After Saturday’s loss to Syracuse, Providence head coach Phil Seymore said emphatically that the Orange was a lock to be in the NCAA tournament field.

Seymore said he didn’t see a way Syracuse could be denied. The Orange had just dominated the Friars 63-47 for its fifth straight Big East win — a feat difficult enough that it was the first time SU had done so in 20-plus years.

And Seymore wasn’t sugarcoating his answer about whether or not SU belongs in the tournament.

‘Definitely, yeah, no question they are,’ Seymore said. ‘You know, the league is tough, so you can take some losses in it. But they won enough games in nonconference, and they beat some pretty good teams.’

Syracuse (21-7, 9-6 Big East) hopes it has done enough as it prepares for its final regular-season game at No. 1 Connecticut (28-1, 15-0) in what should be a sold-out Gampel Pavilion. The team is preparing for a near-impossible game to win against the No. 1 team in the nation on UConn star Maya Moore’s Senior Night.

‘It’s a tough game to play them on opening night,’ SU head coach Quentin Hillsman said. ‘It doesn’t matter when you play them. UConn’s a very good basketball team, and they have great players.’

Syracuse is in a three-way tie for seventh in the Big East standings, so the final game against UConn does have some implications. A win or loss could be the difference in whether the Orange receives a bye — the top eight seeds get a first-round bye.

But if the Orange loses to the Huskies — and all but Stanford have lost to the Huskies this season — it probably won’t deter SU’s NCAA tournament hopes. Syracuse was a No. 9 seed in ESPN’s last Bracketology on Feb. 21. The Orange could be even higher in the next edition, as it won both games this week.

‘No matter what happens from this point on,’ Hillsman said, ‘we finished winning five out of our last seven. If we lose (at UConn), and we lose in the first round of the Big East tournament, we’ve won five of our last seven.

‘And it’s hard to keep a team out of the tournament when they close the season like that.’

Syracuse hasn’t had much success against Connecticut and head coach Geno Auriemma. The Orange lost to the Huskies by 21 last year in the Carrier Dome in a decent showing. UConn also dashed Syracuse’s tournament hopes last season by beating the Orange 77-41 in the Big East tournament.

Three years ago, SU played the Huskies tough, losing just 65-59. But the next year, in a controversial game that involved a Nicole Michael tripping incident, UConn asserted its dominance in a 107-54 rout.

Syracuse assistant coach Rick Moody said he was watching tape of the Huskies earlier in the week when he was pulled out of the room to speak to a television reporter.

And it was a good thing Moody had to step away.

‘I was just about to puke,’ Moody said. ‘The one thing I know about Connecticut is this: I have so much respect for Geno. … When I watch them, the thing that separates them from 90 percent, if not 95 percent, of the other teams in this country is how hard they play.’

Moody singled out Moore. The National Player of the Year frontrunner leads the Huskies with 23.4 points per game, but Moody didn’t mention that. He singled her out for her effort. He said the way she takes charges and dives across the floor for loose balls rubs off on the rest of her team.

‘Geno demands that out of them, and he gets that out of them,’ Moody said. ‘It’s kind of scary.’

Hillsman said after the Providence win that his team will go to Storrs, Conn., looking to win. There is no intimidation factor, as evidenced by the tussles between these two teams in recent seasons.

If Seymore is right, this will be a game between two NCAA tournament teams. For Syracuse, it will match UConn’s immense effort that Moody talked about in order to stay in the game.

‘They’re going to bring intensity,’ Moody said. ‘We match that intensity and then play very intelligent basketball, and if we do that, we do it long enough, meaning all 40 minutes, and we have a game plan the kids trust and then execute that game plan, then who knows.’

mcooperj@syr.edu

 

 

 

Published on February 27, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Mark: mcooperj@syr.edu | @mark_cooperjr