WASHINGTON — Preston Shumpert sat through warmups on the Syracuse bench, his forefingers tending to his temples while an extreme headache lay between them. He ended the game in much the same fashion — sitting on the bench, a pair of goggles buried in his hands.

In the locker room 20 minutes later, little had changed. Shumpert sat again, this time with fluid dripping from his right eye, his eyelashes stuck together, his face pointed and stuck to a spot on the ground, his head still pounding from a day-long headache.

A corneal abrasion to his right eye rendered Shumpert a non-factor, while proving just how much a factor he usually is. And, when the 75-60 shellacking at the hands of Georgetown reached its excruciating end at the MCI Center last night, it was SU head coach Jim Boeheim rubbing his temples in search of an elixir.

Fourteen turnovers will do that to a head coach. So will being on the wrong end of a 47-22 rebounding margin. Or losing your best player because of a vision problem incurred nearly 10 months after the original injury.

‘Not having him was a big thing,’ said Syracuse shooting guard DeShaun Williams, who finished with a team-high 13 points. ‘That was basically the game.’

Georgetown head coach Craig Esherick concurred, despite his team holding such a disparate rebounding advantage and winning in convincing fashion.

‘Obviously, the key of the game for Syracuse was Shumpert not being able to play,’ he said. ‘He’s clearly their best player. He hits the big shots. He does the rebounding for them.’

The injury stems from last year’s Big East Tournament semifinal, in which Shumpert was poked in the eye going for a loose ball. Trainers told him he could reaggravate the injury, which he did while sleeping this weekend. Pain surged near the cornea, double-vision ensued and Shumpert was hounded by headaches.

To combat the problem, Shumpert sported black, Horace Grant-like goggles to cut down on the glare from the arena’s lights. In addition, a team doctor inserted a contact in the injured eye to prevent irritation when Shumpert blinked and applied eye drops.

As a result, Shumpert was able to play through the first half, though he could barely see. He logged 18 minutes, hoisting five shots, scoring three points, adding three assists and turning the ball over once.

Despite the injury, neither team could pull away. The biggest shot came eight seconds before the break, when Georgetown senior point guard Kevin Braswell nailed a three pointer to push the Hoya lead to 37-30.

When Shumpert sat down only a minute into the second half, No. 14 Syracuse (17-5, 6-2 Big East) still had a chance. But a 17-8 Georgetown (13-7, 4-4) run to start the stanza effectively put the game out of reach. The Hoyas led by as many as 23, as Syracuse struggled to run its offense without its top scoring threat.

‘I put drops into the eye,’ said Shumpert, who left the SU locker room after the game with a Captain Hook patch covering his right eye. ‘Then, they wore off. The first half, it was pretty bad. You just try to fight through. It was a big game for us. I tried to press it a little bit. The second half, it just wasn’t there. I can’t play if I can’t keep my eyes open. It’s almost like your eyes work together. For you to have one eye closed and one eye open, it’s impossible.’

Shumpert’s total number of working eyes was the same as the total number of shots he made. But, and maybe more importantly, his defensive presence was also missed, power forward Hakim Warrick said. Shumpert entered the game averaging 5.7 rebounds, and without him, Syracuse got more than doubled up on the boards.

It marked the fourth-consecutive game the Orangemen had been outrebounded, and three of those times have been by 20 rebounds or more.

The total rebounding margin for those four games is a devastating minus-76. And word on the home front is that life can’t get much better under the basket.

‘I don’t think we’ll get a lot better, but we’ll get a little better rebounding the basketball the rest of the year,’ Boeheim said. ‘We’re not a great rebounding team. We will get outrebounded. We’ll have to get a little better. Teams are really going to the boards against us. Once you show a weakness, they’re really going to go after it.’

Couple that four-game-long weakness with an eye injury to a sharpshooter, and Syracuse never really had a chance.

But Shumpert believes his eye will heal fully. He just doesn’t know how long it will take. And, in the meantime, his teammates refuse to make excuses.

‘Forget the eye,’ Kueth Duany said. ‘It was terrible. We just played terrible. We didn’t even come out ready. I don’t even know how to explain it right now. I don’t even want to talk about it, that’s how upset I am right now.’

Published on January 28, 2002 at 12:00 pm