PISCATAWAY, N.J.–Paul Harris knows Syracuse should have beaten Rutgers by more than 10 points Wednesday night. But the freshman guard also knows he and the rest of the Orange learned a lesson on how to finish off an opponent from head coach Jim Boeheim.

‘People, like myself, didn’t listen to coach Boeheim,’ Harris said. ‘Sometimes if you listen to the coach, maybe you can pull away. I didn’t listen to him and a couple other guys, I’m not going to list names, didn’t. If we just hold the ball, they would have fouled us. But we wanted to shoot.’

Luckily enough for the Orange, it built up a big enough cushion in the second half and made its free throws down the stretch to emerge with a 68-58 victory over Rutgers in front of 7,106 at the Louis Brown Athletic Center.

It is the second Big East road victory in a row for Syracuse (13-4, 2-1), which survived dangerous foul trouble and 10 first-half turnovers.

Sophomore guard Eric Devendorf scored 19 points off the bench to lead SU in scoring for the third straight game – all in the Big East. He scored 20 in Sunday’s 70-58 win at Marquette. Big East leading scorer Demetris Nichols notched 12 points and Andy Rautins added nine points, all in the first half. Darryl Watkins was one point short of a double-double with nine points and 10 rebounds.

SU held a 17-point lead with 4:53 left, but let Rutgers (8-8, 1-2) climb within six points with a little more than a minute remaining by attempting careless shots early in possessions.

‘We weren’t good in the last four minutes,’ Boeheim said. ‘We took two shots we shouldn’t have. We should have been holding the ball there. We need to work on that. I guess we really haven’t been ahead late. Too many times this year we’ve been way ahead or we’ve been behind fighting back.

‘We took a couple shots we shouldn’t have taken. Hopefully a couple guys heard about it, a couple guys will learn from it.’

Nichols missed a 3-pointer with 2:11 left that Rutgers turned into two points the other way. Josh Wright blew a lay-up with 1:45 left and Rautins turned the ball over with just over a minute remaining.

Syracuse made 18-of-21 free throws, including 6-for-6 in the final three minutes to ice the victory.

Rutgers stayed in the game despite shooting the ball a dismal 29.5 percent from the field. SU battled foul trouble all through the second half. Nichols, Rautins, Darryl Watkins and Terrence Roberts all finished with four fouls each.

‘This was tough, the foul situation,’ Boeheim said. ‘We’ve been able to avoid that. Obviously it hurts when you get both big guys in trouble, but I thought we played through it pretty well.’

SU pulled away with an 11-5 run in the first four minutes of the second half. A thunderous alley-oop from Wright to Roberts with 4:53 left gave the Orange its largest lead of 17.

Devendorf scored 13 of his 19 points in the second half, on 3-of-5 shooting from the field and a perfect 7-for-7 from the free-throw line.

‘These games are made for Eric,’ Boeheim said. ‘They’re going way out, they are going to pressure Andy and Demetris. It creates space for him to get to the basket.’

Rutgers closed the halftime gap to three points when Marquis Webb grabbed an offensive rebound off a Courtney Nelson 3-point attempt and drained a short jumper. The Scarlet Knights took advantage of 10 SU first-half turnovers and scored 12 points off of turnovers in the first 20 minutes.

Rautins led all scorers with nine points in the first half, but he didn’t attempt a shot after the 14:10 mark. He played seven minutes Sunday at Marquette and did not score. Wednesday night, he was 4-of-6 to start the game-and the Orange needed it badly.

Nichols attempted only two shots in the first half. He scored two points. Roberts did not score, going 0-for-2 from the field.

But without a serious outside shooting presence, the Scarlet Knights never truly threatened the Syracuse lead, but hung around for much of the game to keep things interesting–something that Devendorf knows SU can change.

‘We do gotta put them away,’ Devendorf said. ‘We had them down by 15, 16 points. We just gotta figure out a way to close out games and put them away. We have to cut their throat and we didn’t do that tonight.’

Published on January 13, 2007 at 12:00 pm