NEW YORK – Twelve times Thursday night, Hakim Warrick found himself unable to jump over a crowd or slip through a backdoor screen for an alley-oop. He could only stand and analyze the 15 feet of clear space leading to an unguarded basket.

Twelve times, Warrick shot rather aimlessly and awkwardly, fixing his eyes on the floor immediately after each shot, as if he could not bear to witness the result.

Ten of his 12 free throws clanked off the rim, and Warrick could barely speak afterward, knowing that his free-throw shooting doomed his Syracuse team in its final game of the season. In front of what appeared to be no more than 1,000 fans at tip-off, the Orangemen lost, 65-54, to Temple in the consolation game of the NIT at Madison Square Garden.

‘I felt like I really hurt the team this game,’ Warrick said. ‘Missing free throws like that pretty much was the game for them. This is my lowest point of the season. It’s a tough way to end.’

Warrick, a freshman, spearheaded a dismal free-throw shooting night for Syracuse, which made just 8 of 21 from the line. None, though, were more costly than the four Warrick missed early in the second half during a 15-point Temple run that proved to be the difference.

Down 33-30, Syracuse came out of a timeout and fed Warrick inside. The freshman took the ball up amid a pack of big men and came down with the chance to shoot two free throws. As the Temple student section screamed in appreciation of the call – Warrick had already missed 5 of 6 – he missed both off the right side of the rim.

With his team down two more points a possession later, Warrick grabbed an errant DeShaun Williams three-pointer and took it toward the basket. This time, Temple’s Brian Polk whacked him on the arm. Again, Warrick missed both.

‘Hakim learned a lesson, I hope, tonight,’ Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘You miss 10 free throws in a game that is going to be this close, it’s too big to overcome. He makes his free throws, we’re in there, and the game comes down to the last shot. It was just a game of horrendous free-throw shooting.’

Not for Temple. The Owls made 20 of 23 from the line, including all six during the 15-point run that produced a 41-30 lead with 12 minutes to play.

Temple maintained the lead by utilizing a smaller lineup to face Syracuse’s zone defense. Head coach John Chaney took out space-eaters Kevin Lyde and Ron Rollerson, instead using four or even five players whom could shoot from the outside.

The smaller lineup also helped Temple break Syracuse’s full-court press, which it used for parts of the second half. Temple’s David Hawkins evaded the pressure particularly well, using his quickness to dribble around Syracuse’s Preston Shumpert and James Thues.

‘I’ve always been deceptively quick,’ Hawkins said. ‘But when we went small, we had smaller guys in there that could penetrate towards the middle of the zone and then move out and shoot the three-pointers.’

Syracuse could not counter with the same. Shumpert was the Orangemen’s lone offensive weapon, scoring 21 points. DeShaun Williams and Kueth Duany, Syracuse’s second and third options, shot 5 of 15 and 2 of 9, respectively, for a total of 20 points.

‘Those two guys at the beginning of the year were shooting almost 40 percent from the three-point line and almost 50 percent from the field,’ Boeheim said. ‘And that’s when we were winning. And they’ve just struggled over the last part of the year, and really there’s no explanation for it. Defenses are the same. That’s hurt us.’

Thursday night, poor free throw shooting was even more perplexing. ‘Free throw shooting was a big difference,’ Chaney said. ‘If they had made a few more of those, the game would have been the flip of a coin.’

‘Nothing I can really do about it now I guess,’ Warrick said. ‘It’s just one of the things we’ll have to fix before next season.’

Published on April 1, 2002 at 12:00 pm