The Syracuse men’s basketball team could have returned this weekend to a hero’s welcome.

It chose rest and free time instead.

SU head coach Jim Boeheim decided after Syracuse advanced to the Sweet 16 with a 72-70 over Maryland on Tuesday to remain in Denver and not return to Syracuse before flying to Phoenix. Because the NCAA prohibits teams from arriving to the site of its game until 48 hours before it plays, Syracuse will fly to Phoenix today.

‘Coach decided to take the hour flight to Phoenix from here instead of going home for four days and having to fly four, five, six hours,’ SU guard Josh Pace said.

Instead, the Orangemen will stay in their Denver hotel, relax and enjoy some better weather than they would’ve gotten had they come home.

The Orangemen also became reacquainted with an old friend last night. As a team, Syracuse went to the Pepsi Center to watch Carmelo Anthony’s Denver Nuggets beat the Los Angeles Clippers, 102-80.

‘It was great,’ assistant coach Mike Hopkins said. ‘He looked great. He shook all our hands and treated us first class.’

Ironically, Syracuse will be competing for a spot in the Final Four against UConn, Alabama and Vanderbilt – a total of four East Coast teams transplanted to Arizona. Alabama, the closest school to Phoenix, is about 1,400 miles away.

This, you’d imagine, is not what the creators of the Pod System had in mind.

‘It’s kinda crazy, isn’t it?’ Hopkins said. ‘Last time we were in the regional to go to the Final Four, us, Arizona, Georgia and Kansas were there. So it was a little different, because at least one of the schools was from the Midwest.’

In the zone

Last season, Syracuse turned Boeheim’s 2-3 zone into an art form to make its run to the national championship. This year, the zone has already flexed its muscle, holding a bewildered Maryland to 22 points in the first half of SU’s 72-70 second-round win Saturday.

All of that has left Alabama head coach Mark Gottfried, who said he won’t change his normal offense to adapt to SU’s athletic defense, relatively unimpressed.

‘Different teams have zoned us at different times,’ Gottfried said. ‘You can’t reinvent your offense just because you’re playing Syracuse. Hopefully, we’ll attack it pretty well.’

Maybe Gottfried has been listening to Boeheim too long. Boeheim downplayed the importance of the zone, pointing to Brigham Young’s dismantling of it in the first half of SU’s first-round win over the Cougars.

‘We play zone and we play man-to-man when we get desperate,’ Boeheim said. ‘Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t work. When teams come out and make five or six 3s in a row like BYU did, it doesn’t look so good.’

(W)under dogs

By beating No. 1 seed Stanford, which had lost just one game all season, on Saturday, Alabama showed some statewide supremacy. It combined with in-state brethren Alabama-Birmingham, which dropped No. 1 overall seed Kentucky, to knock off two No. 1 seeds.

While the Tide turned heads with its victory, it didn’t earn them too much respect across the nation. Alabama opened as 1.5-point underdogs to the Orangemen, and several talking heads are comparing SU’s matchup with the Tide as a stroke of luck, similar to last season, when SU drew No. 10 Auburn in the Sweet 16.

And that’s placed a chip squarely on the Tide’s shoulder.

‘Our guys watch a lot of cable TV, and they thumb through the Internet,’ Gottfried said. ‘They’ll listen to everybody who talks saying they have no shot. They’ll hear all that, and it will probably motivate them.’

Don’t count Boeheim among those counting out Alabama.

‘They’ve just got tremendous players, lots of guys who can hurt you,’ Boeheim said. ‘I think Stanford has a great basketball team, so to come from behind and beat a team like that, that’s just unbelievable. They’re playing as well as anybody.’

Speaking of anybody, that’s just who Boeheim thinks can win the tournament. Alabama’s win over the Cardinal and UAB’s slaying of Kentucky proves how unpredictable college basketball has become. Perhaps the results weren’t flukes, but the beginning of a trend.

‘This tournament is wide open,’ Boeheim said. ‘I thought before it started, you might not see a No. 1 seed in the Final Four. It’s great for the game.’

Tickets going fast

There are about 200 tickets remaining for SU’s Sweet 16 game against Alabama on Thursday, and they’ll go on sale today from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Gate B of the Carrier Dome. Approximately 550 of SU’s 750 allotted tickets were sold in one day. A portion of those has been purchased as student tickets, of which 178 were available.

Tickets cost $100 and cover the entire three-game session of the Phoenix Regional at America West Arena.

Fans traveling to Phoenix can watch the Orangemen in a 50-minute open practice Wednesday at 3:10 Mountain Time. The other participants in the Phoenix Regional – Vanderbilt, Connecticut and the Crimson Tide – will also have open practices.

Tickets purchased through Syracuse can be picked up at the Will Call window in the main ticket trailer at America West Arena. The trailer is located on the corner of 1st and Jefferson Street. The Will Call window will be open from 3:10 p.m. (MT) through halftime of the Syracuse game. Tip for the Syracuse-Alabama game will be about 9:40 EST.

Staff writer Mike Licker

contributed to this story

Published on March 22, 2004 at 12:00 pm