Orange Assessment

With two games remaining in the regular season and the Big East Conference and NCAA tournaments just around the corner, we’re still trying to get a handle on this year’s edition of the Syracuse University men’s basketball team.

Is it the team that started the season 18-0 and vaulted to No. 3 in the national polls? Or is it the team that lost six of eight games, including three in a row at the Carrier Dome, from mid-January to mid-February?

Is it the team that registered convincing wins over Notre Dame, St. John’s (at Madison Square Garden—no easy feat this season), and at Connecticut? Or is the team that barely beat William & Mary, lost by 22 points at home to Seton Hall, and needed overtime to beat Rutgers at the Dome this past Saturday?

On one hand, give credit to the Orange for hanging tough in the ultra-competitive Big East (a 10-6 conference record after Monday’s victory at Villanova), and for grinding out wins against Michigan, Georgia Tech, North Carolina State and Rutgers when the games could have easily gone the other way.

“This team has had some great games and when the games are right to the wire, we’ve stepped up and made plays to win these games,” SU coach Jim Boeheim said after the Orange’s 84-80 overtime victory over Rutgers.

“That’s not always easy to do. It’s very easy to let a game like this get away from you.”

On the other hand, SU has had a tendency to allow inferior teams to hang around too long. And the Orange’s head-scratching pen-chant for disappearing during long stretches of games has cost them wins against top-ranked teams.

The 18-0 start glossed over the fact that this is a young team and young teams are generally inconsistent and prone to wild swings. Senior forward Rick Jackson and sophomore guard Brandon Triche are the only returning starters. Junior forward Kris Joseph and junior guard Scoop Jardine are first-year starters. And most of the other minutes have gone to four freshmen (C.J. Fair, Baye Moussa Keita, Dion Waiters and Fab Melo) and sophomore James Sutherland. Most of the other minutes have gone to four freshmen (C.J. Fair, Baye Moussa Keita, Dion Waiters and Fab Melo) and sophomore James Southerland.

“For 18 games, we didn’t know what losing felt like,” Triche said. “Then we lost a game {at Pittsburgh} and it kind of snowballed. We finally got that win {after a fourgame losing streak} and we remembered what it was like and I think we’ve been getting back to our old selves.”

At the start of the season we looked at five keys that would determine if the Orange could make another deep run in the NCAA Tournament and improve on last year’s Sweet 16 finish. As we get ready for March Madness, let’s assess how the Orange has answered those questions:

1. Replacing the Big Three—again. SU lost its top three scorers after the 2008-2009 season (Jonny Flynn, Eric Devendorf and Paul Harris), and its three best players after the 2009-2010 campaign (Wes Johnson, Andy Rautins and Arinze Onuaku).

Statistically, SU’s top three players (Joseph, Jackson and either Jardine or Triche, take your pick) have approximated the production of Johnson, Rautins and Onuaku in just about every major category. We’re not saying this year’s threesome is equal to last year’s—the eyeball test tells us they’re not— but they have more than held their own.

The big difference, then, is …

2. The bench. Last season, Boeheim had the luxury of bringing Joseph and Jardine off the bench. Joseph ranked third on the team in scoring (10.8 points per game) and rebounding (5.5 per game), while Jardine averaged 9.1 ppg and ranked second on the team with 151 assists.

Fair has overcome an early-season ankle injury to become a major contributor who’s getting starter’s minutes. Waiters has shown flashes and Keita has been a pleasant surprise, but overall SU isn’t getting the production from its bench that it had last year.

Fair, a 6-8 forward, played a big part in SU’s wins over West Virginia and Rutgers as Jackson had to play more in the middle because. . .

The freshmen big men. Fab Melo, the Big East’s Preseason Rookie of the Year, has turned into a non-factor. After playing three minutes against Georgetown and not at all against Louisville and West Virginia, the 7-foot Melo played four seconds against Rutgers and was yanked after committing a foul.

Melo’s former backup, Keita, has been solid all season. But at 6-10 and only 213 pounds, Keita has had trouble against the big bodies in the Big East and that has forced Boeheim to use the 6-9 Jackson at center far more than he would like.

“Ricky has been tremendous defensively, but we have to get Baye or Fab playing better in there,’’ Boeheim said. “If {Jackson’s} playing the whole time at center, and they keep going in there, he’s going to get into foul trouble and we can’t afford to lose him.”

Shooting the 3. Led by Rautins and Johnson, last year’s team shot 39 percent from three-point range. Before Monday’s game, SU was shooting 35 percent overall and 33 percent in Big East play. The difference? Last year’s team made an average of seven threepointers per game, while this year’s team was at 6.2 after the Rutgers game.

While this year’s three-point shooters haven’t been quite as consistent, the lack of three-point scoring hasn’t devastated the Orange. SU’s offense is not as strong this year because it’s not as deep. Last year’s team had seven players who averaged 8.1 ppg or more, while this year’s team has four such players.

The chemistry. Last year’s team was unique in that it was led by a group of older players (Johnson, Rautins and Onuaku) who were as unselfish as they were talented. Joseph, Jackson, Jardine and Triche have assumed the leadership role and they seem to have steered the Orange through that difficult 2-6 stretch.

But the real work remains as they have to step up their games in March while helping Boeheim and the coaching staff coax more productive minutes out of Waiters, Keita, Melo and Southerland.

“There’s no question we lost three big leaders last year,” Jardine said. “But me, Rick, Brandon and Kris have taken it upon ourselves to be the leaders, and we’ll have the young guys ready for the tournament.”

Orange Slices: The Rutgers’ game was SU’s first overtime contest since the six-overtime classic against Connecticut in the 2009 Big East Tournament. Under Boeheim, the Orange is 37-20 in overtime games, including 19-3 at the Carrier Dome and 21-3 in its last 24 overtime games.

Jardine left Saturday’s game against Rutgers with a right-hand injury. But Jardine, who had a large bag of ice strapped to his hand after the game, played 43 of the game’s 45 minutes and said the injury wasn’t serious.

The Orange, which had been shooting a Big East-worst 64 percent from the foul line in league play, sank 34-of-47 free throws (72 percent) against Rutgers--the most ever by a Syracuse team at the Dome.

—Matt Michael