Andy Rautins sat on his stool in the Syracuse locker room, speaking in a low, somber voice. He and the rest of the Syracuse men’s basketball team had just felt the sting of losing to their little brother in town, Division II Le Moyne, at home in the Carrier Dome. As Rautins spoke, he continually used one word: embarrassment.

‘You lose to a Division II team right in your home and you just embarrass your fans and yourselves with the way you play,’ Rautins said. ‘It’s inexcusable.’

In one of the most shocking losses in recent Syracuse history, SU’s porous defense proved too much to overcome, as the Orange lost to Le Moyne, 82-79, Tuesday night in its exhibition finale at the Carrier Dome. Syracuse took a one-point lead with 22 seconds to go, but Chris Johnson’s 3-pointer with nine seconds left won the game for the cross-town underdogs.

‘When you play exhibition games, you feel like this is a team you’re used to beating by so many points,’ center Arinze Onuaku said. ‘We feel as a team we let ourselves down, because on the defensive end we didn’t feel like we played like we know we can.’

Even with the defensive deficiencies, Syracuse still had a late chance to win the game. The Orange used a 6-0 run over a span of 20 seconds, capped by a Wesley Johnson 3-pointer from the right corner, to change a 78-73 deficit into a 79-78 lead with 22 seconds left in the game. All the Orange had to do was stop the Dolphins on one play.

Durrett Miles brought the ball up, and the play broke down as time ticked off the clock. In the timeout leading to the inbounds pass, Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim talked about not letting Chris Johnson, who had been 5-of-12 from 3 up to that point, touch the ball.

Instead, Johnson was wide open and Miles found him at the top-right of the arc. Point guard Brandon Triche ran over to block the shot, but Johnson put it home to give Le Moyne the game-winner with nine seconds to go. Wesley Johnson, who led all scorers with 34 points, missed a 3-point attempt to tie the game with three seconds left, and Rautins missed a desperation 3 from the other foul line with time expiring. The Dolphins would add one free throw.

The defensive lapse in the last seconds that left Chris Johnson wide open fell on the shoulders of SU sophomore forward Kris Joseph.

‘The play before they got an alley-oop and they ran the same play, overload,’ Joseph said. ‘So in my head I knew the shooter was coming, but I didn’t want to put the man in the middle in a bad predicament, maybe they get an alley-oop. But I should have followed directions and gone to the shooter.’

Even if Joseph had followed directions and Syracuse won the game, the players were still disgusted with the overall performance. Rautins used the E-word – embarrassing – while saying no one would have been happy, even with a victory.

The main culprit was the defense. Instead of playing its patented 2-3 zone, Syracuse primarily played man-to-man and failed to stop the Dolphins as a result. Chris Johnson lived on the edge, killing Syracuse with six 3-pointers.

Inside, where Syracuse is supposed to be its strongest, Syracuse yielded plenty of backdoor cuts that led to easy lay-ups. Le Moyne shot 48.4 percent for the game, and a whooping 54.5 percent in the second half that erased a 37-32 halftime lead for SU.

Onuaku struggled against smaller competition, continually failing to put a body on his man on drives to the basket. Even SU’s full-court press, used often in the waning minutes of the game, didn’t work. Le Moyne found open men downcourt for easy lay-ups.

‘We’re concerned about our man-to-man,’ Boeheim said. ‘We wanted to play it to get some tape on it and see what we need to do better, and there is really no area that we really couldn’t do something better, in terms of defending the post, helping on screens and helping on drives. There will be a lot of tape to see.’

Syracuse has never lost to Le Moyne in six regular season contests. Even last year, Syracuse thrashed the Dolphins in a 34-point rout. This time, though, the little brother finally beat the older brother, even if it was an exhibition game.

Le Moyne head coach Steve Evans said this is ‘one of those for the ages’ for Le Moyne basketball, and a game these athletes will remember forever.

For the Orange, it’s a wake-up call before the season opens Monday. Even though the game doesn’t count in the standings, the players were still shocked and visibly displeased with the loss. Syracuse had lost to a Division II program. That’s not something that sits well.

‘We just didn’t show up tonight,’ Rautins said. ‘That’s what happens anytime you don’t show up in college basketball, you get beat, and that’s the bottom line.’

mrehalt@syr.edu

Published on November 3, 2009 at 12:00 pm