Sluggish Syracuse Quickly Bounced

Texas A& M Shuts Down McNamara

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., March 16 -- They expended so much energy to reach this point that Syracuse arrived here at the NCAA tournament with nothing left. The same team that ran off four consecutive wins in the Big East Tournament took the court Thursday night against 12th-seeded Texas A&M and played lifelessly, as if already content with the achievements of the past week.

The happy result for Texas A&M was a 66-58 first-round win that came so easily it sometimes seemed too good to be true. The Aggies (22-8) jumped ahead early, led by nine at halftime and then withstood a brief run from fifth-seeded Syracuse (23-12). In their first tournament appearance in almost two decades, the Aggies held Syracuse star Gerry McNamara to two points -- tied for his career low -- and earned a second-round game against LSU on Saturday.

"We played well and we kept control of the game," Texas A&M Coach Billy Gillespie said. "This is exactly what we wanted to show people."

Texas A&M got into the tournament as a bubble team, but it quickly proved it belonged in the field. The Aggies' methodical, half-court offense usually resulted in easy shots against the Syracuse zone. Guard Acie Law led all scorers with 23 points, and forward Joseph Jones scored 12.

"You could sense they were getting frustrated with what we were doing," Law said. "We got under their skin a little bit. We did a good job of attacking and stealing rebounds. That got to them."

The Aggies' greatest accomplishment, though, came on defense. In his final college game, McNamara performed more like the player tagged overrated than the one Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim so vehemently defended last week in New York.

The senior guard spent the final three minutes of the game on the bench, with his head buried in a towel. He played only 23 minutes, in part because of a sore groin, and generally looked like a shadow of the player who made back-to-back, last second three-pointers in wins over Cincinnati and Connecticut last week.

"I'm not going to make excuses and he's not going to make excuses," said Boeheim, who wouldn't say if McNamara was hurt. "If you watched the game, you know why he wasn't in there."

Ironically, Syracuse only made the game competitive when McNamara came out of the game. The Aggies maintained a double-digit lead for most of the second half, but Eric Devendorf hit a three-pointer to cut the lead to four with less than two minutes to go. Syracuse, though, turned the ball over on its next three possessions, and the Aggies made 11 of 12 free throws in the final three minutes to seal the game.

· LSU 80, IONA 64: Louisiana State's 6-foot-9 Glen Davis outlasted and out-pushed practically the entire Iona team down the stretch, scoring 17 of his 22 points in the second half to propel fourth-seeded LSU over a pesky Iona team that led by five at halftime. The Tigers advanced in the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2000.

"We made a commitment to get the ball to Glen in the second half, and that's what established us offensively," LSU Coach John Brady said. "When he gets going in there, he's obviously tough to stop physically."

The Gaels forced 12 turnovers in the first half, many caused by feisty guard Ricky Soliver, voted the best defender in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. Guard Steve Burtt scored 16 of his 23 points before the break.

But even put together, Soliver and Burtt -- who combined for more than half of Iona's total points this season -- barely weigh as much as Davis. And eventually, he squashed them.

"He's a load down there," Soliver said. "I didn't really know anybody could be that big."