With SU facing some major question marks and a Memphis team full of talent, the Orange brushed both aside Saturday night. It isn’t often that a team can shoot 12-26 from the charity stripe, get outrebounded by 9 and still win against a tough opponent in their own house, but that’s just what Syracuse did. With Devo on the sidelines, Andy Rautins slid into the shooting guard spot and held it down capably.

A little more unforeseen was Rick Jackson supplanting Kristof Ongenaet’s position as starting power forward. I’ve been particularly sour about Ongenaet continuing to get starts despite all the slow first halves. LVO and I had come to the conclusion that he was going to start all year while playing limited minutes a la Craig Forth whether we liked it or not, so at least for me this was a breath of fresh air.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see if this was simply a case of Jim Boeheim trying to match up with Memphis’ huge frontcourt or if it’s something more permanent. I suppose another possibility is that Boeheim felt uncomfortable starting an offensive vacuum in Ongenaet with Hakim Warrick, one of the best to ever hold down that spot, looking on.

Even on a down night, I think Rick is miles ahead of Kristof and has much more to offer. Despite AO’s size, he hasn’t been especially foul-prone, so Jim Boeheim might be able to afford playing both AO and Jackson more often at the same time. If Jackson keeps learning quickly, such a frontcourt could be more formidable than any for Syracuse since Otis Hill and John Wallace anchored the back of the zone nearly 15 years ago.

Rick was arguably the most important player of the game tonight, posting 14 points, 7 boards and 2 blocks in a career-high 28 minutes of action. Arinze Onuaku had a tough night on offense; I chalk that up to a combination of being overmatched and the Orange making some despicably ugly entry passes. Saturday was a funky night for AO. We saw him airball a free throw (ok, that’s not that out of the ordinary) and even bring the ball up the court on one possession. I digress. With Arinze putting the “AO” in “AWOL,” someone had to produce in the post and Boeheim was not about to treat 300-lb. center Pierre Henderson-Niles to a plate of Belgian waffles.

A lot was made of Jonny Flynn’s hip injury, but any SU fan knows that if the kid could walk, Boeheim was going to run him hard as if there was nothing wrong, and that’s exactly what he did. In a flashback to last season’s Big East schedule, Flynn played the entire game and had a huge role in getting the Orange back in the game when it fell behind 19-9. He finished with a great line of 24 points and 6 assists and dared to push the ball in transition against Memphis’ quick backcourt, achy hip and all. Paul Harris had a typical game when you look at his stat line, but he sank a huge three pointer that really put the Tigers on the ropes.

Defensively, SU returned to its zone defense calling card and Memphis just couldn’t shoot the ‘Cuse out of it. It wasn’t that the Tigers weren’t gunshy, but their shots simply weren’t falling. Boeheim was quoted as saying the thought of playing man defense never once entered his head, and I certainly don’t blame him. Score one for the advanced scouting crew. When the opposition puts up an astounding 33 treys and sinks just seven, there is absolutely no reason to go man-to-man. In the grander scope, those three point attempts comprised nearly half of Memphis’ field goal tries. John Calipari has a tendency to be as subborn on offensive philosophy as Boehiem is in defensive philosophy, so the fact that Calipari didn’t make a halftime adjustment wasn’t very surprising to me.

Looking ahead to Monday, Coppin State will pay a visit to the Dome before the Orange go on a weeklong break before conference play begins. The Eagles are bottom of the barrel material, so hopefully SU can get off to a hot start and give Jonny and company a rest.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 21st, 2008 at 12:10 am 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.