BUFFALO — You play for Syracuse, you know the deal. Adulation and hero worship when you are everything you were touted to be, moans and groans and outright derision when you lose your way and turn into a one-man gang that couldn’t shoot straight.
Welcome to Trevor Cooney’s world.
Cooney entered the NCAA Tournament mired in a horrific 18-for-72 slump from downtown. He happens to be the Orange’s only 3-point threat. Syracuse is probably little more than a Sweet 16 team if Cooney clangs ’em as John Starks did 20 springs ago in Game 7 against the Rockets. And they’re no lock Saturday if there is any way Dayton can summon the same fire and emotion it did for state rival Ohio State. When Cooney is on, he changes everything for the Orange.
“I’m from outside of Philadelphia — Delaware — so I listen to sports radio with those guys, and, I mean, Chase Utley might hit two home runs one game, and then he might go through a stretch where he doesn’t even get a hit,” Cooney said in a corner of the Syracuse locker room after the third-seeded Orange juiced 14th-seeded Western Michigan, 77-53. “Yeah, I mean they’re fans. I’m the same way, and you’re like, ‘All right Chase, let’s get a hit, let’s get a hit.’ It’s just how fans are. When you’re playing well, they’re going to be with you, and when you’re not playing well, they’re going to be pushing you to play well. That’s just how it is. That’s sports for you.”
It is the perfect attitude, the only attitude really, and undoubtedly a big reason why Cooney never stopped believing in himself, in his shot. He would make 4-of-8 from Andy Rautins Country on his way to a game-high 18 points in 27 minutes.
“Growing up, I’m still a huge J.J. Redick fan, and Ray Allen fan, and, I mean, you look at Ray Allen — when they made the finals in Boston, one of the games, there was one time … he went 0-for-8,” Cooney said. “And then he came back and he made six 3s the next day. To be a shooter, sometimes it’s tough. You go through stretches up and down. But at the end of the day, you just got to keep shooting and keep believing the next one’s going to fall for you. And if you treat it like that, you are going to get some good rolls, and you are going to shoot it better.”
What got Cooney going was an emphatically loud coaching lesson from an agitated Jim Boeheim after Cooney missed the first of his seven first-half 3s a little more than two minutes into the game.
“He just pulled me to the side. … He was talking about my form,” Cooney said. “He wanted me to go forward on the shot, and he’s right. When I’m more square going forward, it goes in, like I did with the other ones. So I’m glad he said it.”
A mere 44 seconds later, Cooney drilled his first 3, and the floodgates opened for him.
“He’s been in this business a long time,” Cooney said, and smiled. “He knows what he’s doing.”
Cooney’s right ankle had been a problem. Not Thursday.
“I wasn’t so mad with my shooting at all — it was a lot of times I let my shooting affect other parts of my game,” he said. “I wasn’t as energized as I was offensively or defensively, I wasn’t the leader that I wanted to be. You can’t let it affect you. And a lot of times the ball would just go in and out, in and out, in and out. That’s what’s frustrating sometimes. You just got to keep shooting and keep believing and good things will happen.”
In truth, Syracuse didn’t need the ridiculous home-crowd advantage it enjoyed. The Orange have precocious freshman point guard phenom Tyler Ennis and C.J. Fair and Jerami Grant and that intimidating 2-3 zone to stomp the jittery Broncos. But there is no question Orange Nation breathed a sigh of relief when Cooney awakened from his slumber.
“When I make shots, it opens up a lot of things for other people,” Cooney said.
Someone wanted to know whether Cooney thought the Orange had recaptured the swagger from their 25-0 start.
“It looked like it out there,” he said.