The Orange dropped their fourth game in a row on Saturday, but some solace can be taken in that SU looked to have tightened up on defense in the second half, forcing Jimmy Butler to make a couple of tough shots in the closing seconds to sink Syracuse in Milwaukee. During the current losing skid, there’s been a lot of talk about the two main ways in which opponents have shredded the zone – drawing defenders into the paint, which opens passing lanes (Pittsburgh) and hot three-point shooting (Villanova and Seton Hall).

On Saturday, it was a mix, as Jae Crowder was the beneficiary of porous defense, while Butler and Darius Johnson-Odom paced the perimeter attack by each knocking down a pair of threes. However, Marquette also mixed in some penetration, and like Villanova, scored a bundle from the line. The Golden Eagles went to the line 33 times, of which only six came with the motivation of Syracuse getting the ball back as Marquette pulled away. Syracuse, on the other hand, had 14 attempts, and made just more than half. Though it’s understandable for fans to blame the officiating for such a wide free throw disparity, usually, it’s simply a difference in the style of play, and that looked to be the case last weekend.

Another culprit for the difference is the fatigue of SU’s starters, which can subsequently be attributed to the struggling  but young bench. Only twice has an SU bench player scored in double figures in Big East play, and both times, it was CJ Fair. Compare that to the first nine games of last season’s conference slate, where someone (usually Kris Joseph) came off the pine to score at least ten points ten times. Now, anyone who followed last year’s team knows how fortunate the Orange was to have a budding star in Kris Joseph and a less burdened Scoop Jardine coming off the bench, but a top-tier Big East team should be getting better production than the paltry contributions of this season’s role players. Dion Waiters’ preferred method of rhetoric during the Seton Hall game only made matters worse, and James Southerland has been so cold lately that he was essentially frozen to his seat. As a result, four SU starters played more than 30 minutes and three totaled at least 38.

While SU would enter unforeseen territory in the long Jim Boeheim era with a fifth consecutive loss Wednesday at UConn, it could just be that there are so few upper-crust teams that nearly every program in the top half of the standings (with the possible exception of Pittsburgh) is bound to take more lumps than usual. Georgetown dropped four in a row to start conference play, but have since reeled off five straight; Villanova beat the Orange soundly, but followed it up with an egg against Providence and a close loss to the Hoyas. Marquette lost four out of six games before beating the Orange. While a staggering nine teams are in the RPI top 25, the conference looks like it’s merely cannibalizing.

The Big East isn’t alone there, however. The Big 12, believed to be a powerful league, might only send four teams to the Big Dance. Complicating things, preseason #3 Kansas State currently stands 2-5 in conference play, and their once-promising center just quit th team as the Wildcats stare down a likely NIT berth; The ACC is looking hollow beyond Duke and surging North Carolina; The SEC is similarly dry, and the Pac-10 is down once again.

Though it probably won’t make fans feel any better about the Orange’s current struggles, the team’s situation is hardly unique once you examine the “upper echelon” of college basketball this season.

On Saturday, Syracuse takes on the first of three consecutive road opponents, first venturing to Milwaukee to take on Marquette. The Golden Eagles’s season has been one of many close calls. Six of their eight losses, all to very good teams, have come by five points or fewer. They weren’t afraid to hit the road in non-conference play, but they’ve come out on the short end too many times to be considered a contender for a top-tier finish in the conference, despite remarkably winning nine of the last ten games in conference play last season.

That doesn’t mean they won’t sport a dynamic offense on Saturday afternoon. Syracuse, known for guarding the perimeter well all season, has allowed its last three opponents to shoot 10-17 (Seton Hall), 11-24 (Villanova) and 6-15 (Pittsburgh) from long range. It’s well-known that one way to bust the zone is to be successful from deep, and Buzz Williams has a trio of bombers in Darius Johnson-Odom, Jae Crowder and Dwight Buycks who can give Syracuse fits once again. Johnson-Odom is the team’s leading scorer and shoots 37.8% from three-point land, though he’s been even better as of late; Crowder, one of the best juco transfers in the country this season, is the opposite in that he sports a higher overall clip than Johnson-Odom, but has been cold lately, though he remains a threat. Crowder, who checks in at 40.6% from long range, is also a physical type, averaging 6.9 rebounds per game in just 27 minutes per contest. Buycks, who has been a terrific shooter both inside and outside the arc, has the look of a player who isn’t getting the ball as much as he should In addition to the stable of shooters, Jimmy Butler is one of the best wings in the conference

Defensively, Marquette has a lot of work to do, which could mean some very nice things for an Orange team looking to get out of an offensive rut. The Golden Eagles have had ten games this season where the opponent scored at least one point per possession. Marquette’s schedule has included Gonzaga, Duke and Vanderbilt, but even Rutgers and UW-Milwaukee didn’t have much difficulty converting on possessions. The inability of their defense to get stops at crucial moments in games has been a major sore spot all season long.

I discussed yesterday that there aren’t a ton of viable options personnel-wise at Jim Boeheim’s disposal to fix the problems that have been plaguing Syracuse, particularly in the frontcourt. Dashonte Riley is rehabbing from surgery, Fab Melo has been a disappointment on both ends of the floor, and Baye Moussa Keita, for all the defensive tenacity he brings, looks lost on offense. It seems as though the best band-aid for that problem is simply for the guards to feed Rick Jackson. Against Marquette, Jackson will enjoy a size advantage if he’s matched up against Crowder, and an even bigger advantage in athleticism to begin the game, which is when center 260-lb. Chris Otule lumbers up and down the court at a pace that can accurately be described as Melo-esque.

A lot of fans are starting to panic, as the team has lost games to opponents that a third-ranked team should be able to beat. If you ask me, this hasn’t exposed the Orange as much as it has exposed the silly rankings system. There’s no shame in losing at Pittsburgh, especially without Kris Joseph; losing to Villanova at home, while disappointing, is also a “respectable” loss, and Seton Hall, at full strength, is a team with a great chance to end up in the Tournament after their early season struggles. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a coach in the Big East who would want to face Kevin Willard’s squad on the first day of the conference tournament.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of kinks for the Orange to iron out, or that finding the solution will be easy. Having lost three in a row and looking down the barrel of three straight road games (and four of five overall), the next two weeks will tell us more about this team than any other stretch of the season. While it’s not yet time to panic, the microscope is coming into focus.

I’m not going to come out and say that the sky is falling after SU’s historic 22-point home loss to Seton Hall on Tuesday, but I do think it’s going to get worse before it gets better. My tune may have been different if SU played better than they did against Villanova and Pittsburgh but still lost, but signs have emerged over the last week that this team may not have the focus required to make a deep run in the Tournament. While it’s not out of the ordinary to see a mid-to-late January swoon from this team, and no top team is without warts this season, there are issues up and down the Orange that are just uncharacteristic of high-caliber teams. The tumult that Syracuse has gone through in such a short time is staggering.

In the span of three games in the middle of the season, SU has fallen into a 19-0 hole to begin a game; Scoop Jardine has been benched with his team behind in a close game against a top-ten opponent; Fab Melo lost his starting spot, then got it back, James Southerland started one game out of necessity and another because Jim Boeheim hasn’t found the right horses 21 games deep (though he should get some credit for trying to shake things up); Dion Waiters was seen cursing off his Hall of Fame coach during a blowout at the hands of a team that reported to the Dome with an 8-12 record.

The team definitely has some issues, and they’re just as easy to see by their play on the court as it is through their verbal interactions. As the Pirates’ lead ballooned, Syracuse tried to erase the deficit with a single shot every time down the court, a steep departure from the little-by-little trimming of the big margin early against Pitt. It was also different from the basic formula of getting stops and looking for good shots that characterized the second half against Villanova before things fell apart late in the game last weekend.

Now, the Orange is about to play four out of five on the road, with the lone home game in that stretch against recovering Georgetown. While one of those road games is against lowly USF, in the long-term, it’s difficult to see an end in sight. There are a ton of pieces to pick up, but it’s still only January, and there remain several top teams in the Big East against whom Syracuse can punch back. The race is far from over, but the sense of urgency should be growing at the Melo Center.

The memory of an unnecessarily close call at the Prudential Center from 17 days ago is still very fresh in Orange fans’ minds, as much as we’d like to forget a game in which Syracuse struggled shooting in the first half and went a woeful (even for Syracuse) 17-36 from the free throw line. While putting up a stronger performance against Kevin Willard’s team would help erase the recollection of SU’s first true road game of the season, a win would put the Orange back on track after losing two straight games to top-ten teams.

While it’s difficult to get on a team too much for losing to very good teams, even without respect to the rankings, SU has the talent to beat Big East contenders. It almost goes without saying, then, that it shouldn’t be a similar mountain to beat a Seton Hall team at home with a losing record, even with star/volume shooter Jeremy Hazell back in the fold. While the Pirates are definitely happy to have him back, there has clearly been a lot of rust, as Hazell has gone a feable 24-67 in four games since returning. Against Rutgers, he chucked it 21 times and sunk just six attempts. What might be more amazing is that he’s shot the ball more than 21 times in 11 games in his time at the Hall – this is hardly unusual for him, but now that Hazell is back on the team, he needs to succeed if Seton Hall wants to salvage any kind of a run at an NCAA Tournament bid.

On the other side, Syracuse has plenty of its own woes to absolve, shooting and otherwise. Scoop Jardine is ice cold. Though the Villanova game was a low point for him, over Jadine’s last five games, he’s shot only 34% from the floor, and has averaged ten shot attempts per game in that span – almost half of which have been threes. I understand that you can’t get out of a slump unless you shoot the ball every now and then, but the stats as well as eyewitness accounts indicate that Jardine needs to exercise more precaution and not fire at will the way he’s been doing. Tonight’s game will be our first chance to see whether he got the message that Jim Boeheim sent by benching the junior in favor of Dion Waiters, and how he responds.

I think this will go one of two ways: Either he plays with a massive chip on his shoulder and tries to show everyone that the Villanova game was just an aberration and that he can be successful while shooting the ball freely, or he becomes more selective in his shots and defers to his teammates in a way that we haven’t seen often this season.

One thing is for certain, though – Seton Hall has a very tough time winning in the Dome. While I feel for their struggles as a team that looked poised to return to the Big Dance this season before suffering a number of setbacks, they’re coming to the Dome at one of the most inopportune moments, to face an Orange team seeking to prove that last week’s play is an outlier, rather than the start of a trend.

For most of the season, including conference play, I witnessed a healthy amount of vulnerable moments from the Orange to not be very surprised by Saturday’s loss to Villanova in front of a humongous crowd. Whether it was narrowly escaping against mid-majors or starting slow against teams like Seton Hall and St. John’s (let alone the deep trench to begin the Pittsburgh game), it hasn’t been hard to find spots where the team has looked uncertain, and over the weekend, the bottom dropped out of the backcourt.

While it’s been touched on by several in the blogosphere already, I can’t let it go untouched in this space: The collective production of SU’s three guards was very disappointing. Brandon Triche’s afternoon, which included several baskets to keep the Orange in the game until it got away in the final two minutes, is the only thing that kept me from declaring the backcourt a game-long disaster. Scoop Jardine reached what will probably go down as his nadir as an Orange guard, hitting only one of eight shots and finding himself on the bench for the last six-plus minutes of the game. As has been observed frequently here, Jardine’s inability to make good decisions on a regular basis has noticeably held the team back all season – perhaps more than his ability to penetrate and draw the defense in has helped it. Jim Boeheim let him know it by yanking Jardine from the floor for the end of the game, and it will definitely be interesting to see on Tuesday what Jardine learned from the events of the afternoon.

Of course, Dion Waiters didn’t fare much better shooting the ball, but I feel as though his effort was the result of trying to take the game over before he was ready. An upperclassmen like Jardine shouldn’t have that issue. While Waiters’ struggles definitely made things worse, he is still young. I think the pressure of having to defend the Villanova guards who made nearly half their threes and sunk all their free throws, coupled with being relied upon to boost the offense, was just too much for him, though that evaluation shouldn’t be interpreted to mean that he was lacking in confidence.

As noted before, Brandon Triche was a welcome departure from the play of Jardine and Waiters. He had a very nice game with 14 points on 5-12 shooting, made four of eight threes, and dished out four assists with only one turnover in 33 minutes. I agree with Brent Axe in that I was disappointed to see Boeheim sub Triche out for Jardine near the end of the half as Triche looked to be gaining some momentum while it was clear that this just wasn’t going to be Jardine’s day. I may be curious to see how Jardine responds to being benched at the end of the game (as aforementioned in this post), but I think I’m more interested to see if Saturday was the impetus towards a shift from the current distribution of minutes where Jardine and Triche share court time to a pattern where we see less of them together.

To end this post on a couple of positive notes, I continue to be impressed with Rick Jackson’s season, and his place as the fifth player in the somewhat-obscure 1,000/800/200 club among SU’s can’t-miss types like Derrick Coleman, Etan Thomas and Rony Seikaly is a symbol of how far he has come from once being behind Donte Greene and Kristof Ongenaet on the depth chart.

Lastly, it was great to see Kris Joseph bounce back from injury with a very good performance. It was comforting to know that he didn’t try to come back to soon, and his 23 points, including tying his career high of four three-pointers, should remove any and all doubt that he isn’t 100%, a common concern when it comes to concussions.

It had to happen sometime.

Few people were expecting Syracuse to get out of Pittsburgh with a win on Monday night, but perhaps even fewer expected a game as strange as what took place at the Petersen Events Center. After Pitt ran 19 straight points on the Orange in the game’s first eight minutes, SU responded with a 17-point run of its own. The game was characterized by unanswered spurts, and in fact, the teams didn’t trade individual baskets until the final minute of the first half.

Pitt wore Syracuse down the entire game with their rebounding skill and by hitting key shots whenever Syracuse answered in the second half. The microscopic contributions that Fab Melo and Baye Keita made also shortened the Orange bench already in overuse due to the absence of Kris Joseph. Despite the uphill battle, however, the Orange had their chances to strike, and at one point, tied the game.

In the end, though, Pitt was just too much. The death blow came after the 7:03 mark of the second half, when Pitt head coach Jamie Dixon was whistled for a technical foul. The score was 57-53 after CJ Fair made one of two free throws, but the Orange would score just four points on their next nine possessions over the next 4:30, and Pitt extended their lead to ten and never looked back. Especially against a team as efficient as Pitt, you can’t have that many empty possessions late in the second half while playing from behind. At that point, fatigue and youth shone through for Syracuse.

There were more positives to take from this loss than any in recent memory. CJ Fair, who I expected to be a minimal factor, was fantastic. He made some difficult shots as an undersized small forward, and even managed to pull down nine rebounds to go along with a team-leading 16 points off the bench. Rick Jackson was his usual self, getting yet another double-double as he and Gary McGhee waged a memorable battle down low, with each trying to get in the other’s head. Though James Southerland struggled to get his jumper going, I think he’ll ultimately be better off for the experience of starting and playing 38 minutes against the Big East’s first-place team in their house.

Surprisingly, the Orange turned the ball over just seven times all night. Usually, when you see runs like those the Panthers reeled off, they’re ignited or perpetuated by a turnover, be it a charge call or a block that leads to a key basket on the other end. With the exception of Gilbert Brown’s athletic chasedown of Dion Waiters late in the second half, Pitt’s more successful stretches were lengthened by the Orange simply missing shots moreso than ‘Cuse coughing the ball up.

As a team, the Orange expressed the most perseverance I’ve seen since the six-overtime game against UConn at Madison Square Garden two years ago. Though they never lead on Monday night, they turned in a very inspiring effort with essentially six players. There’s little shame in losing to Pitt on the road, as frustrating as it is that the ‘Cuse hasn’t topped the Panthers since 2006.

There are no moral victories, but I think the team found out a lot about themselves and how they handle adversity. It would have been easy for them to pack it in and lean on the crutch that they were without their leading scorer after getting down by 19, but they battled all night, and in the end, I think this loss will help the team far more than it hurts them.

When Kris Joseph went down Saturday afternoon, my mind instantly traveled back to the 2009 Big East Tournament, when Kristof Ongenaet had one of the worst landings to a dunk I’ve ever seen. You just don’t see traumatic head injuries sustained in basketball. But when Syracuse meets Pittsburgh on Monday, the team will have cushier support than the court that Joseph landed on, though not a lot, considering the unfriendly confines of the Peterson Events Center.

James Southerland and CJ Fair have played well as of late, and winning at Pittsburgh will undoubtedly pose a bigger challenge for the Orange than it would have been if Joseph were healthy. The fact that Syracuse hasn’t beaten Pitt since 2006 should also add motivation for this year’s team to do what Johnny Flynn, Paul Harris, Donte Greene and Wes Johnson couldn’t – come out victorious against the Panthers. With Joseph out, Southerland will get a big opportunity to show that he can step up in extended playing time, while Fair also stands to gain from Joseph’s absence. Both have shown promise, but we’ll really get to see what they’re made of when they play in front of one of the toughest road environments college basketball has to offer.

In order for SU to return home with a win, the margin of error may as well be non-existent.

Even for this optimistic blogger, things don’t look good for Monday night. Pitt has won seven straight games, and their only loss on the year came against Tennessee, who had an afternoon of fluky hot shooting, combined with an afternoon of fluky cold Pitt shooting. Marquette’s 89-81 loss to the Panthers at the Pete wasn’t even that close, as Pitt led by double figures for a heavy portion of the game.

This isn’t just Jamie Dixon’s Panthers at home; This is perhaps the best all-around team he’s fielded since taking the reigns from Ben Howland. Whereas hard-nosed defense has been the hallmark of Panther teams in years past, this season, they’ve added a very well-rounded offense to propel themselves to a 17-1 start. They’re one of the top 30 shooting teams in the country, and Pitt is the best in the Big East in three-point shooting, thanks to Ashton Gibbs (44.6%), Gilbert Brown (41.4%) and Brad Wanamaker (40.7%). Combine that with the nation’s second-best assist percentage, and the Panthers suddenly become a team whose offensive attack is highly powerful, valuing and maximizing their possessions better than most if not every team in the country.

That doesn’t mean Pittsburgh hasn’t abandoned its defensive style, though. They are nearly impossible to defend on the boards, thanks to the size of Gary McGhee and forwards Dante Taylor, Nasir Robinson. If one of those three runs into foul trouble, Jamie Dixon has freshman Talib Zanna, who averages 4.5 rebounds in just 14 minutes per game, on his bench. On Saturday, the Panthers outrebounded Seton Hall 51-27 – the same Seton Hall team that outrebounded Syracuse by 12 two weekends ago.

For SU to pull off the season’s best win to date, their less experienced players have to step up like they did against Cincinnati. James Southerland will have to show off his long-range shooting prowess and continue to stay focused on defense in his first career start; Fab Melo must not only avoid regressing after his improved performance from Saturday, but to be frank, he has to build on it; Baye Keita will have to do what’s been asked of him all season, which hasn’t been much – simply man the middle adeptly. He may be a freshman, but he can’t be intimidated by Pitt’s stout frontcourt, though that’s far easier said than done. One of the primary reasons why the Seton Hall game was so close was because Rick Jackson didn’t get any help on the glass.

Objectively, it’s hard to envision Syracuse escaping from the Steel City with a win for the first time since 2004 without catching a few breaks, but on the other side of the fence, that’s why they play the games. Outcomes we don’t expect are just one of the things that makes college basketball so exciting. I’d love for tomorrow’s post to be about how Fab Melo’s 14 points and four blocks were crucial in Syracuse notching an unlikely victory on the road, or about how James Southerland was unconscious beyond the arc on his way to a 20-point night, or how Rick Jackson made Gary McGhee a non-factor down low, and maybe I’ll get that opportunity; Far stranger things have happened. Until then, however, it seems as though all we can do is see what the hoops gods have in store on Big Monday.

The inside attack of Rick Jackson, Baye Keita, James Southerland, and an awakening from Fab Melo led the Orange to a 67-52 win Saturday afternoon. The recent slow starts were nary a problem, as SU started the first half on an 18-3 run, and opened the second half with a 16-0 stretch where SU played some of its most complete basketball of the season and built a lead too comfortable for Cincinnati to seriously threaten. The Bearcats stayed close in the first half thanks to nine three-pointers, but ultimately, they fell in love with the long ball and stopped looking inside. Out of the intermission, the threes stopped falling, and things got out of hand for them in a hurry.

Rick Jackson had another terrific day on the interior for the Orange; the duo of Yancy Gates and Ibrahima Thomas put on a decent effort, but Jackson was just too much as he opened up his expanding repertoire of post moves on his way to his 11th double-double of the season.

Fab Melo was also a big help Saturday. In his best game of the season, he shook off three early fouls and was important in SU’s game-breaking second half run with a couple blocks and a layup. His 15 minutes of run matched the playing time given to CJ Fair and Dion Waiters, and based on his mannerisms and postgame comments, he finally looked to be enjoying himself, and his confidence is every bit as important to his success as his development skillset.

Continuing the theme of SU’s younger players stepping up, James Southerland also contributed well. Odds are he wouldn’t have played as much if Kris Joseph hadn’t banged his head on the court, but he continues to make the most of his opportunities. If Jim Boeheim’s impressions turn out to be true and Joseph can’t go on Monday night in Pittsburgh, Southerland will have to capitalize.

Another sophomore, Brandon Triche, continued to round into form. To see him develop as he has over the last month has been one of my favorite things about the season to this point. I was slightly curious as to why he didn’t play more towards the end of the game, but he has been a little achy and hobbled, and with a double-digit lead, I can understand Boeheim’s decision to keep Waiters on the floor and let the freshman get some experience.

Scoop Jardine Watch: Scoop had another five-turnover game to bring his , but I can’t get on him too much – he went from the 7:54 mark of the first half through the 11:42 mark of the second half without turning the ball over – slightly more than 16 minutes, and his second half turnovers came when SU was comfortably ahead. He settled down, and I think part of that was because the team wasn’t having the same issues as the last few games in putting points on the board. He made a couple other boneheaded moves, and was bailed out, so the refining process will continue.

All in all, I was impressed by the Orange’ performance Saturday afternoon. While things stagnated a little after the lead swelled to 20, it was a very workmanlike effort, and every time the Bearcats made a mini-run, the Orange struck right back. Meanwhile, Cincy has the look of an average Big East team – they’ll win most of the games against the bottom half and lose most of the games against the top half. They’re talented, but too inconsistent to finish better than the middle of the pack.

Like St. John’s, Cincinnati is a program that has fallen on hard times – since immigrating to the Big East for the 2005-06 season, they haven’t made the NCAA Tournament once. And like the Orange, the Bearcats’ schedule has come under some heavy criticism; somewhat because of a lack of a true road game in the non-con schedule (although beating reeling Oklahoma in Oklahoma City should count for something), but mostly from the fact that their slate was not very competitive, no matter the location of the games played.

Mick Cronin’s team hadn’t met a single ranked team until they lost to Villanova last week, and their marquee win of the non-conference schedule was a home blowout over in-state foe Xavier, who is already sitting on the bubble. Yet, if you build a schedule and your team navigates it as smoothly as the Bearcats have, players can get confident and get that air about themselves that they can beat anybody, a sort of Placebo Effect for college basketball.

In a couple of conference games, it’s been revealed that while Cincinnati is an above-average team, in the Big East, that merely translates to positioning somewhere in the middle of the pack. Early in the conference schedule, Cincinnati has beaten the teams they should (Seton Hall, DePaul and South Florida) have and taken a loss at Villanova that didn’t surprise anyone.

The team coming to the Carrier Dome on Saturday is one that has some weapons, but many of them have been inconsistent. Yancy Gates, one of the better forwards in the Big East, had 11 points and nine rebounds against Villanova, but went for just nine and three against South Florida. 6’11 senior Ibrahima Thomas has fouled out in three of the team’s four conference games; both Thomas and Gates have shown a flighty desire to play away from the basket, and it has backfired miserably, with the two combining to go 3-25 from beyond the arc on the year.

Cincy’s backcourt attack will be lead by Dion Dixon, who will gladly shoot the three (19-61 on the year) but can also drive to the basket. Cashmere Wright will lend a hand with his 9.3 points per game, but the guard I’m most intrigued by is Sean Kilpatrick, a freshman who comes off the bench. He’s already had three 20-point games, but has also had six games where he’s scored five or fewer points, including a pair of scoreless outings.

As for Mick Cronin’s coaching style, he’ll substitute liberally (seven players average at least 15 minutes per contest), and has made defense a priority; the Bearcats have coaxed teams into a 42.4% effective field goal percentage (10th in the country) and get turnovers on over 25% of opponent possessions (20% is average). They’ve also made a genuine effort to crash the glass, especially on the offensive end.

I think having Lance Stephenson on the team last year really stunted the Bearcats’ development for a season, and I don’t think you’ll find many Cincy fans who think having him was worth the trouble. However, that doesn’t mean they’ll be an easy out Saturday afternoon. Also, for whatever combination of reasons, these Saturday afternoon games cause the Orange to come out a little flat, something they need to correct if they’re looking to cruise through this game and get ready for Pitt on Monday. While some have called this a trap game, I shy away from that description; typically, for a trap game, the opponent has to be underrated to an extent, and I don’t see that with Cincinnati. Their schedule doesn’t have a lot of experts believing they can pull the upset, and in the Big East, a 16-1 record will get you noticed, no matter how inflated that record is.

As slowly as the Orange have started in conference play with their delayed awakenings shooting the ball, they’ve received some major boosts from the players who have needed to step up to make this team a Final Four contender. Brandon Triche and Kris Joseph are rolling, and Rick Jackson has been as consistent as he can possibly be. While the bench hasn’t been as productive as last year’s, it’s very young, and is right around where I thought it would be back at the beginning of the season. Still, Gates will present one of the tougher physical challenges Jackson will see all season, so there’s a good one-on-one matchup to keep your eye on. Cincy’s 16-1 record is definitely misleading, though, so expect SU to win this one handily.

Like many Orange fans, I found myself flustered after yet another slow start. Syracuse started Wednesday’s game against the Red Storm 3-14, but unlike Saturday’s game, the team quickly settled into a groove, going 28-40 the rest of the way in punishing the Johnnies. While I doubt that this is the last we’ll be hearing from St. John’s, the buzz they’ve received since the calendar turned should die down.

Aside from the 20 SU turnovers, this is the way most envisioned the team winning a game when the season started: balanced scoring (four starters in double figures), a typical night from Rick Jackson, SU’s lone scholarship senior (12 points, ten rebounds and a pair of blocks), supporting contributions from the bench (a collective 17 points) and a defense that pestered an opponent into a shooting percentage under 40%.

But about those turnovers…

While he was far from the only culprit, Scoop Jardine was responsible for seven of the team’s 20 turnovers, and made some poor decisions on top of those miscues. He also made a lot of positive contributions, however, and most of his mistakes come with the intent to spark the offense, so you can’t blame him too much. If you’ve been watching Syracuse this season, you know how aggravating the sputtering starts can be, and it must be even tougher for the guys who are actually playing the game. So as frustrating as Jardine can be to watch, his style is just something SU fans will have to live with until he improves that part of his game (and who knows if and when that time will come?). At the same time, having more turnovers assists for the second straight game is something that simply can’t continue.

Elsewhere, newly-anointed CuseOrange Golden Boy Brandon Triche continued to shine. In 27 minutes, the sophomore scored 15 points, dished out four assists and didn’t turn the ball over once. While Scoop Jardine likes to force the issue with reckless abandon, Triche is content to wait more methodically for his chance to strike, often when the defense doesn’t expect it. His emergence as a complimentary player, and a very good one at that, looks like it has lifted a burden from the shoulders of Kris Joseph.

If you look at Joseph’s and Triche’s game logs on the season, you’ll notice that the timing of Joseph’s newfound consistency, starting with the Iona game, is right on line with the first of Triche’s steady contributions. Since that game, Joseph has gone 46-80 (57.5%) from the field, and that includes a couple stinkers against Morgan State and Seton Hall. After struggling to get going earlier in the season, Joseph is averaging 19.5 points per game in Big East play, meeting (and possibly exceeding, depending on who you ask) the tall expectations set for him in the wake of Wes Johnson’s early departure.

While some see this weekend’s matchup against Cincinnati as a trap game before SU heads to the Pete for a crack at the Panthers, I think the St. John’s game proved that Jim Boeheim can keep his team focused against an improved Big East foe eager to hand the Orange their first loss.

Two other loose ends:

1. Rick Jackson became a member SU’s 1,000 point club. With 54 members, that group is SU’s “Hall of Very Good” of sorts. Like the 1,000-yard rushing mark in football, it was once the benchmark of an all-time great, but is now the hallmark of a steady scorer who you always have to account for (case in point – Arinze Onuaku, who averaged 9.2 points per game on his career, is also a carrier of the 1,000 point club card).

2. The win also marked Syracuse’s 1,800th victory. They’re just the fifth school to accomplish the feat.