Donte Greene is blunt when discussing the current state of the Syracuse basketball squad.

‘We’re not a great team,’ Greene said. ‘There’s always something to work on.’

Greene’s statement is by no means an indictment of the team’s talent level or potential. Rather, for a Syracuse team that will have no fewer than four freshmen contributing major minutes throughout the season, Greene and the rest of the Orange understand it will take time for the players to find a comfort level playing with one another.

The team will have to come together quickly, though, as Syracuse will open its season tonight when it hosts Siena at 7 p.m. in the Carrier Dome in the first game of the Preseason NIT Tip-Off Tournament. If SU wins, it will play the winner of Fairleigh Dickinson vs. St. Joseph’s Tuesday at 7 p.m.

Syracuse must win both games to book a trip to New York City and Madison Square Garden next Wednesday for the NIT Tip-Off semifinals.

Syracuse may not be up to Greene’s high standards quite yet, but it will have to play more consistently on the defensive end than it did in last week’s pair of preseason games to ensure it doesn’t suffer an upset in two games that figure to test the young squad.

‘We’re going to have to learn on the fly a little bit,’ freshman guard Jonny Flynn said. ‘It’s good starting the season off playing for something right away in the Preseason NIT. It’s going to really push us.’

The Orange mixed in periods of encouraging play with some mistakes in its two preseason wins against Division II opponents St. Rose and Le Moyne last week. Last Sunday against St. Rose, Syracuse found itself trailing by a point with less than six minutes remaining before pulling away to an 80-71 win.

Wednesday against Le Moyne, SU’s interior defense was porous during the first half before the Orange put on an offensive display, running up and down the court on the overmatched Dolphins en route to a 50-point win.

Against the Dolphins, the Orange interior defense was a weakness in the first half, as Le Moyne frequently scored easy baskets inside. When Syracuse switched to the 2-3 zone from man-to-man defense in the second half, it was better able to defend the Dolphins, and SU opened up a comfortable lead. After the game, head coach Jim Boeheim admitted his team was, at the moment, better in the zone defense.

Correcting the defense will be a point of concern early on for the offensive-minded Orange.

‘Coach tells us all the time that we have to work on defense because UConn isn’t going to be Le Moyne,’ SU forward Paul Harris said.

In the short term, SU will have to show improvement to hold off Siena, which returns three starters from a team that went 20-12 and narrowly missed an NCAA Tournament trip when it lost to Niagara, 83-79, in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference championship game.

If SU beats Siena, it will most likely be met with another slippery contest against St. Joseph’s. The Hawks went just 18-14 last season, but the team returns four of five starters, including its top three scorers.

Win those two games, and a likely meeting with Ohio State in the tournament semifinals awaits. Texas A&M and Washington are the hosts of the South and West regionals, respectively.

Despite the potential slips the early schedule may hold, the youthful Orange seems to be embracing the challenge.

‘That’s how you want it,’ Harris said. ‘Last year, people kind of said we played easy games. Now you see Coach scheduling a harder, non-conference schedule. We’ll see how we do.’

Wright practices

Syracuse did get a bit of good news Friday when its lone senior, point guard Josh Wright, participated in practice. Wright had sat out the first two games for what Boeheim called an ankle injury.

Wright’s return would be good news for a Syracuse team that will be playing meaningful games for the first time.

‘We really have to keep working on everything,’ Boeheim said. ‘We just have a lot of work to do; I thought there were some very encouraging things on offense tonight and some things that were not so encouraging on defense. That’s just going to be the way it will be for a while until we get well into the season.’

Published on November 11, 2007 at 12:00 pm