PITTSBURGH - Syracuse knows what it takes to string six victories together and win the NCAA tournament, so it has some advice for national title hopeful Pittsburgh.

Specifically, the regular season has become virtually meaningless. It's March, and what happened in November, December, January and February means nothing.

The defending national champions proved that Sunday, rebounding from an earlier 21-point loss to Pitt to upset the No. 3 Panthers 49-46 in overtime and end their 40-game home winning streak.

The Orangemen (19-6, 9-5 Big East) not only damaged Pittsburgh's chances of being seeded No. 1 in the conference and NCAA tournaments, they got a badly needed victory that keeps them in the running for a first-round Big East bye. Their fifth victory in six games should greatly improve their NCAA seeding.

"Hopefully, the selection committee will take this and consider it as a big road win against the No. 3 team in the nation," said Hakim Warrick, who scored 17 points. "We were a much better team than the team that got beat by 21 in Syracuse. We really did a good job of sticking to our game and hitting big shots."

None was bigger than Gerry McNamara's 3-pointer with 3:52 remaining in overtime that put Syracuse up 47-44, the only shot he made in nine attempts while being shadowed by Pitt's Julius Page.

McNamara was scoreless in the second half of that 66-45 loss to Pitt on Jan. 24 and again for nearly 30 minutes Sunday, but hit six important free throws and the 3-pointer down the stretch.

"Pitt is the best team in the country from what we've seen," McNamara said. "Pitt and UConn are such good teams, but we feel like we can play with these teams. We just had to go out and do it."

That's the best lesson Syracuse might have taught Pitt in the Panthers' first home loss since Jan. 12, 2002, against Notre Dame. The home-court streak was the second-longest in Division I to Duke's 41 games, and included 34 victories since the Petersen Events Center opened last season.

Still, as McNamara warned: "When tournament time comes around, when March comes around, everyone's level of play is going to rise."

Pitt started 18-0 while playing a soft pre-conference schedule. Now, just when they should be peaking, the Panthers (25-3, 11-3) are showing some weaknesses. They had to rally from 13 down Tuesday to beat Georgetown, which lost to Seton Hall by 27 points Saturday.

Beating Syracuse would have allowed them to effectively wrap up the Big East regular-season title and No. 1 tournament seed by winning Tuesday at Providence. Instead, the Panthers, Friars and Connecticut are tied with two games remaining, and a loss Tuesday might drop Pitt to No. 3 - not in the country, but the Big East tournament.

"It's just one game, but we've got to pick it up," Page said.

Nobody did that on a day the Panthers' top four scorers were a combined 12-for-43. Carl Krauser, held to nine points before fouling out with 1:03 remaining in regulation, and Jaron Brown were 3-for-12, Page was 3-for-10 and Chris Taft was 3-for-9 as Pitt shot only 30.9 percent.

With Krauser sitting out the overtime, reserves Yuri Demetris and Mark McCarroll badly missed 3-point attempts as Pitt was trying to rally. Pitt hadn't scored so few points since a 52-46 loss in double overtime to Penn State in 1982.

"They wanted to keep it low scoring and hope we didn't shoot it well," said Jamie Dixon, who lost at home for the first time and drew his first technical as a head coach. "We'd like to win every game, but our effort was there. We just couldn't seem to make any big plays."