Scoop Jardine smiled as he put an eventual 48-point dismantling — the largest margin of victory in the 32-year history of the Big East conference — into painful perspective.

With SU up by 31 points against a DePaul team with only 30 of its own, Jardine chuckled as he backpedaled to the free-throw line for an and-one opportunity. Following a made fast-break layup during which Jardine was fouled by Blue Demon junior guard Jeremiah Kelly, a three-word dig provided all the perspective Kelly and the Blue Demons needed.

‘Come on,’ Jardine said to a dejected Kelly. ‘Please.’

Jardine’s smile never seemed to dissipate on a night when his longtime teammate and friend, Rick Jackson, departed the Carrier Dome for good on Senior Day. Jackson tied Jardine for the team-high in points on the night with 14.

There was no reason for the smile to fade. Plain and simple: Syracuse embarrassed DePaul 107-59 in a laugher that only amplified in ridiculousness as the game went on. Each of the 10 players who entered in the first half for Syracuse dominated his counterpart in a complete team annihilation. And if the smiles on Jardine and the usually stoic Jim Boeheim didn’t speak to the obliteration, the gravity of the stats did.

No. 12 SU (25-6, 12-6 Big East) ended the game shooting a ludicrous 71 percent from the field and 78 percent from 3-point range. In the regular-season finale win in front of 28,086 in the Dome, Syracuse scored 57 first-half points — the most the team has scored in the first half since Dec. 5, 2009, against Maine. In the first half, all 10 of SU’s players scored. DePaul tallied only seven defensive rebounds in the game.

No contest. TKO. The game was over right as it started, as SU rolled from the tip. Postgame, DePaul first-year head coach Oliver Purnell couldn’t muster much.

‘Once they got on a roll,’ Purnell said, ‘that was it.’

The win secured Syracuse a No. 4 seed and a double-bye in next week’s Big East tournament at Madison Square Garden, which starts Tuesday. The Orange will open up play at 2 p.m. on Thursday against the winner of a second-round game between fifth-seeded St. John’s and the winner of Seton Hall vs. Rutgers.

But Saturday afternoon, the Orange romped in the moment. With reckless abandon, SU starting guards Jardine and Brandon Triche torched an aloof DePaul defense with easy dribble-drives. The scouting report assembled by Gerry McNamara, SU’s graduate assistant, worked as the defensive Achilles heel of DePaul ruptured. Through a week of watching film, it became apparent to McNamara that the Blue Demons couldn’t defend if not planted in front of SU’s guards, applying Purnell’s brand of ball pressure out of a solid foundation.

All game, the Orange screened DePaul until it was completely lost. Attacks from the likes of Jardine, Triche and Kris Joseph to the basket weren’t challenged. The undersized Blue Demons seemed as if they weren’t even there.

The result of that scouting report was a scoring exhibition and the most lopsided win in conference history.

‘We knew that they wouldn’t hedge as good (defensively on screens),’ Triche said. ‘They were going to put pressure. We knew they weren’t as good helping. We were going to put pressure by penetrating.’

Offensively, the guards did whatever they wanted to whoever they wanted. So did everyone else, as maligned freshman center Fab Melo even lit up the tiny Blue Demons for a season-high 10 points on 100 percent shooting. Reserve wings Mookie Jones and James Southerland added nine and seven points, respectively.

Former walk-on Brandon Reese scored four of his own. All 17 players on SU’s roster saw time, and against DePaul’s regulars in the final five minutes of the game, SU’s walk-ons even played DePaul close. DePaul only outscored an SU lineup sprinkled with SU’s 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th players, 7-4.

When SU walk-ons Matt Lyde-Cajuste, Nick Resavy, Griffin Hoffmann, Nolan Hart and Russ DeRemer entered the game periodically over the course of the final three minutes, the game was a game for only that final stretch. The other 37 minutes, the embarrassment for DePaul — in what may have been Syracuse’s best game of the year — was ultimate.

And the one thing Purnell longed for postgame wasn’t there all day. Any element of stopping SU was a pipe dream in the worst statistical nightmare in Big East history.

Said Purnell: ‘We could’ve given them some more resistance.’

aolivero@syr.edu

Published on March 4, 2011 at 12:00 pm