It had been a while since Syracuse played like the team that spent all season ranked in the top five.

During the second half Saturday, the top-seeded Orange looked like that group and maybe even better, pulling away to a 75-59 victory over eighth-seeded Kansas State in the third round of the East Regional.

“The second half, we made shots. We haven’t done that lately,” Orange coach Jim Boeheim said. “Our offense was not good in the first half. We had to pick it up on the offensive end. Our defense was very good the first half. We got killed on the boards. … Second half, we did a much better job on the boards.”

Scoop Jardine had 16 points and eight assists, Dion Waiters had 18 points and James Southerland added 15 for the Orange (33-2), who didn’t wait until the final minutes to seal the win as they did in the second round against 16th-seeded North Carolina-Asheville.

“I think we picked it up on both ends of the floor. Especially on the defensive end, we got what we wanted. We were able to get transition baskets,” said Kris Joseph, who had 11 points. “There was a lot of space on the offensive end. We got open shots, open looks; we knocked ’em down. This is the way I like us to play. Everyone was involved. The scoring balance — it was really balanced tonight. That’s how we’re supposed to play.”

The Orange hadn’t looked that way lately, even in their wins.

Syracuse scored fewer than 70 points — it averages 74.5 — in five of its past seven games. The Orange shot better than 46.5 percent from the field — their mark for the season — only once, and the stretch included 3-point performances of 1 of 15, 5 of 20 and 3 of 14. Against UNC-Asheville, they shot 44.6 percent and 5 of 23 on threes, and that included making one of their first 13.

“We won. We won the game. It don’t matter,” Jardine said. “It don’t matter if we played good or bad. We won and advanced. That’s what this tournament’s about. We saw a lot of upsets. A No. 2 lost to a No.15 seed. That’s what this tournament is about. We don’t worry about how we’re playing; we just worry about getting the W. We’re advancing to the Sweet 16. That’s all that matters when we get there, too.”

Syracuse plays Vanderbilt or Wisconsin in Boston on Thursday night in the regional semifinals.

Rodney McGruder had 15 points for the Wildcats (22-11), who struggled from the field against Syracuse’s 2-3 zone defense.

Neither team had its leading rebounder. Syracuse’s 7-foot Fab Melo, the Big East Defensive Player of the Year, was declared ineligible by the school for the rest of the tournament earlier in the week. About 20 minutes before the start of this game, Kansas State announced Jamar Samuels would be held out over an eligibility issue.

“It was tough playing without him, especially one of our seniors. He’s one of the main leaders of the team,” McGruder said. “It was just tough, you know. It’s tough that he would never get to play another game in a Kansas State uniform. He missed his last game.”

Among those in the crowd at Consol Energy Center was Vice President Joe Biden, who went to law school at Syracuse.

This is Syracuse’s 17th appearance and third time in four years in the round of 16. The Orange, who had already set a school record for wins in a season, were ranked No. 1 for six weeks.

Southerland was 5 of 6 from the field in the second half, and Jardine and Waiters were both 5 of 9.

“It’s all a rhythm thing. James got in a rhythm; Scoop in the second half got in a rhythm. That’s what we want to see,” Joseph said. “We don’t want to take contested shots. We want easy, open shots. That’s what we got.”

With Waiters going 7 of 7 and Joseph 7 of 8, the Orange finished 23 of 29 from the free-throw line, while the Wildcats were 13 of 19.

Rakeem Christmas, who moved into Melo’s spot in the starting lineup, had eight points and 11 rebounds for Syracuse, which shot 66.7 percent in the second half, including making all five of its attempts from behind the 3-point line.

Boeheim, whose 889 wins rank third on the Division I list behind Mike Krzyzewski and Bob Knight, earned his 47th NCAA tournament victory, tied with John Wooden for fifth place.

Jordan Henriquez had 14 points and 17 rebounds for Kansas State, which dominated the rebounding throughout, finishing with a 41-32 advantage. Henriquez had 11 of the Wildcats’ 25 offensive rebounds, but they were able to turn them into only 20 second-chance points.

Henriquez had trouble defensively and had to sit for 4 minutes in the second half because of foul trouble.

“They dragged me away from the rim,” he said. ” When I did contest, they usually got into my body, hit me with a pump fake, drew a couple fouls on me early in the second half.”

— Associated Press —

Frank Martin watched freshman point guard Angel Rodriguez flub his way through the first half against Southern Miss Thursday and tried to keep his sanity.

At one point, the always animated Martin feared Rodriguez and his fellow freshmen were “going to make me cry on national TV.”

Tears of joy, maybe.

Rodriguez overcame his early jitters to score seven of his 13 points in the final 2 minutes, 10 seconds as the eighth-seeded Wildcats surged past the ninth-seeded Golden Eagles 70-64 at the NCAA tournament.

Martin called it no coincidence that Rodriguez — who airballed a couple of shots early and gave it away three times — was the player with the ball in his hands and the season on the line.

“It’s not like I trust him with 10 minutes to go and not trust him with two minutes to go,” Martin said. “I’ve got tremendous faith in him. That’s why you saw him out there making the plays he made towards the end of the game.”

Southern Miss, making its first NCAA appearance in 21 years, pulled within 62-59 on a steal and dunk by Darnell Dodson with 2:34 to play.

Rodriguez, handed the starting job in January after the Wildcats got off to a slow start in Big 12 play, calmly dribbled on the wing after a timeout then slipped past two defenders before hitting a nifty reverse layup.

Kansas State’s defense tightened up, and Rodriguez nailed five free throws in the final 57 seconds to send the Wildcats into Saturday’s matchup against Syracuse, which beat UNC Asheville 72 -65.

“We were fortunate to take the punch and stop the bleeding by making another run,” Rodriguez said

Rodney McGruder led Kansas State (22-10) with 30 points — including 18 in the first half when the Wildcats could muster little else — and center Jordan Henriquez added 15 points, nine rebounds and six blocks for Kansas State, which won its opening NCAA game for the third straight year.

“We’ve elevated our program to one of the better programs in the country,” Martin said. “We have been in this thing consistently. I don’t know how many people can claim they’ve been in it four out of five years.”

Certainly not Southern Miss (25-9), making its third tournament appearance since the program moved to Division I in 1972-73.

The Golden Eagles overcame some early jitters to build a five-point lead midway through the second half but couldn’t win in coach Larry Eustachy’s return to the game’s biggest stage.

“We just didn’t make the plays,” Eustachy said. “We didn’t execute the things we needed to do, particularly in critical situations.”

Neil Watson led the Golden Eagles with 16 points, and LaShay Page had 15. Kentucky transfer Darnell Dodson scored all 14 of his points in the second half, but Southern Miss fell to 0-3 in NCAA play by wilting during a critical stretch midway through the second half.

The Golden Eagles had all the momentum after a Dodson 3-pointer gave them a 45-40 lead.

Kansas State responded with a 18-6 run led by McGruder and Henriquez, who combined for 13 points during the burst, including a 3-pointer by McGruder that hit every inch of the rim before rolling in.

Southern Miss made one last run but couldn’t extend Eustachy’s revival act through the weekend.

The former Iowa State coach led the Cyclones to a pair of Big 12 titles over a decade ago before his stunning downfall. He resigned in 2003 shortly after photos of him partying with students surfaced.

Eustachy went to rehabilitation to treat alcoholism and found a job at Southern Miss in 2004, where he’s slowly built the program into a Conference USA contender by providing a home for cast-offs from other programs and junior college transfers.

The Golden Eagles repaid Eustachy’s patience by leading the program to the tournament for the first time since Brett Favre was still in school, but Southern Miss had trouble all game overcoming the bigger, tougher Wildcats.

No Wildcat was bigger or tougher than Henriquez. The 6-foot-11 center dominated the lane, swatting six shots and altering a handful of others.

He wasn’t too bad on the other end of the floor either. Henriquez — a 52 percent free-throw shooter — made 9-of-10 at the line to give McGruder some help after a first half in which McGruder singlehandedly kept Kansas State in front.

It’s the way Martin expected Henriquez to play all season. There were flashes of brilliance last fall before Henriquez got “a little full of himself” according to his coach. Though never technically in the doghouse, Henriquez slumped during most of the Big 12 season before finding his footing in the last two weeks.

Brimming with confidence, Henriquez provided a presence in the middle that let the guys in front of him play aggressively knowing he would erase mistakes. His long arms made every Southern Miss foray into the lane a difficult task and he wasn’t too bad at the other end of the floor either.

A 52 percent free-throw shooter on the season, Henriquez made 9-of-10 at the line to help send the Wildcats rolling into the third round.

“We have to do what I told the team,” Martin said. “We got to be on a bunch of one-game winning streaks. That’s all we got to do.”

— Associated Press —