LOUISVILLE, Ky. – When Terrence Williams squared up from behind the 3-point line with Louisville leading by one point in the second half, it was a shot Syracuse was probably happy to give up. After all, Williams and the Cardinals had been chucking up an abnormal number of 3-pointers all night, and more were falling out rather than in.

But the sophomore forward made this one. He also made the next one 45 seconds later, giving the Cardinals a four-point lead in their eventual 76-71 win over Syracuse on Saturday. It was his third 3-pointer of the night, which sounds less impressive when put in the context of his 10 attempts. But that was UL’s mentality throughout the game. The Cardinals were liberal in their 3-point shooting, chucking 32 attempts. That’s 10 more than the team’s average and tied for the second-most an opponent has shot against SU’s 2-3 zone.

‘They have shot more than anybody else in the league,’ Boeheim responded when asked whether he was surprised by the Cardinals’ bombs away approach. ‘That wasn’t a problem.’

It was actually a good thing for the Orange, considering UL isn’t a very good 3-point shooting team to begin with and was actually worse on Saturday. The Cardinals were 8-of-32, which amounts to 25 percent. They were shooting 33.5 percent heading into the game. That didn’t discourage UL head coach Rick Pitino from encouraging his players to shoot.

‘That is our philosophy and so you go with it,’ Pitino said. ‘That is the only way a team that just shoots the ball average will become a good shooting team, if they are totally free of any pressure or stress from missing.’

The problem for the Cardinals is when those shots are ill-advised. Syracuse’s double-digit lead midway through the second half can partly be attributed to the Cardinals misfiring throughout the game from beyond the arc. Playing with a perimeter-oriented lineup, Louisville guards Brandon Jenkins, Edger Sosa, Will Scott and Jerry Smith shot a combined 20 3-pointers. They made five of those attempts. Tack on Williams, who missed seven attempts from the beyond the arc – a few of which were simply poor shots – and it made for a poor shooting night for UL.

‘We were taking some 3s that were three feet beyond the college 3,’ Pitino said. ‘I told T-Will, ‘you can go 0-for-30 from the college 3,’ but if you are going to jack it up from four feet behind the line, then I am going to have a problem with that.’

Syracuse’s defense knew about Williams. He was the Cardinals’ leading scorer with 13.3 points entering the game, but is shooting just 24.8 percent from beyond the arc and 37 percent from the field.

‘I thought we did a good job on him the whole game,’ Boeheim said. ‘We did a good job finding Williams the whole game until the end and then he just got loose twice and made two big shots.’

That’s the problem with a team that shoots a lot of 3-pointers. The opponent can guard them tough all game long, but once they start hitting shots, they can make up for lost time. Three of UL’s four second-half 3-pointers came in the final five minutes. That’s the period of time UL put the finishing touches on its late-game rally.

‘We knew they would shoot a lot of 3s,’ Syracuse forward Demetris Nichols said. ‘They just made them at the right time.’

Published on January 28, 2007 at 12:00 pm