Jonny Flynn didn’t want to talk about his 28-point performance after Syracuse’s devastating loss Saturday to Pittsburgh. But Pitt head coach Jamie Dixon did.

‘When he makes 3’s, I wouldn’t want to guard him,’ Dixon said. ‘He’s too strong, too quick off the dribble. He’s an unbelievable player.’

Flynn tied a career-high in points with a dazzling performance on 11-of-17 shooting from the field. But that was of little consolation to the freshman guard, who was one of the more visibly upset Syracuse players in the quiet locker room following the Orange’s 11-point blown lead.

‘We lost the game,’ Flynn said. ‘I don’t really want to talk about what I was doing because it doesn’t really matter.’

For about 37 minutes, it did matter. Flynn paced the Syracuse offense for much of the game with his aggressive mentality. Many times he caught Pittsburgh by surprise, pushing the ball upcourt after made Panthers baskets. More than once, Flynn turned that speed into points.

And the freshman had his shot early, which was an indication of how the day went. Flynn scored six of Syracuse’s first nine points with two 3-pointers.

In the two previous losses to ranked teams Louisville and Notre Dame, Flynn shot 9-for-34 (26.5 percent) from the field and a measly 4-of-19 from beyond the arc.

But Flynn said he worked all week with Syracuse assistant coach Mike Hopkins on his shot and positioning.

‘I felt really good coming into this game with my jump shot,’ Flynn said.

It looked it. Flynn made 4-of-5 3-pointers in the first half alone, those four treys equaling his total in the last two games combined.

‘Jonny was awesome,’ sophomore guard Paul Harris said. ‘He was on fire. I just told him, ‘Keep shooting, your shot will eventually come.’ And it definitely came tonight.’

With Donte Greene setting up shop down low consistently for the first time all season, Flynn was the designated shooter out high, and Pitt couldn’t find a way to stop either freshmen. The two combined for 51 points on 21-of-35 shooting.

‘We played zone, we played man, but he scored against us all the way against each defense,’ Dixon said of Flynn.

Dixon had a solution at the end of the game, though. The Panthers’ head coach planted 6-foot-1, 185-pound guard Ronald Ramon on Flynn in the game’s final four minutes, and Flynn had trouble getting decent looks at the basket.

After Flynn hit two 3-pointers in consecutive trips down the court to keep Syracuse up by 11 with just more than five minutes to go, he took only two more shots in the game’s final five minutes.

His running floater with 1:38 left was a huge basket that made it 77-73 Syracuse, but those were the Orange’s final points of the game.

Flynn said he noticed Ramon’s pressure, but that wasn’t the difference, he said.

‘A couple times I felt like I was open, and I didn’t get the ball,’ Flynn said. ‘We just tightened up at the end. We stopped playing the way we were playing. We stopped playing like what got us the big lead. We started being too conservative.’

Flynn drove the Orange offense for much of the game, so it’s no surprise that his lack of shots in the final minutes of the game coincided with an 18-2 Pitt run to end the game. And regardless if Syracuse played too conservative or passive in the final 3:30 of the game, Flynn did everything he could for SU, with arguably his best effort of the season.

But that didn’t matter to him afterward.

‘I came out a little more aggressive today,’ Flynn said. ‘I had a huge second half, which we needed to put ourselves in position to win the game. And we just lost.’

magelb@syr.edu

Published on March 2, 2008 at 12:00 pm