It was a different Syracuse locker room. It was crowded, spirited, loose. Arinze Onuaku was making faces at Terrence Roberts when Roberts was being interviewed. Roberts turned up the television to watch highlights of different games. It was a winning locker room.

The mood could easily shift back to Wednesday’s form, when it was dreary after a loss to Cincinnati, depending on how the Orange fares against West Virginia tonight. It could be even more somber or even more spirited. The point is, it’s important to keep Saturday’s win in perspective. SU is back on the court tonight. It can either capitalize on the win or fall back into a slump.

Syracuse fans have already been down this road. After Terrence Roberts hit a miraculous 3-pointer against Rutgers, it looked like a shot that SU could build on. But it couldn’t put on a decent showing against then-No. 1 Connecticut. It looked like it was able to put together a run after topping St. John’s last weekend and having three straight games at home. But then SU stumbled against Cincinnati.

SU responded by playing an impressive game against Louisville. But the turnaround was quick for tonight.

‘Now we have only one practice before our next game,’ junior forward Terrence Roberts said. ‘It keeps up our energy level. We know what we have to do, and we won’t get relaxed. We don’t get cocky, because we know we’ll have to win that night.’

This late into the season, the term ‘must win’ is negligible. Every game is a must-win. Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said it best on ESPN’s College GameDay: You’re either playing to get in the NCAA Tournament or playing for a higher seed.

On Saturday night, both Syracuse and Louisville were playing to get in. The Orange showed the urgency necessary to win. And they did. It was a game the Orange needed to win to remain in NCAA Tournament contention and it made the plays it needed to make.

But it was one game. It needs at least two more. The Orange has 18 wins. Eric Devendorf thinks the magic number is 20, and I agree with him. But who are those wins coming against?

The schedule is tough. It’s a bearable, but tough. West Virginia is another team struggling, losing three of four games. Georgetown, Saturday’s opponent, is also in a slump, dropping its last three games. But the Hoyas are among the top teams in the conference, and tough at home, where they beat Duke.

SU plays DePaul in two weeks, a team the Orange should be able to beat. It closes against Villanova – a great team – but it’s the final home game of the season and Gerry McNamara’s last game at the Carrier Dome. The crowd will be similar to Saturday night’s crowd, which undoubtedly energized the Orange.

But the knock on the Orange is they don’t have any ‘quality wins.’ If it gets to 20 wins, it would mean a win over either West Virginia, Georgetown or Villanova, which would be a ‘quality win.’ There’s also the Big East tournament, where SU would almost certainly draw a tournament-caliber team in the first round. (If the season ended today, the first round draw would be Cincinnati and the second round draw would be Villanova.)

But first things first. That’s tonight against West Virginia. It could be the quality win SU needs. Or it could be a figurative ‘do not disturb’ sign on SU’s locker room.

Zach Berman is an assistant sports editor at The Daily Orange, where his columns appear occasionally. E-mail him at zberman@syr.edu.

Published on February 19, 2006 at 12:00 pm