Chris Quinn backpedaled quickly, his palms facing the court and head bobbing back and forth. He shot a sharp glance to his right and mouthed what everyone else in the Carrier Dome was thinking.

‘Oh my God,’ Quinn said.

Quinn had just nailed an unthinkable shot, a double-pump, how-did-he-do-that 3-pointer with Gerry McNamara’s hand in his baby face. The shot finished off the 11 straight points for Quinn. It also finished off the Syracuse men’s basketball team, which lost to Quinn and Notre Dame, 84-72, last night in the Carrier Dome.

Quinn and his more infamous backcourt mate, Chris Thomas, lit up Syracuse for a combined 47 points. Thomas finished with 25, while Quinn scored 22.

‘Coaches always tell me to stay aggressive,’ Quinn said. ‘That’s what I wanted to do today. It’s great playing with Chris, because the other team is always keying on him, and it really opens me up.’

Last night, it seemed, everything was open for Notre Dame. The Irish made 11 of 23 3-pointers, a 48 percent clip.

‘We cut up their zone,’ Thomas said. ‘We figured out how to get good looks. We just played poised.’

Notre Dame stormed to a 31-21 lead late in the first half behind a seemingly endless barrage of 3-pointers. The Irish backcourt of Chris Thomas and Chris Quinn drifted beyond SU’s 2-3 zone’s range and connected on six 3s in the game’s first 14 minutes. The final trey came from Thomas, who fired from 5 feet behind the line to give the Irish a 10-point lead.

With Notre Dame’s best post presence, Torin Francis, out with back spasms, Thomas and Quinn combined for nine 3-pointers in 17 attempts for the game. The Fighting Irish knew they’d have to rely on 3-pointers to beat SU. So did the Orangemen.

‘We knew,’ SU guard Gerry McNamara said, ‘that Thomas and Quinn were going to start jacking.’

It didn’t matter. Thomas and Quinn spotted up from so far beyond the 3-point line, Syracuse’s zone, even stretched to its limits, couldn’t contain the pair of sharpshooters.

‘Coach kept telling us to play guys tough,’ SU freshman Louie McCroskey said. ‘But it’s kind of hard to guard them when they’re 50 feet out.’

Still, the Orangemen (16-6, 6-5 Big East) hung with the Irish. McNamara and Hakim Warrick spearheaded a furious rally to start the second half, with McNamara nailing a 3-pointer before dashing the entire court twice, each time laying the ball off to an open Warrick. The first resulted in a layup. The second, a rim-shaking slam that sent the Dome into a frenzy.

Demetris Nichols provided the other keystone to the rally with a vicious block, leading to a Josh Pace put-back. In little more than three minutes, Syracuse had turned a nine-point halftime deficit into a 41-40 nail-biter, and it also made a slumbering Dome erupt.

That energy was enough to keep Syracuse in the game for 10 nip-and-tuck minutes, but Syracuse simply couldn’t overcome Notre Dame’s scorching shooting. As they did in the first half, the Irish pulled away with hot shooting. The Irish (13-9, 7-5) made 5 of 8 3-pointers in the second half, good for 62 percent.

Even Tom Timmermans, Notre Dame’s oafish, 7-foot center, got into the act, knocking down an open 3 with 7:13 left to play that gave Notre Dame a 60-53 lead, its largest since the break.

‘When Timmermans is hitting 3s, you know it’s their night,’ McNamara said. ‘Sometimes one play can take the life out of you. When Timmermans hit that 3, that was a big shot.’

Big enough to stomp out any chance SU had to win, which came as sweet retribution for Notre Dame, which lost to SU in South Bend, Ind., 81-70, on January 17.

In that game, SU’s guards outplayed Thomas and Quinn to snatch a road win. At the end of the game, Thomas noticed Orangemen giggling on the bench as SU threw down breakaway dunks at the game’s end.

‘Just the way we ended the game, we really felt they embarrassed us on our home floor,’ Thomas said. ‘We were really up for this game. We wanted to do the same to them.’

Published on February 16, 2004 at 12:00 pm