Two down, one to go. After topping Rutgers and West Virginia on the road, SU finds itself in South Bend, Indiana, playing for a rare sweep of a three-game conference road trip. It’s been 5 seasons since the Orange won three consecutive road games in conference play, but you’d have to go all the way back to 1990-91 for such a streak where the road games were consecutively scheduled, as they are in this instance.

On to the Irish, this is still Luke Harangody’s team. The big guy averages 24 points and 9 rebounds per game and last year, SU’s back tandem of Rick Jackson and Arinze Onuaku did a magnificent job of containing him. While Harangody scored 25 points, it took him 28 shot attempts to do so, and as we all know, if you have more shot attempts than total points scored, it’s not good for business. It almost goes without saying that locking down on Luke, similar to how the Bearcats did so last week, is a key to victory.

Now that we know who’s commanding the ball inside, here’s a look at the outside threats since Orange killer Kyle McAlarney (17-27 from three for his career against SU) graduated:

1. Tim Abromaitis – A junior who has been slow to develop due to redshirting last year and a scarcity of minutes his freshman year, over half of Abromaitis’ field goal attempts have been threes, but he’s hit about half of them (47-95). Goofy-looking and pasty to boot, he’s got the look of a McAlarney successor.

2. Ben Hanbrough – Yep, that Hansbrough family. Had SU beaten Oklahoma in last year’s Sweet 16 matchup, they would have faced Tyler and the Tar Heels in the Elite 8. We know how that turned out, so this is what we settle for. The younger Hansbrough transferred from Mississippi State and has proven to be a very good ballhandler, with an assist/turnover ratio of nearly four to one. That mark is tops in the conference, and while he is a threat to shoot it from deep, he’s been streaky this season.

3. Tory Jackson – Jackson is another very strong ballhandler and is loaded with stamina, leading the Big East in minutes played. The senior leader’s main job is to feed Luke Harangody, and his 5 assists per game reflect that he’s been doing a decent job to that end. He doesn’t can threes with much ease, but he can’t be left open either.

For Syracuse, in addition to locking down on Harangody, they have to make better decisions. The last 1:15 of the West Virginia game was about as bad it could get without the Orange actually blowing up the lead. Between some missed free throws, apart from Kris Joseph’s last attempt which was an unintentional-intentional miss, fouling a three-point shooter, Wes Johnson trying to pass out of a swarming triple-team instead of simply taking the foul, there was some horrific late game management on the part of the team.

The Orange needs to value the ball. Notre Dame forces the least amount of turnovers from their opponents of all the teams in the Big East, while SU commits the most. Monday night is a great opportunity to right that ship, but Notre Dame will be hungry to add a big win to go along with its upset of the Mountaineers.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 11:57 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.