Rick Jackson continually heard the same message from head coach Jim Boeheim. With such a distinct size advantage against a guard-oriented Marquette squad, Boeheim wanted his big men to take over the game.

‘Coach kept saying, ‘Get the ball down low, and when you get it, go up strong,” Jackson said. ‘And I think in the second half we did that and we got a big margin up.’

The SU big men quartet of Jackson, Wes Johnson, Arinze Onuaku and Kris Joseph flexed their muscles in Saturday’s 76-71 win over Marquette at the Carrier Dome, combining for 60 points and 36 rebounds. Marquette simply had no answer for the foursome, as SU consistently pushed the ball inside against the Golden Eagles, scoring 56 of its 76 points inside the paint.

‘Their lineup was kind of little, so we really just wanted to get in there and pound and take advantage,’ Jackson said. ‘When you play against a little team, it can go both ways. They can run it up and down, or we can just pound it inside and we have a field day. You really just want to come out victorious and finish around the basket and do well.’

The offensive game plan for the Orange was evident after the first two plays of the game. Syracuse tried to push the ball inside to Jackson, but he fumbled the pass and it led to two quick Marquette buckets that gave the Golden Eagles a 5-0 lead. While the plan might not have worked well early, Syracuse kept going back to the well.

Marquette’s lineup usually consisted of a three-guard rotation that featured two forwards in the 6-foot-6 Lazar Hayward and Jimmy Butler. Neither player was able to physically match up with Syracuse’s big men, as both Onuaku and Jackson come in at 6 feet 9 inches.

With Marquette playing blanket-coverage on shooting guard Andy Rautins on the outside – he scored zero points and had only two shots – and a triangle-and-two defense, the Orange passed the ball inside often, and it led to easy layups for the big men.

Several times Hayward was caught in one-on-one coverage of Onuaku, and he gave space to the larger player, leading to easy layups and dunks for the SU center. Onuaku scored 12 points and hauled in five boards.

‘They’re going to face guard Andy, and they’re going to take him out of the game and we’re going to play four versus four. And they have no help side, so we can throw the lob pass inside,’ Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘In the first half, we didn’t do it very well. Second half we did it well, and we got layups.’

While the big men were magnificent offensively, they also were a force on the defensive end. Marquette fired 67 shots during the game, 14 more than Syracuse, but many of those shots led to one-and-done possessions. Marquette would fire a long-range shot, miss, and Syracuse would scoop up the rebound.

At times, no Marquette defender was even in the vicinity of the basket, and it just became a question of which Syracuse defender would haul in the miss. Syracuse out-rebounded Marquette, 43 to 21, with Johnson hauling in a game-high 15 rebounds.

Boeheim praised his team’s rebounding abilities, saying this was the ‘first time this year we got on the boards,’ and his team consistently needs to do that in the future when they have a size advantage. The players knew they would have to dominate the boards to defeat the pesky Golden Eagles.

‘That’s the main thing. We felt we can dominate the boards,’ Johnson said. ‘I felt anything that came off the rim I tried to go get it, and coach was really stressing to me go get the rebound, go get the rebound, so I felt like I had to go do it, so I was trying to get to the glass.’

Saturday’s dominating performance by the big men is a good sign for the Orange heading into tonight’s showdown against a large Georgetown team. Jackson even said this is probably the best collective group of big men he will have played all year.

Heading into that matchup, SU will rely on what worked against Marquette.

‘We all worked together,’ Jackson said. ‘We all had great post-up plays, great passing plays, and we just really took our time down there and finished well.’

mrehalt@syr.edu

Published on January 24, 2010 at 12:00 pm