After topping Marquette Saturday, the ‘Cuse makes its annual trek to Manhattan for the conference tournament (pardon me…”Championship”). For the first time in four years, the Orange doesn’t need to make a big splash at the Garden to force the selection committee’s hand.

No one can keep the ‘Cuse out of the Big Dance this year, no miracle run is necessary, but there is still work to be done as the Orange jostles with its seeding fate. As it stands, SU is seeded as either a 5 or 6 seed, depending on whose projections you look at, with a few outlying negative nancies pegging the Orange with a 7 seed.

There was a lot of talk about the week in MSG expanding to include all 16 Big East teams. Fortunately, as far as SU is concerned, the expansion is moot since the Orange won’t play in the first round. After its first-round bye, the ‘Cuse will face off against the winner of the Tuesday nightcap between USF and Seton Hall, two teams who SU disposed of early on in the conference schedule.

The Hall came into the Dome on January 30 and Andy Rautins sent the Pirates scrambling to find a fire extinguisher. Rautins shot a stunning 7-10 from beyond the arc and was one of five Orange players who tallied double figures in a 100-76 victory.

The Pirates’ best victory of conference play was a 65-60 victory over the Hoyas. They picked up some steam with a five-game winning streak, but those victories came against GTown, Rutgers, St. John’s, Rutgers again and DePaul. The Pirates are one of those teams that would need a hot shooting night from Eugene Harvey, Jeremy Hazell and company coupled with a lid on the rim at the other end to advance. We’ve all seen those types of games, but we also know they aren’t probable. 

On January 2nd, SU had a hard time holding off the Bulls in Tampa, but escaped with a 59-54 victory. USF is in the bottom rung of teams whose presence in Manhattan this week is a direct result of the tournament’s expansion. Lacking any semblance of an offensive attack, USF likes to keep things slow and lull the opposition to sleep. Not surprisingly, that strategy hasn’t done the job in the deeply talented and brute Big East as the Bulls find themselves with a 4-14 conference record.

To add to this piecemeal scouting report, the Bulls and Pirates faced each other on Feburary 25, with the Pirates winning out 75-60 thanks to Jeremy Hazell’s 20-point performance. I see the Bulls trying to slow the pace but ultimately dropping this one. I’ll predict a Pirate victory, 70-59.

If you haven’t heard the latest, Dashonte Riley is going to be an Orange.The odd twist here is that he originally committed to Georgetown, backed out, took an official visit to SU which involved attending the Georgetown game (that’s gotta sting), and the last two schools in the running for his services were SU and Marquette, who just so happen to play one another Saturday afternoon.

Riley is a 6’11″ center with a great rebounding game (but with that height, how can you not have one?). At 220 pounds he can stand to bulk up like most incoming big men around the country and for all we know he could still be filling out his body.

For Sean Williams fans, this isn’t great news, as he’ll go down yet another rung on the depth chart. It’s also due to the fact that the commitment  puts SU over the scholarship limit of 13 for the 2009-10 season:

Class of 2010: Eric Devendorf, Paul Harris, Arinze Onuaku, Andy Rautins

2011: Rick Jackson, Scoop Jardine, Sean Williams, Jonny Flynn, Wesley Johnson

2012: Kris Joseph, Mookie Jones

2013: Brandon Triche, James Southerland, Dashonte Riley

My thinking here is that either:

a) One of the early departure candidates that have been thrown around (Devo and Flynn) has told Boeheim that they’re leaving early, or at least plan on testing the waters. Harris strikes me as enough of a space cadet where I have trouble trusting his assertion that he’s staying, but I won’t go so far as to predict that he’s leaving.

b) The Sean Williams Experiment is over, and he’s been encouraged to transfer.

It’s much easier to draw a conclusion from Column B than Column A when you look at the logjam in the frontcourt – AO, Jackson, Harris if you want to paint him as such, Johnson and Southerland. There are only so many minutes to go around, especially after Boeheim thins his bench every January, and Williams as we all know has been tremendously slow to develop.

It’s hard to not like it when a zone-heavy program like Syracuse hauls in a 6’11″ center, and SU appears to be deeper in the back of the 2-3 than the powder at Greek Peak.

Kristof Ongenaet never pulled in gaudy stats like Carmelo Anthony, Hakim Warrick or Gerry McNamara, so it was expected that his home finale wouldn’t exactly send fans stampeding for the Dome box office. The late start surely didn’t help things either, and after the first half, those who did turn out (or tune in) to Tuesday night’s game may have been regretting their decision. The first 20 minutes contained some atrocious basketball on both sides, some of the ugliest ever seen from this team.

But given the way SU has played their last two games, opponent’s standing be damned, you got the feeling that the sloppy style wouldn’t sustain. Not for an SU team whose hardest worker was playing his last home game, against a Rutgers team trying to scrape for wins in a futile home stretch. Read the rest of this entry »

Kristof! Kong. The Waffle. The Epitome of Grit (it’s not too late to introduce a new one – after all, you can’t spell “Kristof Ongenaet” without “Grit”). Kristof Ongenaet’s swan song will come for an unusually late Tuesday night game against the lowly Scarlet Knights. Who knows, maybe he’ll be the one who gets to posterize Mike Rosario this time around.

Ongenaet came to SU as an unknown entity to hold down the fort while Arinze Onuaku sat out the 2006-07 season and Donte Greene played 25 feet from the basket every night. While he hasn’t exactly improved during his stay at SU, Ongenaet has provided something that the Orange teams of the last two years have sorely needed: hard-nosed defense. Read the rest of this entry »