PITTSBURGH — Down low, one team shielded space while the other yielded space. One team pulled down rebounds as the other pulled itself out of the game with turnovers. While one team chalked up second-chance points, the other only talked about getting a second chance.

The case study in contrasts left Syracuse with a definitive answer that it’s still a few shipments of grit and muscle from the Big East’s top rung.

Experienced No. 2 Pittsburgh, 14-1 overall, 4-0 in the league for the first time, displayed a defensive know-how that the Orangemen couldn’t match, and that was demonstrated convincingly in SU’s 73-60 loss before 12,508 at the Petersen Events Center.

‘Our offense just wasn’t good enough today,’ SU head coach Jim Boeheim said, ‘and the majority of the reason for that is Pittsburgh is just very experienced and very, very good defensively. We hadn’t faced anyone as physical as Pittsburgh is.

‘If they’re not the best defensive team in the country, they’re pretty close to it.’

Syracuse (11-2, 2-1 Big East), which entered with the fifth-best scoring offense in the country, mustered its lowest point total of the season. Meanwhile, the Panthers continued to assert themselves with a defense that’s on pace to become the stingiest in Big East history.

That defense limited SU to just 45 field-goal attempts. It forced the Orangemen into a season-high 20 turnovers. It held superfrosh Carmelo Anthony to a super-pedestrian 14 points and three rebounds.

‘In our locker room before the game,’ Anthony said, ‘our coach said Pitt was going to play physical. So they started throwing ‘bows, and I got out of sync a little bit.’

So did Anthony’s teammates. Syracuse couldn’t find a third scoring option — let alone a primary or secondary option — in part because the rash of turnovers kept the offense from settling in.

Pesky 6-foot-4 guard Jaron Brown spent his time on defense attached to Anthony like an umbilical cord. He snagged eight rebounds and rarely let Syracuse’s leading scorer beat him off the dribble.

‘(Brown) was out there, playing real aggressive, real scrappy,’ said forward Hakim Warrick, who scored 11 points — four of which came in the final two minutes, when the game was already decided. ‘He’s all over you the whole game. He was able to get a few rebounds nobody thought he could get.’

The Panthers held a 35-27 edge on the boards, mostly because of a 15-8 discrepancy in offensive rebounding. In fact, when the Orangemen bolted away to an early 19-12 lead, offensive rebounds pumped Pittsburgh back into the game.

Senior Donatas Zavackas followed a Brown miss for a layup that put Pitt up, 24-22. One minute later, Julius Page — who finished with a career-high 25 points — poured in back-to-back 3-pointers, and the previously quieted Pitt student section rose into a bouncing throng.

The performances of Page, Zavackas and Chevon Troutman — who combined to equal the entire Syracuse offensive output — offset the lackluster outing from Brandin Knight. Pitt’s star point guard was stonewalled into his first scoreless game of the season. But it didn’t matter.

‘We have so much depth,’ Pittsburgh coach Ben Howland said. ‘You can’t say, ‘If we stop Brandin, then you’ll beat Pittsburgh.’ To stop Pittsburgh, you have to stop a lot of guys.’

Syracuse did plenty to stop itself.

The SU deficit swelled to double digits in the second half, when Troutman, who made 10 of his 12 shots, swiped the ball from Anthony and converted a gimme layup.

One timeout and two possessions later, Panther freshman Carl Krauser forced yet another turnover, swerved down the court and dished a no-look pass to Page, who finished the play with an emphatic dunk.

‘I think we’ll get better, but at this stage we just didn’t handle the defensive effort that Pitt made,’ Boeheim said. ‘They forced us into some things that we really didn’t want to do.’

Converting points from turnovers, Pittsburgh had 33. Syracuse? Just 11.

‘Am I surprised we didn’t win?’ SU center Craig Forth asked. ‘No. Not when you have 20 turnovers. Not when you look at the stat sheet. Not when I have one rebound. We played hard the whole game, but not well.’

Published on January 20, 2003 at 12:00 pm