It sure wasn’t pretty, but it was enough. The rust from not playing since last Saturday appeared to shine through, as Syracuse escaped the Prudential Center with a five-point win over Seton Hall despite a season-low 44.2% shooting mark from the Orange.

The offense from both teams bordered on unwatchable in the first half, when the Orange and Pirates combined to go 15-58, including 1-25 from beyond the arc, with the only trey coming from Kris Joseph to open the game. At intermission, the score was an unattractive 20-19. I can only imagine the words coming out of Jim Boeheim’s mouth in the locker room with SU missing on so many opportunities.

Whatever the message was, Brandon Triche listened and responded. After going scoreless in the first half, the sophomore scored eight points during a 24-14 SU run to start the second half. He would go on to convert a four-point play and finish with 15 points to match Kris Joseph’s total. In making his first four shots of the second half (including a three-pointer from beyond NBA range), Triche showed some of the confidence for which he’s often been criticized for hiding. He may not be one of the team’s top options on offense, s0 when he gets going, especially when the team has to lean on him as heavily as they did on Saturday, it’s a treat to watch.

Triche especially had to bail out his fellow point guard Scoop Jardine. Jardine was just 4-11 from the floor, and had little business taking many of those eleven shots. While he came through late in the game to help seal the victory, his decision-making remains suspect at best. I’ll hold out hope that he can correct that part of his game – even Eric Devendorf seemed to relax in his junior year – but it’s not something I’m going to count on or expect to happen overnight.

Rick Jackson was again a force on the glass; his 14 rebounds powered him past Todd Burgan for 18th on SU’s all-time list. Herb Pope and Jeff Robinson gave him fits down low, and Kris Joseph was the only one who gave Jackson any help on the glass, as SU was clobbered on the boards, 43-30.

I said earlier in this post and in the preview that it could be tough for the team to return to form following a week-long break, and it appeared to be part of the reason why the Orange struggled so mightily on offense. I’m not sure of the extent to which the conference is accountable versus venues like the Prudential Center which host non-NCAA events, but I imagine the gap can’t be easy for the team to deal with. While some may counter that it’s the coach’s job to have his team prepared for every game, regardless of time or place, to have a long break between conference games is very confounding.

The Orange will get another road test on Wednesday night, when they travel to Madison Square Garden to take on Steve Lavin’s resurgent St. John’s squad.

After a lengthy week-long break, the Orange return to play with their first true road game of the season, a visit to the Prudential Center to take on Seton Hall, who come into the game with a mediocre 7-8 record. First-year head coach Kevin Willard has had to deal with a number of personnel issues this season, which is interesting because when Willard’s hiring was announced, the player defections that are typical of BCS conference programs as they navigate coaching changes didn’t follow. In fact, the three Pirates who put their names into the NBA draft after last season (Jeremy Hazzell, Herb Pope and Jeff Robinson) all ended up returning to school. Subsequently, the Pirates were expected to contend for a tournament bid and not go through a major transition period. Unfortunately, it turns out that some of those hitches in developing a team under new leadership were simply deferred.

Herb Pope has struggled while dealing with a heart condition discovered after he died for a short time following a workout in April. While he remains a solid rebounding force, averaging nine boards per game in the team’s last seven games (compared to about seven per game through the Pirate’s first seven), his scoring has regressed from last year’s mark of 11.5 points per game down to 8.5 this season. He’s just one of Willard’s troops who have been slow to pick up the slack caused by another unfortunate incident.

On Christmas Day, Hazell was shot in Harlem during an armed robbery. The Pirates’ leading scorer had been out of action since November 18 after breaking a bone in his non-shooting wrist during Seton Hall’s game against Alabama. The gunshot wound, which went through his armpit and damaged his ribs, coupled with recovery from his wrist surgery, has Willard very tentative when asked about his star’s prognosis. It remains a possibility that Hazell could take a redshirt year just nine months after being projected to jump to the pros.

On top of Pope and Hazell’s unpredictable happenings, sophomore forward Ferrakohn Hall announced Thursday that he would be transferring to Memphis out of a desire to be closer to home. While Hall’s contributions for Seton Hall weren’t bountiful, – he averaged just 5.1 points per game off the bench – it’s just one more depth issue in the frontcourt that Willard’s team has to overcome in order to be respectable.

Seton Hall freshman Fuquan Edwin has been a major help, scoring in double figures in seven of the team’s last eight games. He’s seized the increased playing time and has rounded out into one of the conference’s top newcomers in a hurry. Jordan Theodore is a solid point guard and junior senior Jeff Robinson has improved noticeably in his time in East Rutherford.

Still, the paper-thin squad shouldn’t be much of a challenge for Syracuse on the road. James Southerland has made over half of his last 19 three-point attempts; Kris Joseph has finally become a consistent performer as the team’s top scoring threat and Rick Jackson continues to be dominant on the glass. The only thing for Orange Nation to be cautious about is the return after such a long sabbatical.

After a week-long break in December, the Orange had a tough time on defense against an inferior Iona team, so similar rustiness could hold SU back as they return to a regular schedule. Still, there’s a ton of talent at Jim Boeheim’s disposal, and not much on the other side of the scorer’s table. The Pirates will be happy to be home after taking road beatings from Cincinnati and Louisville, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re scuffling in a big way, having dropped four of their last five games against good competition.

If you didn’t catch it last night or over your morning viewing of SportsCenter, St. John’s won a low-scoring thriller over Georgetown on national television Monday night. While the Red Storm have played well for most of the season, casual fans still view them as the same non-factor they’ve been since the early 2000′s. With the strength at the top of the conference, I wouldn’t look for St. John’s to compete with Syracuse, Pitt and Villanova and the like (let alone live up to the billing as best team in the Big East as Rick Pitino postulated), but the big win sends a message to the conference that they should be taken seriously. That especially goes for Syracuse, which is a dominant 11-2 against the Redmen since 2000.

While St. John’s has received a good deal of attention for what is already viewed by experts as a knockout recruiting class (partially due to a jaw-dropping number of scholarships available), Steve Lavin might be a little ahead of schedule. There have been a couple bumps in the road with losses to St. Bonaventure and Fordham, but the Johnnies’ three losses are by a combined nine points.

After the Georgetown game, talk shifted from the surprising nature of the victory to the grueling stretch currently in front of the team. Following the Georgetown meeting, here’s the breakdown:

• 1/8 at Notre Dame
• 1/12 vs. Syracuse (insert MSG home game joke here)
• 1/16 vs. Notre Dame
• 1/19 at Louisville
• 1/22 vs. Cincinnati
• 1/26 at Georgetown
• 1/30 vs. Duke
• 2/2 vs. Rutgers
• 2/5 at UCLA (who may be down, but it’s still a cross-country flight for a game three days following a conference tilt)
• 2/10 vs. UConn

That’s a schedule that includes seven games out of ten against teams ranked in this week’s AP poll, and eight of 11 if you want to include Monday’s game. It bears a striking resemblance to the famous SU “Gauntlet” of 2008-09, when the Orange played eight games against teams in the final AP poll in a ten-game stretch. The only difference is that St. John’s slate includes two non-conference opponents in that bunch, one of which is viewed as the country’s best team.

For Orange fans, it’s also a good time to see where the Orange’s schedule is at its most challenging this year. Nearly every opponent outside of the bottom four teams in the league should give Syracuse a fight, but there always seems to be a period where things get especially tough and the team’s focus and endurance is put to the test. When the conference schedule was first released, I wrote in this space that this season’s accent would be the following:

• Feb. 9 vs. Georgetown
• Feb. 12 at Louisville
• Feb. 14 vs. West Virginia

Now that we’re more than two months deep in the season, we can where things have changed and where they’re the same. Georgetown will be as tough an out as they’ve been in recent years, and Pitino just seems to have his mentor’s number over the past few seasons, but Bob Huggins has taken longer than anticipated to find the recipe for success in Morgantown. With that in mind, the focus shifts to this ten-game progression:

• Jan. 12 at St. John’s
• Jan. 15 vs. Cincinnati (though their non-con schedule lacked quality teams)
• Jan. 17 at Pittsburgh
• Jan. 22 vs. Villanova
• Jan. 25 vs. Seton Hall
• Jan. 29 at Marquette
• Feb. 2 at Connecticut
• Feb. 5 at USF (fatigue could come into play in the final of three straight road games for SU)
• Feb. 9 vs. Georgetown
• Feb. 12 at Louisville

For those counting, that includes five games against teams currently in the AP poll, though there’s a decent shot St. John’s crashes that party, especially if they take care of business against Notre Dame later this week. For those who prefer some of the newer methods such as RPI and KenPom rankings, that’s six games against teams in the top 50 in RPI, and eight against teams in Pomeroy’s top 50. The change in perception reflects the outperforming of expectations by St. John’s, Cincinnati and UConn to this point, though extended breathers in conference play are still as hard to come by as ever.

All told, it’s great for the conference as a whole when a program like St. John’s get on the path to resurrection. Now, we’ll get to see how far the team’s newfound confidence can carry them.

With Saturday’s 70-58 win over Notre Dame Saturday, Syracuse moved to 15-0, its best start through that many games since 1999-2000. The Irish, long known as a perimeter-oriented team, had developed a strong inside game behind the versatility of Tim Abromaitis and strength of Carleton Scott and freshman/Harangody doppelganger Jack Cooley. The Orange did an excellent job matching up, in large part thanks to Kris Joseph’s 18 points and eight rebounds, though Rick Jackson’s career-high six blocks played a major role as well.

Though Joseph took a high number of shots (18) on Saturday, he scored seven of the team’s first nine points as the rest of the team sputtered just a little bit early. Joseph has finally come around and is on his way to becoming the consistent threat the Orange need him to be. He’s made at least eight shots in four of the last five games, and is shooting 57% in that span. Even more impressive is that he’s also shooting 52% from behind the arc (10-19) in that time.

Having shot 45% on threes over the team’s last six games, the team’s biggest question when the season started just might be solved. Perhaps more importantly is the fact that several players are chipping in on the attack, not just Joseph, who over the summer needed only to tune up his long-range game to become a complete swingman.

James Southerland continues to emerge as a key cog in the rotation from the bench. Since the Morgan State game, he’s averaged 11 points per game, and half of his 30 made shots have come from three point range. Prior to that game against the Bears, he hadn’t topped seven all season. I’d like to see him take advantage of his athletic ability and become more aggressive inside, mostly because depth issues down low brought on by the various setbacks of Dashonte Riley and Fab Melo are starting to surface. In addition, I have a feeling that Baye Keita’s inexperience is going to show during conference play. Still, there’s something to be said about someone like Southerland who can come off the bench and provide the kind of offense he’s capable of while holding his own on the defensive end.

Dion Waiters, who played through most of SU’s torrid 19-3 run that put the game at a safe distance, didn’t provide the kind of scoring that we’re used to seeing from him, but his defense continues to improve. His two steals bring his total to 19 on the campaign, and only Scoop Jardine has more thefts per game. Considering Waiters’ reputation as an apathetic defender when he arrived, his acclimation to the zone indicates that he’s rather coachable. It’s still early into his career, but when all is said and done, he could be one of the most glowing examples of Mike Hopkins’ coaching ability.

One thing I’ve grown slightly concerned about is Scoop Jardine’s erratic play. Sometimes I like his aggression, but when you consider the fact that he’s a redshirt junior, he’s had a good deal of time to learn the nuances of Big East play from the bench as well as from experience on the court. While his nine assists were nice, he needs to play with more control and not have outings like Saturday’s where he turns the ball over five times in a game that can be accurately described as only moderately-paced.

Now, we get a week-long wait until Saturday’s road trip to Seton Hall. These lengthy furloughs bite at me as a college hoops fan, but they might have an impact on the team as well. There’s been one such break so far already this season, and the Orange came out of it by escaping against Iona by just six. Until next weekend, be excited that SU has passed each test laid in front of them and that the team has given us plenty to talk about.

While I’m more familiar with SU basketball, I’ve mentioned on this blog that a large portion of my time on campus was marred by the so-called “Dark Ages” of SU football – The 2004-07 seasons were bookended by the final season under Paul Pasqualoni and the messy transition in the athletic department that followed, and the third year of the Greg Robinson era. During that time, SU football went 13-34, with nearly half of those wins coming from Coach P in his last season. In that span, we also endured a handful of embarrassments on national television, including a blowout loss to Purdue in the 2004 season and the 54-14 throttling at the hands of Georgia Tech in the Champs Sports Bowl later that year.

With so few bright spots when I was on campus, it made me very happy to watch the Orange top Kansas State in the Pinstripe Bowl yesterday. In the back of my mind, I knew it wasn’t a top-tier bowl, and with all the financial problems the bowl system imposes on schools (UConn and Oklahoma are among programs expected to take some sizable hits to the wallet through little fault of their own), there’s less doubt by the day that the current operation is broken. Still, the win signals an apex of sorts in turning the corner from the stench left by Robinson’s abomination of a coaching tenure and accelerating to what many hope to be bigger and better things.

I’d be remiss as a blogger if I didn’t address the unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that moved the Wildcats’ two-point try 15 yards further from the end zone. At first, my reaction was that as weird a decision as it was to call it, Adrian Hilburn was equally culpable – after all, if you know your team has to make a two-point conversion, why chance anything by doing anything other than quietly handing the ball to the official and rejoining your team in the huddle? Later, though, as I watched the replays, I remembered that the touchdown was a big moment in the game for K-State, which exonerated Hilburn in my mind. I later learned that the referee who flagged the call reportedly made a condescending comment to Hilburn as he threw the marker, and I grew more disgusted – not just with the call itself, but with the fact Syracuse played its best offensive game all season and won its first bowl game since 2001, but all the team will hear is that the refs screwed* Kansas State.

*And they weren’t really screwed out of the game. Who’s to say that Kansas State makes the two-point conversion from the normal distance? And even then, not to discredit SU’s offense, Kansas State’s defense, which had been terrible all year, was terrible again on Friday. It was very possible for Syracuse to march right back down into field goal range in the time remaining for a last second try for Ross Krautman.

Judging by the attendance marks and the number of fans Tweeting either as they watched the game in person or followed at home on TV, we also learned that fans will support a winner. It may take some prodding and increased success in conference play (especially at home, where SU was winless against Big East foes) to awaken those who are still dazed by the prior struggles of the football team, but the fanbase is hungry for a winner, and Marrone has proven in just two seasons that he can deliver on his end of the deal. While I’ve read nothing official, I think it’s safe to assume that Marrone and his troops will make the obligatory halftime appearance at Saturday’s game against Notre Dame, as the hoops team will hope to ring in the new year with a win.

Despite losing Luke Harangody, the Irish remain a very good team that has outperformed preseason expectations. Their only loss at this point was to Kentucky in a game played in Louisville, and they had a great run through the Old Spice Classic, beating Georgia, Cal and Wisconsin, all on neutral floors. They’re undefeated at home, and beat Georgetown on Wednesday to legitimize their case for contention.

While their game against Kentucky may as well have been one, Saturday’s game against the Orange will be the Irish’s first true road game of the season. Notre Dame will field a stable of three-point shooters, as Mike Brey’s squad includes five players with significant playing time who hit at a 33.9% rate from deep or better, led by senior Tim Abromaitis. Abromaitis follows a long line of long range assassins from South Bend who can torch the ‘Cuse on a moment’s notice such as Matt Caroll, Chris Quinn, Colin Falls and Kyle McAlarney. Last season, Abromaitis hit five of 11 shots from beyond the arc, though the Orange ultimately prevailed.

By turnover rate, Notre Dame holds onto the ball better than all but three teams in the nation, though like Drexel, they don’t force the issue much on defense, instead preferring to hit the glass. This is a somewhat new approach for Notre Dame; even when they had Harangody, they weren’t known for their rebounding, but this season, they’re grabbing 75.9% of their opponent’s misses, one of the best marks in the country in that category. The Orange will have to continue their recent hot shooting to neutralize that strength, and Baye Keita will have to prove that he can help Rick Jackson down low off the bench against better opposition, as he did against Michigan in New Jersey.

For the Orange on offense, it’s worth pointing out that the Irish only plays a six-man rotation of players who average more than 25 minutes per game. As has been the case a few times this season, the Orange will help themselves a long way if they can draw contact and force Brey into calling on his reserves earlier than he’d like. We know that Scoop Jardine and Kris Joseph have no qualms about driving, and Brandon Triche can blow by his man on occasion as well, so this appears to be a very good matchup for SU.

Finally, I’d like to wish all the readers a happy and healthy new year, and I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday, no matter how it was celebrated!

Recently, the SU blogosphere responded to an anonymous Post-Standard blog post about how the Orange have failed to lose a game despite some perceived shortcomings. Today, I hope to similarly serve you as a vigilante of SU hoops journalism.

In the years I’ve followed the Orange, Mookie Jones has been one of the most intriguing players to don a uniform, judging by the amount of discussion centered on the redshirt sophomore. Mookie excites, frustrates, amuses and confuses fans all at once with his three-point shooting ability, slowly developing defense and the occasional excessively public quote, whether it’s expressed through traditional media or Twitter or Facebook.

This morning, Ryan Day, who covers the ‘Cuse for the Auburn Citizen, penned a short commentary expressing his confusion over the clamoring for more Mookie this season. In it, he makes some valid points, but there are also a few spots where he slides a little off-base in his analysis. Let’s start right with the headline:

Not the right time for Mookie minutes

Looking at Syracuse’s schedule, with Drexel tonight followed by five of the Big East’s middle-to-lower tier squads – Providence, Notre Dame, Seton Hall, St. John’s and Cincinnati, it’s probably the best chance the team has left to get Jones rolling without a ton of risk. It’s certainly a better opportunity than the stretch that follows, when Syracuse plays at Pittsburgh, hosts Villanova and travels to UConn in a 15-day stretch. That span also includes a return trip from Seton Hall and a visit to Marquette, whose fans will be out in full force.

He’s a one-trick ponie — a 3-point shooter. He plays no defense and can’t do anything offensively other than shoot, and still, he hasn’t done that extraordinarily well.

I won’t jump on the equine misspelling from a journalist; I’d rather we just keep rolling here. Jones continues to be great at his one perceived skill – shooting the long ball. He’s connected on 41.7% of his three-pointers, not far removed from last season’s mark of 44.1% and his career line of 41.1%. If a 41% clip is not enough to characterize it as “extraordinarily well,” I’d love to get his take on Andy Rautins (37.4% lifetime) and Gerry McNamara (37.5%). On a team short on three-point shooters, Mookie’s accuracy has become a tool that this team desperately needs. At 102 career three-point attempts now in the books, the sample size has grown too large to dismiss.

And if you’re going to insert someone who’s a liability on defense, say a Dion Waiters, then be [sic] better be pretty terrific on offense. Well, Waiters is terrific on offense. And Mookie isn’t.

Six weeks ago, Waiters was a liability on defense, but since then, this assessment has started to become obsolete. Yes, Waiters draws a lot of attention to himself on offense with a great handle and flashy passes (even if some are ill-advised). As a freshman, he’s prone to the occasional defensive lapse, especially once conference play hits, but Waiters’ defense has improved dramatically since day one. Steals aren’t the end-all when it comes to locking down, but Waiters has totaled 15 of them in the Orange’s last nine games, and has at least one theft in each of those games. The timing for this criticism just seems off.

Granted, we haven’t seen Mookie do much of anything else on offense besides shoot the trey, but why imply that he needs more tools when the three guards in front of him on the depth chart can drive? The inside game, whether it comes from Jones’ teammates driving the lane or finishing in the post, is not an issue for this team. If we were talking about Mookie playing more than ten minutes per game, I would be a little more concerned, but I haven’t come across too many fans who are calling for Boeheim to give Jones that kind of run where he needs to have a more versatile game.

When asked why Mookie doesn’t play more, my answer is always the same: “Who do you want him playing over?”

Again, we aren’t talking about Mookie taking away major minutes. While teams have packed in the zone, he has the height at 6’6″ to maintain accuracy over taller defenders. That’s not the case with Scoop Jardine, and Brandon Triche has struggled with it as well. Between Kris Joseph and CJ Fair, there’s enough at the 3 that Mookie can stick to playing the two alongside either Jardine or Triche. For a short time against Morgan State, we got a look at a Dion-Mookie backcourt. Even with the understanding that SU was up by a blowout margin at that point, it was still unsightly. Play Mookie for two or three minutes at a time when Jardine or Triche need some rest and the team will be fine more often than not.

Syracuse’s biggest flaw this season is 3-point shooting, I grant you that. But it has yet to cost them. And when it does, I guarantee the calls for Mookie minutes will be even louder.

This seems to be as much as an indictment on Boeheim’s coaching appraoch as it is on the team’s three-point shooting ability. Failing to address a shortcoming before it’s too late is not part of Jim Boeheim’s MO, at least not in recent seasons. The closest scenario to the contrary I can picture was when I attended games as a student, prior to the resurgence that’s taken place over the last three seasons. I remember growing frustrated as an opposing player shot the lights out against Syracuse, and Boeheim wouldn’t even think about switching to man defense.

In my then-limited basketball knowledge, it bothered me that he would seemingly keep putting his hand on the stove despite getting burned, but he found a better solution that didn’t involve changing his patented coaching style. It was to simply recruit bigger, longer guards – guys like Andy Rautins, Brandon Triche and Dion Waiters. A major part of the game is making adjustments, but in recent seasons, Syracuse has been able to make those adjustments both in-game, as we saw when SU closed out on Morgan State’s Justin Black after he made a few threes, as well as on the recruiting trail. The results speak for themselves: In 2008-09, Syracuse ranked 8th in D-I in opponent 3G%. Last season, they were 22nd; this season, they’re 20th.

The Orange could still run into that proverbial hot three-point shooter who dooms the team, but SU has someone right on their bench who can do the same to the opposition, if only he’s afforded the chance.

As of the final buzzer of Monday’s big win against Morgan State, Syracuse is officially on a six-week cupcake-free diet. It’s the last non-conference game, and Syracuse won’t face a team ranked outside of Ken Pomery’s top 100 until February 5, when they travel to the Sun Dome to look horns with the Bulls. The first rice cake (end food metaphor) in that stretch is the Drexel Dragons of the Colonial Athletic Association.

The CAA is one of the best mid-major conferences in the nation this season. The conference has prevailed over UCLA, Louisville, Clemson, Xavier and Dayton, and displayed solid showings in losing efforts to Georgetown and Tennessee. Hofstra’s Charles Jenkins is among the nation’s leaders in effective shooting. This is no MEAC (Morgan State) or Patriot League (Colgate). Drexel, of course, handed Louisville their first loss in the Yum! Center last Tuesday. They’ve won six straight games, but Bruiser Flint’s team followed up the big win in Louisville with a sloppy 61-57 victory over a putrid St. Francis (NY) squad. Drexel has navigated a somewhat challenging non-con docket with success, keyed by a group of good shooters and one of the best rebounding corps in the nation.

Chris Fouch leads the offense, averaging 19.7 points per contest with a fiery 28-71 mark from three. Not surprisingly, in Drexel’s only loss of the season, Fouch scored only seven points and missed all eight of his tries from three-point land. In the Dragons’ escape job against St. Francis, he went 1-7 from deep. It would appear that as Fouch goes, so go the Dragons, but that’s not exactly the case, as they beat Rick Pitino’s Cardinals despite a similarly bad personal outing. Senior guard Gerald Colds has averaged 18.5 points per game in their last two matchups to pick up the slack, but Drexel prides itself on its rebounding prowess.

The Dragons wipe the glass better than almost every other team in Division-I. They corral 42.7% of their misses on offense, good for sixth in the country, and wrap up 76.8% of misses from opposing defenses, better than only two teams. When 6’5″ tweener Samme Givens averages 11.8 rebounds per game to lead the team, it’s likely a product of the combination of some undersized competition coupled with true rebounding ability. Meanwhile, a physical presence like the 6’9″, 270-pound Daryl McCoy averages 8.7 boards per game despite only playing about 20 minutes per contest. Overall, the Dragons sport a +14.2 rebounding differential, so it’s important not only for Rick Jackson and Baye Moussa Keita to challenge them, but also for James Southerland to keep active on the defensive end, now that he’s getting CJ Fair’s minutes in addition to the time he would normally get.

Playing defense before the shots go up, however, has been problematic for Drexel. They rank 342nd out of 345 teams in D-I in defensive turnover percentage, with a weak 15.6% mark (20% is average). What that means is that drivers like Kris Joseph, Scoop Jardine, Brandon Triche and Dion Waiters shouldn’t have any trouble getting into the lane.

While there’s been some talk about Jim Boeheim cranking up his rotation to ten, Flint has stayed in a Boeheimian seven-man rotation all year.  SU must continue to do what it has done since the start of the 2009-10 season – get out on the other team’s shooters. Of Drexel’s seven regulars, three of them make at least 33.3% of their three-pointers. A short bench for Drexel also means that SU would be wise to draw a lot of contact.

In SU’s final tune-up before conference play begins, expect a fast-paced game as SU tries to sustain its newfound shooting prowess. If Kris Joseph could make his return, well, that’d be nice, too.

No disrespect intended to the onslaught of SU’s reserves, who were fantastic on Monday night, but so much for Morgan State being a tough challenge. The Bears were humiliated, 97-55, in front of a small but devoted crowd at the Carrier Dome, with the student section essentially bare. The loss was so demoralizing for the MEAC favorite that after Matt Lyde-Cajuste made a pair of free throws with 28 seconds left in the game, Morgan State was content to dribble out the clock rather than try to save face by running the offense one last time against SU’s walk-ons.

Just about everything the Orange tossed up went in the basket, especially during a first half where the Orange shot 57.6% from the floor, including 5-9 on threes. We were even treated to a classic Mookie Jones performance where the sophomore canned two threes and took no shots inside the arc.

Meanwhile, Morgan State shot 38.5% for the night, and were actually better on threes (38.5%) than they were on twos (37.7%). All season long, teams have sat back and chucked, but not the Bears. Their game plan was to go inside to Kevin Thompson every chance they could, and I suppose it worked, but it came at the fortunate expense of the long ball. Considering that Morgan State was just the second SU opponent this season to crack 35% from beyond the arc (NC State was the first), perhaps Todd Bozeman should’ve let the few shooters he has shoot and see if they could at least make the game interesting.

Back to the ‘Cuse, James Southerland made Orange Nation forget about CJ Fair’s bad ankle. Southerland had a career night, sinking his first six shots and had his way with the undersized Bears defense, tallying five rebounds and two blocks. Baye Moussa Keita maximized his minutes in the team’s first few games of the season, but in the second half of non-conference play, Southerland has been more impressive in limited action. He’s now strung together three straight solid games. Colgate, Iona and Morgan State aren’t exactly UConn, Pitt and Villanova, but he’s doing all he can to keep his foot in the rotation’s door. While Fair was a big ole DNP, Kris Joseph played about as negligible a role.

The junior couldn’t get anything going, and his lack of consistency is starting to become a concern with conference play just two games away. These opponents are partially scheduled for the regulars to get a sort of running start before Big East play comes, so to see him struggle isn’t a good sign. If he can’t string together consecutive games against some of SU’s weaker opponents, should we just hope and pray that the switch is flipped once the challengers are more talented?

I was much happier with the way the backcourt played. The team recorded 34 assists on 39 baskets, with the majority of those going to Brandon Triche, Dion Waiters and Scoop Jardine. They were also active defensively, stealing a ton of weak entry passes which led to a game-long layup line. I could’ve done without some of the flashy passes in transition, especially those that didn’t connect, but I suppose Dion and Scoop had to keep themselves entertained somehow.

Finally, it was nice to see Rick Jackson return to his old self after a one-game disappearance, and to see Fab Melo notch a new personal scoring mark, but I worry about his bad calf. In a game like this, I’m torn on whether any confidence gained by feasting on a delicious cupcake like MSU is worth the potential of a setback caused by playing 19 minutes on a bad wheel. It’s common knowledge that Melo’s body isn’t where it needs to be when he’s healthy; throw in a nagging injury and I think the risk elevates.

The non-conference finale comes Wednesday night against a Drexel team that upset Louisville over the weekend. Before you dismiss the Dragons’ surprising win as a fluke, remember that SU hasn’t beaten Louisville since the 2005-06 season. Of course, Boeheim will hope to get some long-overdue closure to his team’s 2006 loss to Drexel.

Conference play is wrapping up for SU, but judging from the health statii of a couple players, you’d think it was already mid-February. Fab Melo has a sore hammy, and against Iona, CJ Fair rolled his ankle and is not expected to play tonight against Morgan State.

The Bears represented the MEAC dutifully in the 2010 NCAA Tournament, rolling over for West Virginia in the first round. The conference remains pitiful in 2010-11, as three of the 11 schools have two or fewer wins. Morgan State hopes to return to the Big Dance for the third straight season, but after the beatings they’ve suffered at the hands of highly-seeded teams, they need to make some real strides in non-conference play. Scheduling SU, Baylor and Louisville in a two-week stretch is one way for Todd Bozeman’s troops to get ready for possible tournament action.

Sophomore DeWayne Jackson is MSU’s best player. He has broken out for 31 and 24-point performances, but those outings are compromised when you notice that they came against bad teams in Loyola Marymount and Coppin State, respectively. For reference, Coppin State is #320 in the KenPom ratings, and Morgan State only beat them by six at home. Most recently, Morgan State beat a terrible UMBC team, who is one of just six teams in the country who remain without single win. Let me put it this way: If Boeheim tied CJ Fair’s bad ankle to his good one and played him, he could hang (or, more accurately, hop)with Morgan State. And Boeheim should know – he told the media after the Iona game that even he could bring the ball up.

On another note pertaining to Boeheim’s postgame remarks, he recently said that Morgan State is a team that shouldn’t be overlooked, because when teams are overlooked as UCLA did to Montana, or Louisville did to Drexel. It’s not quite apples to oranges, though – Montana is a clear favorite to win the Big Sky, and Drexel will contend in a quality CAA. While those programs don’t have any excuses losing to the teams they lost to, they’re not exactly patsies, either.

Expect this game to be light on the Melo, with Baye Moussa Keita getting a lot of minutes down low. With CJ Fair out, James Southerland will get plenty of time to build on his last two games. If SU takes care of business early like they should, we may even get a healthy dose of Mookie. I’ll take SU by 23.

Saturday night’s 83-77 win over Iona wasn’t as close as the final score indicated, but there’s still a lot of opportunity for Syracuse to improve. SU regularly lead by 8-12 points the entire second half, but a too-little-too-late run by the Gaels narrowed the deficit. The Orange had their best shooting night of the season, at 59% for the evening. It’s an especially good sign when you look at the box score and see that Syracuse didn’t have to rely heavily on Rick Jackson for scoring.

Kris Joseph, on the other hand, was very good and played what I feel to be his best game of the season. He had a couple of nice drives, flashed his perimeter game and even pulled down seven rebounds. He came into the game mired in a 7-38 shooting slump (then again, it seems like just about everyone on the team has endured a shooting slump at some point this season), but broke out in a big way, going 8-11 from the floor in 38 minutes with nary a turnover. He took one bad shot early, which earned him a quick hook from Jim Boeheim, but once he re-entered the game, things came very easily for him on offense.

While Joseph broke out of a shooting draught, Brandon Triche continued his steady improvement since the Michigan State game. With seven assists, another made three and a couple runners, he played very methodically while Scoop Jardine mostly coasted along in the background.

Dion Waiters was a nice boost Saturday night as well, with an efficient 12 points in 15 minutes. Like Triche, Waiters played within himself, not making some of the cocky decisions we’ve seen him make in the past. Keeping control of the ball, he had zero turnovers for the seventh time this season, and now has just eight turnovers in 174 minutes played on the campaign – basically four and a half full games’ worth of action. Obviously that’s a little out of context, but for someone who always had the ball in his hands in high school and never wanted to let go of the rock, it’s a great sign from him.

Also from the bench, CJ Fair had a very good game in limited action. In the postgame presser, Boeheim revealed that Fair turned his ankle in the first half, which was why Fair sat the entire the second half. With games coming up on Monday and Wednesday to close out conference play, the timing is unfortunate, but time will tell exactly how serious the injury is.

In his stead, however, James Southerland made the most of his playing time for the second straight game. If Fair’s healthy, there’s a good chance Southerland doesn’t see the court in the second half, so credit the sophomore for being ready to have his number called. Sure, Colgate and Iona don’t hold a candle to the intensity of the Big East, but Southerland gave a great effort in keeping the Gaels at arm’s length, with which Boeheim must be pleased to some degree. Still, with CJ’s ankle coupled with Fab Melo’s calf trouble, injuries are quietly piling up as conference play approaches.

Watching Mike Glover, it’s easy to see what Bobby Gonzalez, crazy as he may be, saw in the guard. The former Seton Hall commit had a double-double in the first half, and SU’s defense didn’t look well-prepared to handle him at all. Speaking of SU’s defense, they held yet another opponent to under 30% from the perimeter. The Gaels were happy to hoist it from deep, with 37 of their 58 field goal attempts coming from beyond the arc. In a cursory look, that may seem fine, but Syracuse had real trouble closing out on Iona’s shooters. They got plenty of good looks, and to compound the Orange’s defensive issues, Iona was able to corral 27% of their misses. There’s still a lot of fine-tuning to be done within the zone.