The Syracuse University football team will visit traditional powerhouse Southern California in September and play Big East Conference rivals West Virginia, South Florida and Cincinnati at the Carrier Dome later in the fall. But the game everyone will be talking about this season is Nov.

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?.

The game of basketball has changed dramatically since James Naismith hung up a pair of peach baskets and created the sport in 1891. But this simple fact remains: You can only win by scoring more points than your opponent.

From his faraway seat in Section 336 at the Carrier Dome, Wayne Horton got the last laugh. About an hour before the Jan. 22 basketball game between the No. 7 Villanova Wildcats and No. 3 Syracuse Orange, Horton and two of his children, Joe and Jenna, took a lap around the Dome floor.

Just three minutes and 44 seconds into the Jan. 15 game against Cincinnati, Syracuse University center Fabricio de Melo was whistled for his third foul. It was his 33rd foul of the season, which at that point was only two less than the points he had scored (35), and just one more than the rebounds he had grabbed (32).

Commissioner Bud Selig likes to say that Major League Baseball’s “Steroid Era” is over now that the sport tests players for steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.

That Syracuse University tailback Delone Carter rushed for nearly 200 yards and two touchdowns in the Orange’s first bowl victory since 2001 was impressive enough. That Carter did it carrying the hopes and fears of a close friend on his back made it the stuff of legend.

Here’s a look at Syracuse University’s Big East opponents, in the order in which they were picked to finish in the preseason coaches’ poll (SU was picked third, with two first-place votes). The records and statistics are through Jan. 1:.

A lthough Syracuse University coach Jim Boeheim’s voice can at times be too whiny (just ask the referees) or too harsh (just ask his players after a bad game), it is almost always a voice of reason. So when Boeheim told us way back before Halloween that the Big East Conference was going to be as strong as ever, we should have listened.

The theme of the annual Mayor’s Roundball Classic high school basketball tournament is “It’s All About Pride,” meaning pride in Syracuse and the city’s school district.