Syracuse 81, Providence 74

The Friars entered tonight’s game with a lot of questions left unanswered by the nonconference schedule. Chief among them: Was the 11-2 nonconference record simply an illusion, a product of weak competition, or a sign of big things to come?

Tonight’s game may not have completely cleared up the issue, but we certainly learned one thing: this is NOT last year’s team.

Yeah, at the end of the day, it’s a tally in the loss column, and the term “moral victory” is hackneyed to the point of meaninglessness. That said, this game spoke volumes about how far this team and this program has come since the low points of the summer. It may be a consequence of some addition by subtraction in the offseason, but the team attitude seems to have completely changed gears. Tonight, discounting a few ill-advised three pointers (Gerard, cut it out), what I saw was a consistent confidence that generally seemed to remain at a healthy level. Teams of the last few years always seemed to be dangerously overconfident, panicking, or totally disinterested, depending on the game situation. Tonight, the Friars never truly fell into any of those three categories, which speaks to the maturity of the young guys brought in by Keno Davis over the last 2 years. Maybe most encouraging was the fact that the Friars never quit on this game, even after Syracuse went on runs to expand their lead. Every player on the team fought hard until the very end, and as a result, the Syracuse lead was never fully secure until the final seconds. In a hostile environment like the Carrier Dome, that’s difficult for any player to do, never mind a bunch of freshmen and sophomores, some of whom were seeing their first Big East action. If you had told me back in October that we’d lose the Big East opener to a top 5 ranked Orange team on the road by only 7 points, and that Cuse fans would be quietly soiling themselves until late in the second half, I would not have believed you. For that, I’m proud of what this team accomplished tonight.

Even the box score indicates an improvement in the attitude of this team. The individual statistics are much more balanced than in years past, pointing toward a more team oriented brand of basketball. Four starters scored in double figures, with the fifth, Kadeem Batts, adding 7 points of his own to match his 7 rebounds. Although the Friars were outmuscled down low by Rick Jackson (9 pts, 17 rebs), Batts and Bilal Dixon (11/9) worked hard down low and scrapped for rebounds in key situations. Marshon Brooks kept up his scoring pace, adding 27 points, many of which were the result of effective slashing moves down the baseline. Brooks’ success this season has come due in large part to increased patience on offense, reflected by more effective shot selection, and tonight was no different. Vincent Council continues to fill the stat sheet, with an impressive 10-8-7 line. Gerard Coleman was impressive at times as well. Statistically, it was not his best game, as he scored only 12 and whiffed on a lot of threes, but what stood out was his resilience. He was clearly not having the best time of it, particularly early, and yet he was able to bounce back and contribute to help keep the Friars afloat in the mid-to-late second half.

Obviously, there’s a long way to go, and problems that have plagued the Friars in the past (itchy trigger fingers on long threes, shoddy FT shooting, questionable perimeter defense) reared their ugly heads again tonight, ultimately contributing to the loss. However, it’s important to take notice of the fact that these problems alone would have sunk last year’s Friars, and this game would have been a blowout. Instead, the Friars hung around, and it took a career night from Kris Joseph (27 pts) along with some hotter-than-usual three point shooting (41%) from the Orange to pull this one out. As I said, there’s a lot of work to do, especially since the St. John’s game is a must win as long as these Friars want to shake the “rebuilding year” moniker they’ve been tagged with since June, but tonight was a step in the right direction.

-SM

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