suddenly, all those missed shots that seemed rather innocuous early in the game came back to haunt Syracuse.

‘We missed a couple chippys that we should have made,’ said Flynn, who finished with a team-high 16 points. ‘That really would have turned the game around. Against a team like this, a hard-nosed defensive team like that, all the chippys, you have to make them. …You have to always convert on opportunities they give us, and I think we didn’t do that.’

Connecticut went on a 10-0 run in one three-minute stretch in the second half, and SU never recovered. In the locker room afterward, Flynn stressed the importance of not dwelling on what could have been.

At the very least, Syracuse had the chance to keep the game closer for a longer stretch of time. And even though much of the postgame attention went to Thabeet and his excellent defensive effort, Boeheim acknowledged that at least a portion of the Orange’s trouble was nobody’s fault but its own.

‘When you’re playing a team as good as UConn is, and they are a tremendous basketball team, I think you have to be able to convert opportunities in the first half,’ Boeheim said. ‘We had some really good opportunities, and we did not convert them. We just didn’t enough on offense. Eventually they are going to start getting some baskets.’

jediamon@syr.edu

Published on February 11, 2009 at 12:00 pm