A 0-for-17 first-half performance from 3-point range made Seton Hall head coach Kevin Willard reach for an obscure movie reference. The only way he could describe his team’s dismal shooting performance was to baffle the assembled media with his reference of the 2004 comedy ‘Along Came Polly.’ He had never seen anything like it.

‘I don’t know if I have seen a 0-for-17 ever, especially not in a half,’ Willard said following Syracuse’s 61-56 win over his Pirates on Jan. 8. ‘We watched a little (game) film (at halftime), saw our shots, and it comes from the movie ‘Along Came Polly’: ‘You just got to keep letting it rain.’ And, s***, eventually you are going to hit one of them.’

The Pirates bombed away in an ugly first half against Syracuse, missing 17 3-pointers in the Prudential Center, much like Phillip Seymour Hoffman clanged bricks off a metal playground backboard in the 2004 film.

What made it more frustrating was the fact that if Seton Hall made a few of those 17 3-pointers, the Pirates would have been in a position to upset then-No. 4 Syracuse. As much as Seton Hall struggled, the Orange did as well, scoring a season-low 20 first-half points.

‘On offense, we didn’t help ourselves,’ said SU point guard Scoop Jardine after that game. ‘We needed to get in the lane against this team, and we didn’t do that.’

In the second matchup of the season between No. 9 Syracuse (18-2, 5-2 Big East) and the Pirates (8-12, 2-6), Willard hopes his defense will be able to force the Orange into another 30 percent shooting performance like it did in the first half of the initial meeting.

The Big East bottom-feeder Pirates have lost three straight games since defeating DePaul right after the loss to SU. And if they can’t ruffle Syracuse in the first half again, their chances in the Carrier Dome on Tuesday (7 p.m.) are slim.

For its part, the Orange handed Seton Hall a pile of mistakes that the Pirates used to stay in the game. SU shot 1-of-8 from 3-point range in the first half in that last meeting. It made 17-of-36 free throws in the game. And it had a paltry outing on the glass, as two Pirates (Herb Pope and Jeff Robinson) combined to outrebound the entire Orange team 34-32.

‘We never felt like we were out of the game,’ Willard said. ‘We just felt we couldn’t shoot the basketball very well.’

The absence of All-Big East shooting guard Jeremy Hazell helped contribute to the Pirates’ shooting woes on Jan. 8. Hazell missed SHU’s first game with the Orange, as well as 12 other games, while out with a broken wrist.

He suffered the injury Nov. 19 in the Pirates’ game against Alabama. When out with the injury, the Harlem native Hazell was shot in the side on Dec. 26 while walking home in the early morning hours.

Since his return in the Pirates’ first game following the initial Syracuse contest on Jan. 12 against DePaul, the trigger-happy Hazell has averaged 15.5 points per game. Prior to the injury, Hazell averaged 24 points per game on 12.7 shots per game. He is currently averaging 19.1 points on the season overall.

With the senior Hazell back in the lineup, the Pirates will again be anything but coy when shooting over the Orange’s 2-3 zone. It will be amplified even more with Hazell back.

SU sophomore guard Brandon Triche, who carried the Orange to its first win against the Pirates with 15 second-half points, recognized that SU faltered against the 3-point shooting of Villanova on Saturday. But he is not worried about the problem worsening against Seton Hall. SU’s current slump was bound to happen.

‘It’s fine,’ Triche said Saturday of SU’s current two-game losing streak. ‘Last year we slipped up a few times in March. This time it is in January.’

The slump is still a slump, though, and Hazell and the Pirates could pose a threat with their free-shooting mindset. They will continue to heed the advice of Willard’s movie reference. With Hazell back, their fortunes should improve.

Willard is glad to have his star back. He got that across Jan. 8, not with a movie reference but with a smile. He looked up from the podium and said three simple words when asked if he was looking forward to Hazell’s return.

Said Willard: ‘Yes I am.’

aolivero@syr.edu

Published on January 24, 2011 at 12:00 pm