Nearly eight months after its second loss of the season to UMass ended another frustrating season for the Orange, SU will take to the court to open the 2008-09 campaign against a neighborhood opponent in the D-2 LeMoyne Dolphins. Most of us are used to seeing LeMoyne on the schedule, but only in the preseason portion. In fact, this will only be the fifth time (and first since 1994) that SU has matched up against LeMoyne in the regular season.

For The Orange: Look for Jim Boeheim to continue to tinker with his rotation. Rick Jackson started the final preseason game against Indiana University of Pennsylvania over Kristof Ongenaet and recorded nine rebounds in 20 minutes, so the distribution of minutes at the 4 spot will be something to keep an eye on. Apart from that, the starting lineup appears set with Flynn, Devendorf, Harris and Onuaku holding down the other four spots. At the beginning of the season, Mookie Jones turned a few heads with his shooting, but the tide seems to have shifted, as Boeheim has more recently gone on record saying that freshman Kris Joseph will likely have a bigger role on this team than his classmate. Finally, after sitting out last Sunday’s game with an ankle injury, Andy Rautins practiced with the team and had no noticeabe limp by Wednesday.

For The Dolphins: The Dolphins’ attack revolves around junior forward Laurence Ekperigin, the top returning scorer and rebounder from last season, when he posted 17.4 points per game. Ekperigin garnered preseason Division 2 All-American honors from The Sporting News, and posted 18 points in LeMoyne’s last game against the Orange. The Dolphins, surprisingly, have a lot of size and depth in the low post, but they also come into this season losing more than half their scoring production from 2007-08. If Paul Harris is matched up against Ekpergin, the Dolphins won’t have many alternatives.

Bottom Line: LeMoyne played just one tune-up game, losing by 30 to a Georgia Tech team that isn’t projected to make the tournament. Couple that with all the scoring they lost to graduation, and Syracuse should win in a cakewalk, despite Ekpergin’s talent.

TV: 6:30 P.M. on ESPNU

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 15th, 2008 at 1:32 pm by Brian G. . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.