NEW YORK CITY- Everyone knows the way to attack the 2-3 defensive zone is to hit your outside shots.

But the Memphis Tigers took that to a new extreme Friday night in the championship game of the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic tournament at Madison Square Garden, hoisting 33 3-pointers against Syracuse.

Unfortunately for Memphis, its hot shooting hand eventually cooled off and it lost, 77-62, to the Syracuse men’s basketball team.

The Tigers shot 36 percent from 3-point range for the game, making 12 of 33 attempts.

‘They can shoot,’ SU senior forward Craig Forth said. ‘We pushed our zone out as far as it could go. They were hitting shots from 6 or 7 feet behind the arc. That’s something a lot of teams can’t do.’

Not only was Memphis making routine 3s, the Tigers heaved 3-pointers from nearly every spot on the court, making them and keeping the game close, especially in the second half when Memphis hit seven 3s.

‘I told ESPN at halftime that if we shoot 30 jumpers, we can’t win,’ Memphis head coach Jim Calpari said. ‘We shot 33. The whole game I kept saying, ‘Drive the ball. Drive the ball. Drive the ball.”

Memphis, though, never attacked Syracuse’s zone. It instead tried to stay on the perimeter and win the game from there.

For a while, that strategy worked. But eventually with Syracuse extending its zone out further, Memphis couldn’t keep the hot shooting up. By that time, Memphis had failed to establish an inside presence and it just continued to try to win the game with outrageous 3s.

‘They kept four or five guys out on the perimeter all night and jacked up 3s,’ Forth said. ‘They hit some crazy shots … But they’re not getting inside to the basket and that keeps us out of foul trouble.’

Said Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim: ‘Memphis really attacked our zone tonight. (Rodney) Carney was unbelievable in the first half. We were on him most of the time, and he hit most of his shots.’

Carney, a member of the all-tournament team, scored 20 first-half points en route to a game-high 25.

The Tiger junior made 4 of 7 3-pointers in the first half but just one in the second.

‘They were very poised and calm out there,’ Syracuse sophomore forward Terrence Roberts said. ‘They got it to their leaders in points and they just basically stood back there and watched guys hit shots. We didn’t really step out there quickly enough.’

And what did Syracuse do to try to combat the outside shooting?

‘Basically we tried to get them to stop shooting 3s,’ Roberts said. ‘But that didn’t really work that well. They just kept throwing them up there and they kept going in. There’s not much you can really do about that.’

While the 3-pointers from nearly 10 feet behind the arc frustrated Syracuse, the players knew they had to extend the zone out far enough to challenge most regular 3s, but not too far that it would open up the rest of the floor.

For a while, with Memphis hitting such long 3s, that didn’t work. But eventually, like the players told themselves, the shots just wouldn’t fall.

‘They hit a lot of tough shots- a lot of long 3’s — but I think we did a really good job of keeping our composure and sticking with it,’ Syracuse senior forward Hakim Warrick said. ‘You don’t want to push the zone out too far.’

Said SU’s Josh Pace: ‘We didn’t think they were going to continue to make those tough shots because they were shooting deep 3s, so we wanted to make them keep shooting those shots. If they’re going to live like that, we’re going to let them. Eventually they cooled off and we took control of the game.’

Published on November 19, 2004 at 12:00 pm