Scoop Jardine scored three points, went 1-of-7 from the field and turned the ball over four times against Georgetown on Wednesday. Most of the shots that he missed, he missed badly.

Still, the senior point guard repeatedly found the ball in his hands as Syracuse struggled to break down the Hoyas’ 2-3 zone. And while he failed to create for himself, he said he got into a rhythm creating for his teammates in the second half.

‘It’s controlling the game,’ Jardine said. ‘That’s my job. That’s what I’m here to do. That’s what makes our team run.’

Although the rest of Jardine’s stat line was less than stellar, the senior point guard dished out eight assists —six of them in the second half and overtime —against Georgetown to help No. 2 Syracuse (24-1, 11-1 Big East) to a 64-61 overtime win over the No. 12 Hoyas (18-5, 8-4 Big East) in the Carrier Dome. He played all 25 minutes after halftime, and his six helpers in that span led to 17 points for the Orange, including Kris Joseph’s game-winning 3-pointer with 29 seconds left in overtime. To cap it off, Jardine forced Jason Clark into a turnover on Georgetown’s last possession that secured the win for SU.

‘Scoop’s a great point guard,’ Joseph said. ‘I’ve been alongside him for four years now, and it’s just great to have a player like him on your side. I would hate to have to play against Scoop because he makes the right decisions.’

Jardine turned almost entirely into a passer in the second half and overtime against Georgetown. After playing only seven minutes in the first half, the senior started off the second with a layup and a foul over three Hoyas defenders to spark an 8-0 SU run.

From there, it was his calming demeanor that took over the game for the Orange.

‘Me controlling the team, I have the ability to get everybody all on the same page with my personality and the way I play,’ Jardine said. ‘So for the most part, today in the second half, I was able to do that.’

Although Georgetown had played mostly man-to-man defense throughout the year, it relied on a 2-3 zone against the Orange. While it threw off his SU teammates, Jardine seemed unfazed by the different look.

His first assist in the second half came just after the Hoyas took a 37-35 lead. The senior caught the Hoyas backline napping and connected with center Fab Melo for an alley-oop to tie the game.

On Syracuse’s next possession, Jardine came around a C.J. Fair screen at the top of the key and dished off to an open Joseph on the left wing. Joseph then knocked down the triple in rhythm to put SU in front by two.

‘I thought he was making plays (in the second half) rather than trying to make a shot,’ head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘I thought he made some plays in the second half, and he got five or six assists trying to get in the lane and making plays.’

Jardine set up two more 3s in regulation along with a three-point play for Melo that started with a dunk.

With the scored tied at 61-61 in overtime, he turned a broken play into the game-winning triple.

After a timeout, Boeheim’s original set fell apart when Georgetown’s defense collapsed on Joseph as he tried to drive to the hoop. The senior kicked it back out to Jardine with 10 seconds on the shot clock.

Jardine then set up a new play, drove around a Melo screen on the right wing and found a wide-open Joseph on the left side for the game’s final bucket.

‘Sometimes, that’s what happens in basketball,’ Jardine said. ‘You just have to play off of instinct in basketball, and that’s what I did right there.

He then came up with an equally as important play on the defensive end by harassing Clark on the perimeter and knocking the ball free before the Georgetown guard knocked it out of bounds.

While Jardine’s final stat line wasn’t perfect, the good still outweighed the bad for the Orange’s only true point guard.

‘He’s really the only point guard that gets us into plays, gets us into set and makes plays,’ Boeheim said. ‘He’s going to make a bad play once in a while, but he makes good plays. And we need that. We need him doing that.’

zjbrown@syr.edu

Published on February 8, 2012 at 12:00 pm