After three days of gathering themselves following yet another loss to Pitt, the Orange look to rebound against Memphis when the Tigers come to town to wrap up a home-and-home Wednesday night. Last season, SU notched a big road win at the FedEx Forum despite losing Eric Devendorf to a suspension. They did so largely by packing the zone inside and welcoming the Tigers to shoot a woeful 7-33 from beyond the arc.

Since then, a lot has changed for the perennial champs of Conference USA. John Calipari and Tyreke Evans skipped town, but Memphis gained one of the best non-Wes Johnson transfers in the country when Elliot Williams became eligible after leaving Duke. When you take a look at some of the Tigers’ team stats, they appear similar to last year’s team.

Offensive Stats:

Opponent Stats:

Take a closer look at Memphis’ season so far, and you’ll find that they’ve already lost as many games this season (3) as they had all last season. Despite dropping close games to Kansas, UMass and Tennesse, they’ve played a horrific schedule, ranked 320th in the nation. The crown jewel of that schedule is Memphis’ most recent opponent,  Houston Baptist (#341 in KenPom rankings), who employed a zone, giving Memphis a very very dry run of what will be in store for them Wednesday night.

Of course, Houston Baptist is no Syracuse. SU will enjoy a clear size advantage down low, as it did against Pitt and every other team on the schedule to this point; Wes Johnson stands a good chance to collect another double-double Wednesday night. ‘Cuse had the right idea Saturday by going to Rick Jackson and Arinze Onuaku early on. However, Jackson couldn’t get the ball in the basket and AO sat out a good chunk of the 2nd half with foul trouble and couldn’t  keep up when SU went to the press. It would be wise for the Orange to roll out the exact same game plan; they just have to do a better job of finishing.

Again, I’m going to look for Andy Rautins to get his shot back. After hovering around 50% from three to start the season, that mark has dropped to 25.7% over the last six games. While Andy’s defense can be spectacular, his three-point prowess is what extends the defense and it makes things much easier for the bigs when he’s on. This isn’t the first time Andy has gone cold, but the firepower needs to return.

Andy’s fellow J-D Red Ram, Brandon Triche, also must improve. It’s a tough task for a freshman to lead a team through the rigors of the Big East, and we’re starting to see that with Triche. Through his first two conference games, he’s averaging just 5 points per contest and has more turnovers (5) than assists (4). Memphis may not be in the Big East, but that doesn’t mean Triche won’t be challenged, especially by a senior such as Willie Kemp.

Unlike Seton Hall, who tried to beat SU down the court every time out to get them out of their comfort zone, Memphis’ best shot to hand SU its second straight home loss will be to slow the game to a crawl. It’s what they tried to do against Kansas and Tennessee, and it’s hard to find a reason why Wednesday night will be any different. Like last year, expect to see Memphis chuck plenty of threes plus a fair amount of shots from the elbow, because they’re too undersized for me to see them attacking inside with much success.

I expect the Orange to pull out a double-digit win by exploiting the size advantage down low, which should in turn open things up for Wes and Co. on the outside.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 8:00 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.