For much of the first 12 minutes of Wednesday night’s exhibition contest, the Syracuse players ignored head coach Jim Boeheim’s instructions to push the tempo on offense.

At that point, a lackluster Syracuse men’s basketball team was up a mere three points against Division II Le Moyne due to an interior defense that frequently allowed easy baskets.

Then the Orange turned on the afterburners, using the transition game to spark a 9-0 run.

The downward spiral only grew more violent for Le Moyne, which could only watch as Syracuse raced up and down the court, producing odd-man breaks and scoring easy buckets.

Before five minutes had elapsed in the second half, the SU lead had grown to 30, and the rout was on.

The high-powered Syracuse offense was on full display for the rest of the game, as Syracuse raced past an overmatched Le Moyne, 109-59, in front of 9,040 fans at the Carrier Dome.

‘I thought we moved the ball well,’ Boeheim said. ‘I thought we did a good job passing the ball as the game went on. Early, we didn’t get into our offense very well, but we did a better job as the game went along.’

Syracuse’s top three scorers were freshmen, led by 26 points from Donte Greene in just 23 minutes. Forward Rick Jackson added 17 points and Jonny Flynn, who started at point guard in place of an injured Josh Wright, added 15 points of his own. Five players tallied double figures scoring for Syracuse.

The Orange shot a staggering 59 percent from the field in the victory and tallied 27 assists, 10 of which came from junior guard Eric Devendorf.

Many of those assists were the product of Syracuse’s breakneck style. After steals or defensive rebounds, SU’s first instinct was to look for the outlet pass. From there, all roads led directly to Le Moyne’s basket, as the Orange racked up a good portion of its 62 points in the paint via the fast break.

‘We don’t like to set up at half court a lot because that’s not our style of play,’ Flynn said. ‘We like to be hectic, scrappy with the ball to get those easy buckets. … All the time, Coach Boeheim was pulling me aside saying, ‘Jonny, I want you to push the ball, we don’t want to run a play on offense every time.”

Syracuse’s emphasis on the transition game came in response to its early defensive struggles. Center Arinze Onuaku racked up two fouls in the game’s first minute and played just eight minutes in the first half. In his absence, Le Moyne’s frontcourt duo of Dan Cromwell and Laurence Ekperigin combined for 22 points in the first half, most of which came from inside the paint.

‘I don’t think anybody played defense in the paint in the first half,’ Boeheim said. ‘We just didn’t do a very good job picking up off the backscreens, helping out.’

Syracuse’s solution was to crank up the energy on both sides of the ball. The Orange began what Flynn termed a ‘three-man press,’ pressuring the ball trying to trap Le Moyne players.

Behind a more aggressive style, the SU lead ballooned to 17 by halftime, and by the 15:20 mark of the second half, SU had steamrolled out to a 69-37 lead, punctuated by a thunderous alley-oop slam by Greene, courtesy of Flynn. Syracuse started the second half on a 22-4 run, 10 of those points by Greene.

Of course, some of SU’s dominance had to be credited to the talent of Division II Le Moyne, which finished just 14-15 last year.

‘It’s hard to run against good teams,’ Boeheim said. ‘We’d like to run, to push the ball as much as we can.’

All 13 of Syracuse’s healthy players, including freshman Sean Williams, who didn’t play Sunday, got into the game. The night was capped by a 3-pointer from seldom-used senior Jake Presutti, a former walk-on who earned a scholarship this season, that brought the entire SU bench to its feet.

The dominating performance is one that should leave Syracuse on a high heading into its season opener Monday against Siena in the Preseason NIT.

‘That’s the kind of game we needed going into this regular season,’ sophomore forward Paul Harris said. ‘To see everybody smiling, getting in the game, getting touches. The starter got to sit on the bench in the second half, and the second string got in and they played like they were the first string.’

Published on November 7, 2007 at 12:00 pm