NEW YORK – A win for Syracuse in today’s Big East tournament quarterfinal against No. 16 Notre Dame could potentially be the difference between a top-eight NCAA Tournament or a bottom-eight NCAA Tournament seed. It would also tie SU with the most consecutive wins in the Big East tournament.

In other words, there’s no need for extra motivation. Extra motivation is for those late-November games against mid-majors, when Marshall Street is on the players’ minds more than March Madness.

In March, motivation is just a buzzword used by pundits. Although after beating Connecticut on Wednesday, motivation was coming off the tongues of SU players. They remember Jan. 30, when Notre Dame came to the Carrier Dome and put up 103 points, the highest total SU has ever allowed in the Dome, in a 103-91 win over the Orange.

‘We definitely look at it,’ senior center Darryl Watkins said. ‘You don’t want it to happen again. We remember how humiliating it was. We don’t want the same thing to repeat itself, so you come out and start right away.’

Notre Dame scored 61 first-half points in that game, the most since the Carrier Dome started keeping first-half statistics. The SU crowd booed its own team, irritating head coach Jim Boeheim.

All five of the Irish starters reached double figures. And it put up the damage without two preseason starters: suspended sophomore Kyle McAlarney and injured forward Rob Kurz. McAlarney is suspended for the year and won’t play today, but Kurz will.

At the same time, Syracuse is a better team than it was in late January. Notre Dame beat SU during a stretch when the Orange lost four of five games. It has since won six of seven games.

‘We played well at the end of the year,’ Boeheim said. ‘The games we’ve won, we’ve played well. We’ve really played good basketball the last of the year.’

The problem is the Irish have been playing well, too. They’ve won their last five games and have one of the most balanced scoring attacks in the conference.

It makes the game two hot teams squaring off. Although the team that will debut its new form-fitting orange road jerseys has uncommon extra motivation in March.

‘Notre Dame kicked our butts at Syracuse,’ Boeheim said. ‘We’ve had chances to win every single game this year, late in the game, every single. Notre Dame is the only game – and even that game we were 28 down and got it back to 10.

‘But they played extremely well against us in the first half in Syracuse, and they were very impressive. I’ve been impressed with their team all year long, and it’s going to be a tremendous challenge for us to come back tomorrow and play Notre Dame.’

Published on March 9, 2007 at 12:00 pm