His team had beaten then-No. 6 North Carolina and then-No. 13 California just a few days prior, but to Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim, those wins were no more impressive than Tuesday night’s triumph against unranked Cornell.

Sure, defeating the defending national champions and the media’s preseason Pacific-10 favorites was jazzy, but a win over the defending Ivy League champions was just as meaningful.

‘I thought it was in a lot of ways as good a win as the two that we had in New York,’ Boeheim said. ‘Most people wouldn’t see that, but I think coming off that tournament and coming home, I would see it that way.’

Just one day after receiving a first-place vote in The Associated Press poll, No. 10 Syracuse surged in the second half to defeat Cornell, 88-73, in front of 18,238 at the Carrier Dome last. Syracuse (5-0) led by just six at halftime, but dominated the second half to extend its winning streak to 32 games against the Big Red (2-2).

‘It just shows a lot about our character,’ sophomore forward Kris Joseph said. ‘Coming out and playing Cornell after UNC, they’re two different caliber teams, and we just came in here and we didn’t downplay them, we didn’t think we were better than them. We just came out and played hard the whole 40 minutes.’

After sweeping its duo of games in New York City, Syracuse entered Tuesday night’s contest against the Big Red as hot as any team in the nation. Joseph said Boeheim preached to his team during practice to make sure it was ‘mentally there’ in its first came back from Madison Square Garden and constantly reiterated that the Big Red was a quality opponent.

Syracuse planned to keep an eye on forward Ryan Whittman, who lit up the Orange for 33 points in last year’s 88-78 win. Instead, Chris Wroblewski became a pest for SU’s 2-3 defensive zone, scoring 20 points on the night.

The 6-foot guard moved along different parts of the zone and nailed 3 after 3. His first 3-pointer gave Cornell a 6-5 lead early in the game, and he finished the fist half with 17 points on 5-of-6 shooting from beyond the arc. He For the first time all season, Syracuse’s zone looked vulnerable to the long ball.

The Orange, though, took a 42-36 lead into the half by answering Cornell’s hot shooting with buckets of its own. After the Big Red took a 28-27 lead, Syracuse answered with seven straight points, including a 3 by Andy Rautins in the corner. Afterward, he turned around and bellowed, ‘Let’s go!’ Rautins finished with 18 points.

‘This was a tough game to get ready for mentally,’ Boeheim said. ‘I thought at the end of the first half, every time they made a 3 we came back and made a good possession, made a good play.’

The second half was a return to the type of basketball that spurred Syracuse to its 4-0 record coming into the game. The players said they were not pleased with the defensive effort in the first half and had to be more aggressive.

The zone started collapsing on the shooters on the outside, and Wroblewski couldn’t find the stroke that he had in the first half. The stingy defensive ability to keep Cornell at bay helped ignite the offense on a run that put away the game.

With Syracuse leading, 47-41, Brandon Triche, Syracuse’s leading scorer with 21 points, hit a pull-up 3-pointer in transition and followed that with a three-point play to give the Orange a 53-41 lead. Rautins forced Cornell to call a timeout by drilling a 3 from the top left corner of the arc that gave SU an insurmountable 56-41 lead. The lead eventually ballooned to as much as 23.

‘It started with Andy,’ said Wes Johnson, who scored 15 points and hauled in 10 rebounds. ‘Andy came out with a lot of intensity and everybody really knew we had to get a spark from somewhere. We were playing kind of sluggish but we found everybody had a lot of energy coming into that second half.’

Though there were no championship T-shirts in the locker room after the game, nor a grand trophy to honor their efforts, the players echoed Boeheim’s belief that this game had as much importance as the two wins over ranked teams.

‘It shows that we want to come out and win very game,’ Rautins said. ‘We proved to ourselves that we have no letdown at this point and to be 5-0 at this point when a lot of people doubted us and said we wouldn’t be here, we are extremely happy with where we are.’

mrehalt@syr.edu

Published on November 26, 2009 at 12:00 pm