ALBANY — The Prophet soaked in his success here yesterday, smiling for the TV lights, celebrating for photographers and playfully performing all those other acts that make him the media’s Wonder Boy.

Even when a reporter hit Carmelo Anthony with a question he dodged the last two weeks, the prized freshman’s ears perked. Syracuse’s heart beats, after all, at his pace. When he plays well, the Orangemen play well. When he gets excited, they do, too.

So when he recalls his declaration, they must, too.

Remember, Carmelo, that guarantee you made after Syracuse’s win at Notre Dame on March 4? Remember how you said, ‘You heard it from my mouth: If we get a No. 3 seed, get your Final Four tickets’?

Of course you do.

‘You were the one I told that to,’ Anthony said, referencing the story that appeared in this paper.

The Prophet paused and grinned.

‘I came through,’ he said.

And he did so with gusto, something we’ve come to expect. He scored 20 points and grabbed 10 rebounds and made good on his guarantee as the No. 3-seeded SU men’s basketball team advanced to the NCAA Tournament’s Final Four with a 63-47 win over Oklahoma.

‘Whoever said we weren’t gonna go, they’ve got to eat their words,’ SU guard Kueth Duany said. ‘Carmelo was 100 percent right.’

He let the world know yesterday. He threw Final Four T-shirts into the crowd after the game. In a postgame press conference, he showed up with a freshly sheared net pulled snugly over his backward Final Four hat.

But Anthony left everyone wondering again, remaining mum on whether he’ll jump to the NBA after this year.

‘This is my first Final Four,’ Anthony said. ‘And, hopefully, it won’t be my last.’

Anthony’s roommate, SU guard Billy Edelin, knows Anthony’s routine and called him ‘a big kid.’

‘He better be thanking us,’ Edelin joked about Anthony’s guarantee, ‘because people would be getting on his back right about now if we’d lost.

‘(Making the Final Four) probably justified why he came to college. All that he wanted to come for was this.’

Anthony’s play early yesterday showed why. Though he’s struggled in the first half of late, he scored 12 points in that half against Oklahoma.

‘He hadn’t played a full great game, but he did that,’ Duany said. ‘He made a couple jump shots early that he hadn’t made. That got our juices flowing early.’

Like always, he led and they followed. Anthony’s energy sparked the Orangemen, who stretched their lead to as many as 18 points in the second half by relying on Anthony to dismantle the Sooners’ man-to-man defense.

Perhaps that’s why, during an interview with CBS earlier in the weekend, oft-curmudgeonly SU head coach Jim Boeheim told Anthony, ‘I love you.’

‘I was shocked,’ Anthony said.

Well, Anthony’s shocked everybody. Not so much with his game as with his brash demeanor, unfitting of a freshman.

‘A lot of people say freshmen can’t take a team to the Final Four,’ he said. ‘But we did it.’

For now, Anthony’s days as The Prophet are finished. His guarantee brought the Orangemen this far. The rest, of course, still depends on him.

Darryl Slater is an assistant sports editor at The Daily Orange, where his columns appear regularly. E-mail him at dpslater@syr.edu.

Published on March 30, 2003 at 12:00 pm