By John Kekis
The Associated Press

SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Oklahoma guard Hollis Price searched and searched, but he rarely found a gap in Syracuse's zone defense. The Orangemen are planning an encore performance for T.J. Ford and the Texas Longhorns.

There might be a snag this time, though. The Sooners had only a day to prepare for the Orangemen's 2-3 zone. The Longhorns (26-6) will have had nearly a week before they play Syracuse (28-5) on Saturday in the national semifinals.

"I think preparation time will help, for sure. That's definitely going to be a factor," Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said before practice Tuesday. "And I think they're a better offensive team than Oklahoma, by a lot.

"I think Oklahoma's strength is their defense and the quickness of their guards, and our zone negated that a little bit," said Boeheim, who's making his third trip to the Final Four in 27 years at Syracuse. "Texas is a much better offensive team. They shoot much better from the perimeter, and I think they rebound it better. And they have a great point guard. They'll be much more prepared with the week."

Having Rick Barnes as coach certainly won't hurt. He saw plenty of zone when he coached Providence in the Big East.

"It's a big zone; I don't think we've played against a zone like that," Barnes said. "Their athleticism has a lot do with it. And they can run out of it. We've got the concepts that we try to apply against the zone. We try to get penetration and knock down shots. You've got to have a lot of things going. It takes more than one guy."

The main guy will be Ford, who won the Naismith Award as the top player in the country. Ford, a 5-foot-10 point guard, leads the Longhorns in scoring (15 points a game) and assists (7.5), and last year he was the first freshman in NCAA history to lead the nation in assists (8.27).

This game will present a different challenge for him, though.

"They haven't really gone up against our zone. In the Big 12, they play a lot of man-to-man," Syracuse freshman point guard Billy Edelin said. "They'll try to come out ready, but just like they can prepare, we have a chance to prepare for them, too, so it should be a battle."

Indeed. Price and the Sooners seldom made it past the long arms of Syracuse's trio of 6-foot-8 players - Hakim Warrick, Carmelo Anthony, and Jeremy McNeil - and 6-6 Kueth Duany. And it didn't take the Sooners long to realize it would be a long afternoon. They were whistled for a shot-clock violation on their second possession.

Despite Syracuse's 63-47 win over Oklahoma, the Longhorns are confident. They beat the Sooners twice and made it this far by defeating Connecticut in the regional semifinals. And the Huskies slammed Syracuse, once during the season and again in the Big East tournament.

"We work against a zone every day, because we know there's times people can throw it against us," Barnes said. "Our players feel like they can play against zone, and I'm not going to do anything to let them think otherwise."

Texas is the only No. 1 seed in the Final Four, and the Longhorns like their chances in New Orleans. But the Orangemen have a little history on their side: The Longhorns have never won a national semifinal. Texas lost in the Final Four in 1947, when the NCAA tournament field had just eight teams.

The last time the Longhorns played an NCAA tournament game in New Orleans, they were knocked out by Temple in the first round. Everybody spent the week leading up to that game concentrating on the Temple matchup zone, to no avail.

"It depends how they're attacking us, whether their main goal is to get a shot or to get a shot with rebound position," Boeheim said. "The two ways to beat a zone are to get good shots, which you make, and rebounding. You can do both, but it can be difficult to do both, and we try to make it difficult to do both."