PHILADELPHIA – For a traveling salesman, Syracuse’s itinerary might be acceptable. For a college basketball team, it’s unforgiving.

Syracuse visited South Bend, Ind., where it attacked Notre Dame with a 3-point barrage. The Orange traveled to Cincinnati, where the Bearcats tried to bump and bruise SU. It hosted Connecticut, whose frontcourt depth combined with shooting prowess formed perhaps SU’s most difficult test of the season. The Orange visited Philadelphia on Saturday and Villanova’s unorthodox four-guard lineup trumped SU. Tonight, No. 20 Syracuse visits No. 9 Pittsburgh tonight at 7 in the Petersen Events Center for the rubber match of a nightmarish stretch.

This five-game stretch – four on the road, one at home – is easily the most difficult part of the Orange’s schedule. After winning the first two games, the Orange (15-4, 3-2 Big East) dropped the next two and it leaves the Panthers (15-1, 4-1) – who were unbeaten before St. John’s knocked them off Saturday, 55-50 – as the deciding game of the sequence.

Certainly, 3-2 will look a lot better for the Orange than 2-3. But Pittsburgh is notoriously tough at the Petersen Events Center, where SU is 1-2. And with the Panthers proven vulnerable, Syracuse forward Terrence Roberts knows they’ll be hungry.

‘They’re going to be grinding just like us,’ Roberts said, ‘We need to go into Pitt and get a tough one.’

As stoic as it sounds, ‘need’ is the operable world. While it wouldn’t be devastating for Syracuse’s season, three straight losses would be a tough hole for the Orange to climb out of in a conference that’s being anointed as the best in the nation.

When SU fell to Connecticut last Monday, it came on the heels of a game the prior Saturday night. Between the traveling and the tired legs, it would have been easy to attribute the lackluster first half against UConn to the schedule. Gerry McNamara, for one, doesn’t see it that way.

‘We can’t use that as an excuse,’ McNamara said after Monday’s game. ‘NBA guys play every night. They have to go out there and play eight more minutes than we do and do it every single night for 82 games. We’re pretty well conditioned. Your body is going to take some hits and bruises, but that’s no excuse to come out like we did.’

This week’s Saturday-Monday sequence features two road games, which makes it even more difficult. After the Connecticut game, Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim criticized the Big East’s scheduling, claiming too much was done for television. A team of Syracuse’s prestige is often paired up for primetime games, and because of its stature in the Big East, it’s forced to play Villanova, Connecticut and Cincinnati twice. But it is Saturday’s game and tonight’s game that infuriates Boeheim.

‘We got to play probably the two best teams in the conference besides Connecticut back-to-back in the road for television,’ Boeheim said on Monday. ‘That’s just crazy.’

After the loss to Villanova, Boeheim acknowledged the schedule. And with the nature of the Big East, the schedule gets easier. But it’s still unforgiving.

‘We knew the first stretch in this league will be the hardest stretch in this league,’ Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘We have another tough game, and we’ll see how we are after that.’

Published on January 22, 2006 at 12:00 pm