By now, you know the story of how the first two games of the campaign between the ‘Cuse and the Hoyas went. In Part I, Georgetown raced out to a 14-0 lead before SU snuffed it out and won convincingly at the Carrier Dome. In Part II at the Verizon Center, it was SU who got out to a big lead. The Orange came very close to blowing a 23-point lead, but held on late.

They say it’s tough to beat a team three times in one season, but with the Hoyas having just played Wednesday, I have a hard time heeding that advice. Maybe it’s a law of sample sizes, maybe it’s the fact that Syracuse is clearly better, but it’s tough to see Georgetown upending the outright champion of the conference in its third attempt.

That’s not to say that the third time can’t be the charm, because it very well could be. It’s the Big East in March – crazy things happen:

A player puts a team on his shoulders for four straight games to carry them into the Big Dance.
Games go six overtimes.
Gritty Belgians fall on their heads.
Providence wins.

And I haven’t even gotten into how schizophrenic Georgetown has been this year. They’ve beaten Duke, beaten Villanova on the road, won at Peterson Events Center, but have lost to Old Dominion, South Florida and Rutgers. You just don’t know which team is going to show up.

It’ll be an entertaining game for sure, and Syracuse has a chip in its shoulder as they look for some closure following Sunday’s free-fall at Freedom Hall and put a clamp on their #1 seed. I feel pretty good about saying Syracuse by 12.

Parrish Article: Kansas is better than SU because SU loses at home whereas Kansas loses on the road.
SU Fans Tweet Collectively: We disagree – conference quality, common opponents, undefeated on the road, etc.
Next Parrish Article: Comment about one female SU Tweeter’s appearance which can possibly be construed as sexist, but definitely unprofessional.

As much as we may disagree with how they vote, dissenting journalists in the minority like Parrish have just as much right to vote how they please, but that’s not what this is about. When Parrish decided to call out one reader with a low reference to her personal appearance, he essentially put himself on the level of a six-year-old and only made himself more vulnerable to criticism, or if you want to look at it another way, more publicity.

Monday afternoon, Parrish went on Brent Axe’s radio show to address his ranking and defend his remarks, but all Parrish did was dig himself deeper when Axe called him out on his remarks. Rather than apologizing, Parrish tried to justify the unjustifiable with the shaky-at-best reasoning of  “don’t dish it out if you can’t take it,” and even questioned how he could have crossed a line if he didn’t know where the line was. Essentially, Parrish was given a golden opportunity to save face and make the only right move there was to make, and he completely blew it.

The victim in this situation is in the process of filing formal complaints to CBS and is considering legal action, and as Twitter is constructed to enable, is gathering up arms and making sure everyone knows about it. More power to her, but I would probably handle the matter in a quieter way. This isn’t over, and for all we know there could be an interesting case study on the impact of social media on mass communications when all is said and done.

But until there are further developments, that’s all I’m going to contribute. Life as an SU basketball fan is simply too great right now to focus on the dirty laundry between a writer and a reader. The Orange just clinched their first regular season conference title in seven seasons by throttling the second-place team in front of a record home crowd on national television, was named by both major polling systems as the top team in the country, and a number one seed in the NCAA tournament is theirs to lose.

The final two games of the regular season have plenty of meaning, however. Tuesday night’s matchup against St. John’s comes on Senior Night, the final home game for Andy Rautins, Arinze Onuaku, and, barring something crazy, Wesley Johnson. Being seniors of the fifth-year variety, Rautins and Onuaku have been through it all – an incredible conference tournament run, a huge NCAA tournament snub and the best postseason game played this decade, for starters. But what makes this pair special to me is their perseverance. Since they stepped on campus in 2005, NINE scholarship players left the team for various reasons, some of those reasons being better than others:

Louie McCroskey
Devin Brennan-McBride
Josh Wright
Mike Jones
Donte Greene
Paul Harris
Jonny Flynn
Eric Devendorf
Sean Williams

That’s a ton of roster turnover to witness. There are programs that go through major coaching changes that don’t see that kind of shakeup, but both Rautins and Onuaku will leave Syracuse with a degree, plus the opportunity to pursue basketball professionally if they so choose.

Then there’s the toughness of battling constant health issues. Both players had to take redshirt years due to injury and still have nagging problems: AO’s physique is tough to support on a bad ankle and a surgically-repaired knee, and it seems like Rautins can’t go two games without walking off a stinger or a turned ankle.

Neither player’s ceiling was never thought to be that high, especially after getting sidelined, and they’ve overcome those road blocks by maximizing the potential that remained, a welcome change after the 2003 recruiting class underachieved so mightily and considering the flakiness of some of the players listed above.

There’s plenty of basketball left to enjoy this season, so if you have the opportunity, get to the Loud House and give them the sendoff they deserve.

The last of those points is what puts this team in a category with the teams of 1996, 2000 and 2003. Syracuse clobbered Villanova on Saturday night, yet six of the seven players to tally meaningful minutes scored in double figures.

Wes Johnson and Andy Rautins, the team’s two best shooters, went 5-20 from the floor, but contributed in other ways – Johnson led the Orange in rebounding for the game and Rautins paced Syracuse in assists and steals. Arinze Onuaku played just 21 minutes, but posted 17 points and played a key role in putting the game out of ‘Nova’s reach, converting two three-point plays in the span of a minute.

Scoop Jardine and Kris Joseph didn’t start, yet they posted starter-type numbers. You could say that Jardine was as big for SU in the first half in keeping the Orange in the game as Onuaku was in putting it away in the second. And on and on.

All this isn’t to say that the fans efforts were not to go unnoticed. Not in the least.

‘Cuse fans bought tickets so far away from the court that they might as well have been standing on Comstock Ave., but they didn’t care. Being in the building for SU’s most anticipated game in four years, maybe longer, was all worth it. Such a large amount of alums returned to campus that it was a de facto second Homecoming weekend.

As kitschy as The Dome Ranger may be, bringing him out of hiding (or Tully’s, from the look of it) was a synecdochical indicator that SU hoops fever is at a level unseen since he was a regular staple of games in the 1980’s.

Finally, as excited as SU fans may be for the potential of a number one ranking come Monday afternoon, and they should be, considering how long it’s been since that happened, it’s also the furthest thing from this team’s mind. All that matters to them is being number one in April, when it truly counts, and that’s what I like most about the whole thing.

SU’s fanbase has this one covered. The surprisingly successful year has led to fans buying tickets in droves, so much so that Carrier Dome management declared the game “sold out” at a quantity of 34,616, the first sellout in the history of Dome basketball and setting the new standard for on-campus crowds weeks in advance. ESPN Gameday is in the Loud House.  We even have t-shirts! Gerry McNamara’s Senior Day four years ago will be long remembered for the crowd and dozens of Scrantonian buses, but it speaks volumes when the fans rally around the entire team like they have for this one, as opposed to one player.

The student contingency, which has long been criticized for their apathy during games, has brought it so strong for this one that the University opened the Dome doors for campouts to keep hardcore devoted students from getting sick from the cold (even though Otto taught them how to recover if they do). Peeing in a trough for three days? Count me in, I’m there faster than SU can erase a 14-0 Georgetown lead.

Onto the game itself, it’s helpful that Syracuse just faced a poor man’s Villanova in Providence – a small team that likes to run, is lethal when they’re hitting their threes, and doesn’t care all that much for post defense or rebounding. Jay Wright’s team won’t push the ball to the extreme that Providence did, nor will they be quite as lost or overmatched on D as the Friars were, but the similarities are definitely there.

The primary method of containing Villanova – stopping Scottie Reynolds – hasn’t changed in three years, but that doesn’t make it any less difficult to accomplish. Reynolds has been a Villanuevan pain in the side of Syracuse, as he’s led the Wildcats to a 5-2 record in his time in Philadelphia. In some of those victories, Reynolds posted more modest scoring totals, opting to defer to his teammates, so the supporting cast will have to be smothered in zoney goodness as well.

SU will be challenged with breaking some tight pressure defense in the backcourt, but if they can get through those presses and traps and feed Arinze Onuaku and Rick Jackson, the Orange will have this one in hand. For awhile in January, teams were hellbent on not letting Andy Rautins beat them, no matter the cost, but over the last couple of weeks, that hasn’t been the case and Andy’s made them pay, so there’s one more thing Corey Stokes will have to worry about.

Gametime is 9pm EST.

Fortunately, Syracuse’s defense to start the second half was spectacular and kept the Friars from keeping the game competitive. SU built a 16-point advantage thanks to a 26-5 over the first 9:30 of the second half and never looked back, thanks largely to spectacular performances by Andy Rautins and Rick Jackson

Andy was terrific – with the point guards being mostly absent yet again, he picked up their slack, dropping a season-high 28 points on the Friars, going 8-12 from long range (6-6 in the second half) and popping his dunking cherry about midway through the second half. When the Orange trailed in the first half, he gave them some momentum going into the locker room by canning a trey. In a fast-paced game with tons of possessions, Rautins turned the ball over just twice while playing all 40 minutes.

Down in the paint, Rick Jackson came to play, equaling Rautins’ scoring output for a career high himself. While obliging to match the pace the Friars set, the guards found Jackson often, and he had very little trouble converting 13 of his 17 attempts. The Friars weren’t nearly as quick getting back on D as they were running their gimmick offense, and when they did, they were grossly overmatched by Jackson and Arinze Onuaku, who chipped in a workmanlike 12 and 7.

Now, Syracuse fans can breathe a sigh of relief, bask in a second-round Big East Tournament bye and commence focused anticipation on the Villanova game that will likely determine the conference champion, dictate whether or not the public healthcare option will prevail and end conflict in the Middle East once and for all.

It’s on.

The bright side is that five of those seven players have moved on from Providence, and this year’s team is presently locked up with Rutgers in a fervent battle for 15th place in the Big East. Not quite what second year head coach Keno Davis was expecting from a team ranking 6th in the nation in points per game and 11th in rebounds.

After a lengthy break following an especially taxing game against the Hoyas, the Orange is now staring down one of the most winnable games the conference has to offer. The Friars have lost six in a row* and eight of nine, including four straight home losses. Their lone victory of note is a convincing 81-66 win over UConn, who is barely a tournament team, according to most experts.

*To be a little objective, that losing streak was against a hellacious schedule: at Cincinnati, at Syracuse, Marquette, Georgetown, at Villanova, West Virginia. When Cincinnati is the worst loss out of six straight, you know you got a bad break from the schedule breakers.

For Providence, Jamine Peterson, Sharaud Curry (one of those classic “he’s STILL playing?” types) and Marshon Brooks pack a punch, but things start to level off once Davis has to go to his deep-but-not-particularly-impressive bench. Peterson and Vincent Council are a couple solid pieces to start building around, but Davis is still finding his way and adjusting to the fact that the Big East is nothing like the Missouri Valley Conference.

I’m hoping to see more stellar and consistent play from Wes Johnson as he puts his aches and pains behind him, and will be interested in seeing how the zone manages against a fast-paced offense  that shuffles its deck at every opportunity to keep the defense on its toes. I would feel very at ease to see SU put it together and show that they aren’t looking past the Friars to their giant matchup against Villanova Saturday night

If the ‘Cuse had a two-day turnaround after the Georgetown game, there might be slight cause for concern (Yes, I do think the game took that much out of the team, which was very visible in the closing minutes), but SU should have this one in hand for its 11th straight win away from the Dome.

The game also featured a few things we’ve become used to seeing (good and bad) – Wes Johnson dominating, a blown double-digit lead, Andy Rautins catching fire, steady if unspectacular play from the point, and lockdown perimeter defense from the guards.

I wrote before the game about a few things I needed to see reappear before I classify the Orange as ready to make a deep tournament run, and for at least one game, I’ve gotten some answers:

1. Wes Johnson healed and capable of dominating.

Wow, Wes had a spectacular first half – 14 points (including the team’s last nine of the first half), 8 rebounds, 3 blocks and an assist. You could almost see the frustration of the last few weeks vent away from Johnson as he slammed home a putback late in the first half. Of course, he vanished like most of the SU team when Georgetown mounted their big run, but it’s great to see a dominant half like he had.

2. Someone step up to take the point guard spot by the reins.

If you go by playing time, Triche came out ahead for this one, but we’ve seen Boeheim go with the hot hand all season, and sometimes that’s been the more experienced player in Scoop Jardine. Triche was one of three players saddled with early foul trouble Thursday night, but he calmed down and finished with eight points and a pair of dimes.

3. Continued consistency from Kris Joseph

I didn’t see what I wanted to from K-Jo for most of the game, but he helped seal the win with some key free throws. It’s still tough to ignore that 3-11 line from the floor.

After a taxing game for Boeheim’s troops, they get a well-deserved 5-day rest before another road game, this one at Providence.

When the Hoyas met the Orange last month, they came into the Dome with a case of schizophrenia, having knocked off Butler and UConn, but losing to the likes of Old Dominion and Marquette. After SU squashed an early but large hole dug by Austin Freeman, it’s been more of the same for Georgetown – a home loss to USF and a loss at the RAC, which hasn’t been anything close to the road environment it was in the days of Quincy Douby, but wins against a pair of top 10 teams in Duke and a sound victory over Villanova. Oh yeah, they also beat Pitt in their house, arguably the toughest place to notch a road win in college basketball.

If the season ended today, they’d be on the outside looking in at teams with favorable enough seeding to warrant a game close to campus. Since they haven’t won as many as four in a row since December, it would be hard for the selection committee to justify giving the Hoyas a trip to Providence or Buffalo, the two Northeastern sites for the opening rounds.

The Hoyas are something of a land mine, and the fact that they’ve dropped three of their last six coupled with a heated rival coming into town should be enough motivation for them to play well Thursday night, but as has been the case throughout the season, will the execution be there to match?

For Syracuse, while they may be undefeated on the road, they also have some major questions that need to be answered in the home stretch as they go on the road to DC and Providence:

When does Wes Johnson heal enough for him to return to his dominant form?

Will either of the point guards step up and become the floor general the team needs to succeed in March?

As half of SU’s bench (in a de facto sort of way), can Kris Joseph continue to be a stabilizing sixth man while dealing with nagging tendinitis?

The guards need to make sure Freeman and Chris Wright don’t get hot from outside, and if the bigs can neuter neutralize Greg Monroe as they did in January, it would go miles towards another important win for the ‘Cuse.

This team is a little dinged up, which has contributed to shaky performance as of late. Here’s to hoping SU gets its Ding King in a hurry.

Behind lackluster efforts from Scoop Jardine, Brandon Triche and an ice-cold day from the field for Johnson, it felt like SU was pedaling a bicycle through cream cheese just to hang around. Andy Rautins played decently, uncorking a couple of big threes, but I feel oddly comfortable saying that there wasn’t one player for the Orange who I would say played well. I think Arinze Onuaku could have proven me wrong, but he wasn’t given many opportunities. Jardine, and to a lesser extent, Triche, seemed too impatient to wait for the bigs to establish position to feed them the ball, thus abandoning the gameplan that often brings SU the most success.

A vast majority of the Orange’s points came in transition, as usual, but the difference was that the number of runouts and fast breaks was much lower than in games past, thanks to Louisville’s press and, once broken, their ability to get set and execute a solid matchup zone.

While some have been quick to lay into Tim Higgins’ officiating, he was hardly the reason SU lost, but I agree with the critics that aren’t sure what was going through his mind when he called an intentional foul on Kris Joseph late in the game. Higgins has reffed nearly 1000 games in his 14 years of officiating (going on 15); while I can’t estimate how many of those have included a team trailing by one or two possessions with less than a minute remaining, I do think it’s safe to assume a good amount, enough to know that the trailing team is going to foul until the game is out of hand.

Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that in the window between the 9:00 and 7:30 marks of the second half, where Louisville took the lead for good, Rakeem Buckles was allowed to camp in the paint for as long as he wanted, and from 6 feet away, Higgins never even started a three second count.

Looking down the schedule, all of a sudden just five games remain in the regular season and SU has a loss going into a two-game roadie against a full-tilt Hoyas team and the high-scoring Friars. if Wes Johnson isn’t healthy, he needs to get there fast and start taking over games the way we saw him take over Madison Square Garden. The next biggest thing, in my mind, is to get consistent guard play from the Jardine-Triche tandem. Their inexperience is starting to show itself – they have a couple of great finishers to go to in Onuaku and Jackson, but they can’t finish if they don’t have the ball.

“pacusefan Says:
February 14th, 2010 at 3:56 pm

Chris got back to me. Website is being moved to a new server and the server company is having some small issues. He hopes to have it up ASAP.”

Might be a good thing after todays game. Hope it’s back up soon and thanks PA.