In the 32nd game of his college basketball career, Hakim Warrick finally became nervous.

As the key cog in the smaller, quicker lineup his Syracuse team implemented against St. Bonaventure in the first round of the NIT, the Syracuse freshman knew if he didn’t perform, the rest of his team would suffer. It felt like high school. As he went, the team would go.

And, just like in high school, Warrick filled the crucial role perfectly, using his 31 minutes to score 14 points, grab 10 rebounds and block six shots, keying a 76-66 SU victory.

‘I would give Hakim the player of the game,’ teammate Kueth Duany said. ‘If he wouldn’t have come out and played well, then they would have been all over us. But he stepped up and made it happen.’

Actually he jumped up. Twice in the last six minutes of the first half, Warrick caught the ball down low, turned toward the basket, and soared over his defender. Each time he finished with his signature right-handed dunk, leaving his defender flabbergasted.

‘I have this attitude that no one else can get up that high. And actually, nobody really can,’ said Warrick, whose effort earned Syracuse a 7 p.m. game Monday at the Carrier Dome against Butler. ‘So I just take it up as high as I can and then bring it at the rim.’

In all, Warrick scored eight points in the last six minutes of the first half, turning a two-point Syracuse deficit into a 33-26 halftime lead for the Orangemen.

But his defensive presence may have been even more important. SU head coach Jim Boeheim played Warrick because center Craig Forth was too slow to defend St. Bonaventure’s big men, the tallest of whom is 6-foot-8. The lanky and mobile Warrick stayed with the Bonnies, blocking several shots that started fast breaks for his teammates.

‘Hakim at the five just gives us a more mobile team and he had a tremendous game,’ Boeheim said. ‘He’s got tremendous talent and he works very hard.’

‘I felt a little more pressure with the small lineup, but I settled in,’ Warrick said. ‘Defensively it felt like high school again. Guys coming in and shooting those little floaters and trying to get into your body. And you are just running out of the way and trying to get the block. I did some good things.’

So did another Orangemen. Preston Shumpert, potentially playing his final college game, scored 28 points, including a flood of five three-pointers in the second half. Late in the game, Shumpert and St. Bonaventure star J.R. Bremer, who scored 29 points, turned the game into a one-on-one show, trading three-point baskets.

But Shumpert stole the final word in the two-man battle, nailing a triple from the right corner with two minutes left. The shot forced the Bonnies’ to intenionally foul Syracuse for the remainder of the game.

Shumpert did all of that despite a rowdy St. Bonaventure student section that screamed at the Syracuse star every time he touched the ball and despite a large bandage on his shooting thumb.

‘The bandage, that’s my oven mitten. I slip that on and get it cooking,’ Shumpert said. ‘With that tape on there it gets your palm off the ball a little bit more, and that is helping me a little bit. But the big thing is I’ve been rushing my release. I didn’t do that tonight.’

‘Our offense revolves around Preston,’ Duany said. ‘He’s supposed to make those threes. When he starts making shots like he did, it’s trouble for who we are playing.’

But Duany still insisted Warrick earned the MVP. Even Shumpert eventually admitted the freshman stole the show.

‘The MVP goes to me of course,’ Shumpert joked. ‘Nah, you gotta give it to the rook. He played big tonight.’

‘Not to take anything from Shumpert, but Warrick set the tone the entire game and gave them a real defensive presence,’ St. Bonaventure coach Jan Van Bleda Kolff said. ‘He was the key player in my estimation.’

Published on March 15, 2002 at 12:00 pm