CLEVELAND — Not more than a half hour after disposing of Indiana State on Friday, Syracuse’s players turned to a clear topic of focus when discussing their next opponent in the NCAA Tournament.

SU’s game against Marquette on Sunday in the third round of the Tournament is about ‘revenge.’ It is about a much-improved Orange team avenging its 76-70 loss inside Milwaukee’s Bradley Center on Jan. 29 a game that for Marquette head coach Buzz Williams seems like ‘dog years’ ago. And none of SU’s players, including junior forward Kris Joseph, shied away from the topic at hand.

‘Revenge is sweet,’ Joseph said in front of his locker. ‘You guys are all familiar with what Tupac said.’

In referencing a lyric from the late hip-hop artist, Joseph addressed the elephant in the room. With both teams markedly different from their previous matchup, the third-seeded Orange (27-7) preps to take on its familiar Big East foe in the 11th-seeded Golden Eagles (21-14) at approximately 7:40 p.m. Sunday inside the Quicken Loans Arena.

The last time these two teams squared off, SU was in the midst of its first four-game losing streak in five seasons and just the fourth such streak in Jim Boeheim’s 35-year stint as head coach. Marquette, meanwhile, was also reeling after losing consecutive games during the week at Notre Dame and at home against Connecticut.

But the Golden Eagles exposed an SU zone that struggled mightily during its four-game losing skid. They shot 52.3 percent from the field, including 46.2 percent from beyond the 3-point line. That included the effective game-clinching shot from guard Jimmy Butler.

‘During the four-game stretch, we really just didn’t guard anybody,’ Boeheim said. ‘Our defense was really bad. … Sometimes players, you win a lot of games and they forget how they win the games. And we kind of forgot that our defense was what got us there.’

Syracuse continued to struggle, going 2-2 over its next four games to fall to 7-6 in the conference. Now, the feeling is completely different. The Orange has won seven of its last eight contests — the lone setback coming in overtime in the Big East tournament against a Connecticut team that has won its last six games.

Marquette’s players say they see a renewed confidence in the Orange. Across the benches, Williams sees a better appropriation of minutes by Boeheim. But for Boeheim, the single biggest improvement has come from the recommitment to the zone.

‘We just got away from playing defense, and you can’t do that,’ Boeheim said. ‘We got it back a little bit at the end of the year. I think we’re back to where our defense is much better now than it was during that streak of games.’

And SU’s players believe they have fixed the deficiencies in their games that led to the Orange’s first loss against Marquette.

Last time out, the Golden Eagles attacked the zone to near-perfection. Butler and Darius Johnson-Odom hit 4-of-6 outside shots. And that opened up the inside for Jae Crowder, whom SU forward Rick Jackson said was able to find the ‘dead areas’ within the SU zone.

‘It was just our game plan to attack the zone,’ Crowder said. ‘We knew there were some openings in the zone because of their length. We knew we could get in between, in the middle of the zone.’

But for Syracuse point guard Scoop Jardine, that game was the turning point and the start of the road back to where the Orange currently stands.

‘We found ourselves in that game,’ Jardine said. ‘The better thing about this go-round is that we’re playing better defense, and we know who we are as an offensive team. … We found our identity in that game.’

Now, Syracuse stands as a team that left Williams and his team in silence after they saw the potential of their third-round matchup.

Williams told one of his assistant coaches after an 81-56 shellacking at the hands of Louisville in the quarterfinals of Big East tournament that he was glad he was done playing conference opponents until next December.

Or so he thought. As he and his team watched the selection show last Sunday, they saw their first-round pairing with Xavier on the board. Then …

‘Everybody’s like, ‘Rah, rah, rah,” Williams said. ‘And then the next team that pops up is Syracuse.’

Joseph, for one, is glad his SU squad got a second chance. But this time, in the NCAA Tournament, it’s different.

‘That loss was really what turned our season around,’ Joseph said. ‘If we lose on Sunday, there’s no turning the season around until next November. So we’re hoping to come out on top.’

bplogiur@syr.edu

Published on March 18, 2011 at 12:00 pm