Lately, Billy Edelin and Gerry McNamara have been the Syracuse men’s basketball team’s spark plugs. Last night against Connecticut, the pair was a dead engine.

Both Syracuse guards played perhaps their worst games of the season, stifling the SU offense as the No. 17 Orangemen fell, 75-61, to No. 23 UConn before 16,294 at the Hartford Civic Center.

First, McNamara struggled shooting, missing two 3-pointers on SU’s first two possessions. So SU head coach Jim Boeheim brought in Edelin and hoped the freshman pairing would give the Orangemen (16-4, 7-3 Big East) offensive penetration.

McNamara shot 1 of 9, including 1 of 7 from 3-point range.

‘I missed shots,’ McNamara said. ‘It just didn’t go down tonight.’

Edelin wasn’t much better, hitting just 2 of 6 shots and turning the ball over four times.

On one of his first touches, Edelin drove the lane but misfired a pass into the hands of UConn forward Shamon Tooles. The next time Edelin touched the ball, he charged through the lane and lost the ball to Huskies center Emeka Okafor. That play brought Boeheim off the bench to scream at Edelin.

‘(Edelin) was the one I was really surprised at,’ Boeheim said. ‘He looked like he had no idea what was going on today. He looked completely lost. He was like a deer in headlights.”

Syracuse’s guard play brought Boeheim off the bench on other occasions, too. At the end of the first half, Edelin let the clock expire, casually dribbling the ball outside the 3-point arc.

Until the 3:07 mark of the first half, only three Orangemen had scored. And forward Hakim Warrick — one of the three — scored his lone basket four minutes into the game.

‘I thought (our) two guards — Ben Gordon and Tony Robertson — played terrific defense,’ Connecticut interim head coach George Blaney said. ‘Tony holding McNamara to three and Ben holding Kueth Duany to 4 for 13. I thought that was as much of a key as anything.’

Still, the Orangemen managed to keep the score 30-27 by halftime, thanks to 12 points from forward Carmelo Anthony and eight from Duany.

‘We got nothing offensively but (Anthony),’ Boeheim said. ‘We can’t live with just one guy. The way we played offensively we were lucky to even be in this game. (Anthony) had 29. I don’t think he was the problem.’

It was the rest of the Orangemen.

Syracuse’s centers failed to contribute. This allowed Okafor to help UConn’s guards whenever the quicker Syracuse guards tried to penetrate. Okafor was consistently several steps away from the SU centers, but Craig Forth and Jeremy McNeil still failed to score.

With no one else contributing, Anthony took the Syracuse offense on his shoulders.

At the 8:07 mark of the second half, UConn (15-5, 6-3) held a 53-49 lead after McNamara hit his only 3-pointer of the game. Over the next six possessions, Anthony fired five of Syracuse’s six shots. His teammates, meanwhile, added two turnovers and two free throws.

While Anthony forced fall-away jumpers, Connecticut scored with ease. Six different Huskies scored during a 12-4 second-half run that gave UConn a 65-53 lead.

‘We were terrible,’ Edelin said. ‘Guys we depend on to make plays didn’t. The biggest thing we have to do is accept the fact that we didn’t step up our play.’

Published on February 10, 2003 at 12:00 pm