Despite a late second-half comeback, the Orange put West Virginia away at the Dome. The victory was keyed by a big 24-11 run in the second half, though couple other very important things ignited the Orange, in no particular order:

1. Kristof played undoubtedly his best game of the season.

With AO still hurting, Boeheim wasn’t going to dictate a game plan where Kris Joseph gets a lot of time just because WVU is undersized. I’m normally one of KO’s harshest critics, but I have to give credit where credit is due. The image of Ongenaet most fans have in their head does not involve him blocking threes, but sure enough, he got out on the perimeter, blocking a long ball in addition to a swat on a Da’Sean Butler layup. He also had a thundrous dunk on an assist from Paul Harris that brought the crowd to its feet. You could say that he was the noise to Devo and Flynn’s funk. Wednesday night’s performance means that Saturday’s game against Villanova could provide a major opportunity for Ongenaet to reclaim some minutes in the rotation. Well done.

2. The return of the Paul Harris we know and love.

Harris awoke from a three-game slumber at the opening tip, and West Virginia had no answers when he crashed the boards, notching a double-double about a minute into the second half. I wouldn’t go as far as Doris Burke went and compare him to Lebron James AND Dwight Howard (really, Doris?), but he definitely appears to be back.  Along with Flynn and Devo, Harris blew through West Virginia’s defense as if it was a revolving door.

Looking ahead to Saturday, Syracuse returns to the commonplace routine of playing ranked teams in the Big East when it heads to Philadelphia to face Villanova. Will Ongenaet make me eat crow once again and crush the Wildcats with his thumb? Will Rick Jackson have a big game in front of his home crowd? Is Scoop bringing plaid back and, more importantly, whose cheesesteaks does he prefer, Pat’s or Geno’s? I’ll leave you with the top gems from Doris Burke:

-According to Allen Hopkins, though it may have been O’Brien telling the story, Doris believes that Harris looks just like Dwight Howard from the back. Right. Nevermind that he’s 6’5 and has long hair.

-This one came with about five minutes remaining in the first half for the DVR crowd. It probably isn’t what it sounded like (a horn blared for subs mid-sentence), but I could’ve sworn she said “the most likely suspect to rape someone across the face might be Cam Thoroughman.” Thoroughman’s pretty badass, but I’m not quite ready to put him on that plane.

-Of course, the soon-to-be-infamous “Devendorf can smell deuces” line, around the 13-minute mark of the second half.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 at 10:53 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.