Listening to Jim Boeheim talk, it’s difficult to get much of an idea of what the Syracuse men’s basketball team that takes the court in two days will look like.

If the SU head coach has made any game-planning decisions for Sunday’s season-opening exhibition contest against St. Rose, he’s not tipping his hand.

Will SU play more zone or man-to-man?

‘We’ll see what happens,’ Boeheim said. ‘We always go into it being prepared to play both defenses.’

Decisions on starters?

‘Not really, I usually decide on the last day before.’

Concerns heading into Sunday?

‘Probably everything right now….’

All the more reason for SU fans to tune into Sunday’s matinee, which starts at 2 p.m. and will air on Time Warner 26. Syracuse, equipped with five freshmen and one junior college transfer, will look much different from last year’s team, which lost four frontcourt contributors in Demetris Nichols, Terrence Roberts, Darryl Watkins and Matt Gorman.

Just who exactly the Orange starting lineup and rotation will include is anyone’s guess, but Boeheim did divulge that the rotation will feature most, if not all of SU’s six new faces.

‘They’re gonna play in every game we play,’ Boeheim said. ‘Whether it’s in the league or preseason, they’re gonna play. It doesn’t matter what kind of game it is.’

That arrangement is mostly out of necessity for the Orange. Just four returning players – senior Josh Wright, junior Eric Devendorf and sophomores Paul Harris and Arinze Onuaku – have played significant minutes in their SU careers. Onuaku, the man penciled in to start at center for the Orange, missed all of last season with a knee injury.

So the contributions of the five freshmen – Jonny Flynn, Donte Greene, Scoop Jardine, Rick Jackson and Sean Williams – along with juco transfer Kristof Ongenaet, will be imperative for Syracuse’s success in both the next two preseason games and afterward when the games start to count. After three weeks of official practice Boeheim is eager to see how his group reacts to a game scenario.

‘They’re doing well,’ Boeheim said. ‘It’s a slow process and it takes time. Practice is one thing. They’ve done the things they need to do in practice, and now we’ll see what they do in the game situations and how they react to those situations. That’s something that’s different than practice.’

SU will have two exhibition games against Division II opponents, hosting St. Rose Sunday and Le Moyne Wednesday at 7 p.m. St. Rose, a small college in Albany, returns three starters from last year’s team that finished 22-10 in the Northeast-10 conference.

The two games should help Boeheim ease his young squad into game action, especially on the defensive end.

‘Defense is probably the hardest thing, both man-to-man and the zone,’ Boeheim said. ‘I think we’re probably a little bit ahead offensively. Most kids who come here out of high school are offensive players, that’s what they are. I think our freshmen are more offensive-type players in their mindset. And that’s true of most freshmen – defense always takes a little bit of time.’

Perhaps the biggest question ahead of Sunday’s game is exactly who Boeheim will choose as the team’s starting five. He said he was still deciding on some spots, but acknowledged without naming names that ‘a couple spots are obvious.’

Boeheim is presumably referring to Devendorf, Harris and Onuaku, who all figure to have starting spots reserved. Freshman Donte Greene is the likely front-runner to start at power forward for SU.

The point guard spot is seemingly up for grabs, with Flynn, Wright and Jardine all vying for the position.

‘I really haven’t made any decisions about anything in stone,’ Boeheim said when asked if point guard was a position where competition was open. ‘I have some ideas, but Sunday, we’ll see.’

While the results of the next two games will mean little, they could give Boeheim some semblance of an idea of just which young players are ready to contribute immediately for him.

‘With a young team, you’re concerned about every area,’ Boeheim said. ‘You don’t know what their strengths and weaknesses are until you get into a game situation. So we’re really trying to get better in all the areas. I wouldn’t say there’s one area we have to be concerned about.’

Published on November 1, 2007 at 12:00 pm