The Syracuse men’s basketball team came from behind in the final 10 minutes to win Thursday night’s game against Hofstra, 80-75, before 19,460 fans at the Carrier Dome.

Hofstra came into the game undefeated and shot 12-for-24 from 3-point range, outpacing the Orange by 20 percentage points. The Pride’s three-guard formation produced its top three scorers, guards Loren Stokes, Antoine Agudio and Carlos Rivera. Each played at least 37 minutes, and the combination provided a constant deep threat. They combined for 48 points, and jumpstarted Hofstra to an early 6-0 lead.

Junior Syracuse guard Gerry McNamara struggled from 3-point range during the first half, hitting just one of eight from behind the arc. But McNamara’s play picked up in the second half, and he finished the game as Syracuse’s third-highest scorer with 17 points. The rest of the Orange shot just two for nine.

‘He’d have to go 0-20 before I’d take him out,’ head coach Jim Boeheim said.

‘I just kept telling myself, ‘It’s gonna go. It’s gonna go. You’re gonna get hot,” McNamara said. ‘Eventually I got that rhythm back.’

Senior forward Hakim Warrick led the Orange with 29 points, more than half of which came on slam dunks. He shot 10-for-17 from the field and 9-for-12 from the foul line. Warrick made a 3-point play to put No. 7 Syracuse up, 77-73, with 1:27 left in the game. And he extinguished Hofstra’s hopes with a last-second dunk on a no-look pass from sophomore forward Terrence Roberts.

Roberts played his best game of the season, scoring a career-high 20 points on perfect shooting from the field. He worked the glass against the small but quick Hofstra team, pulling down 9 rebounds.

He also slammed home two errant 3-pointers as they bounced off the rim, but that same aggression yielded two goaltending violations. One came in the closing seconds of the first half on a shot by senior guard Josh Pace that would have put the Orange (13-1, 0-0 Big East) in the lead. Instead, the half ended in a tie, 38-38.

‘It’s kind of a habit that I’ll probably have to work on,’ Roberts said.

The halftime tie characterized Hofstra’s competitive play. The Pride (9-1, 1-0 Colonial Athletic Association) kept the pace with the Orange throughout the game, putting a pressure on Syracuse that its other regional, non-conference opponents could not. The lead changed nine times, the game was tied six times, and Hofstra led for a combined 23:28. This game marks the last for Syracuse before the Jan. 5 Big East opener against St. John’s – a team Hofstra beat by 10 on Dec. 11.

‘I’m proud of the way my guys played, but I want to win that basketball game,’ Hofstra head coach Tom Pecora said. ‘We had opportunities to do it, and we let them slip away.’

Even as SU’s lead spread to nine points with 5:28 remaining, the Pride refused to succumb to the Orange momentum and the roar of the Carrier Dome crowd. Hofstra fought back to within one point of SU’s lead, bringing the score to 74-73 with less than two minutes to go.

The Pride’s guards hurled the ball around the arc as time ticked away, but none could get a shot off without an SU player’s hand in his face. The Pride kept the game within reach until there were just 14 seconds remaining, when the Warrick slam made it 79-75.’Hofstra’s probably the best team we can play to get ready for the Big East,’ Roberts said. ‘They had confidence from the door. We didn’t even have to give them confidence during the game.’

Published on December 30, 2004 at 12:00 pm