Everybody knows Andy Rautins as a 3-point sniper. But there’s a different side to him, he swears. Just as there’s a different side to this team in general.

‘That’s what I’m trying to tell everyone,’ Rautins said. ‘I’m not one-dimensional. This entire team is playing great defense, and it’s been a lot of fun.’

Monday night’s 92-58 thrashing of Colgate was the pinnacle of SU’s swarming defense. Possession after possession, the Orange 2-3 zone baited Colgate into an eyesore of errant passes that led to easy buckets. By its own mid-major status, winless Colgate is a bottom-feeder, to be sure. But unlike its start against Columbia one game prior, Syracuse wasn’t lax on defense.

Players slid from spot to spot and attacked from the opening tip. As a result, Colgate scored a grand total of 16 points at the half – the lowest number by a SU opponent in a decade, when the Orange stymied Princeton to 11 points in the first half on Nov. 12, 1999.

‘We were getting into passing lanes and getting deflections,’ said Rautins, who had four steals in the game. ‘We wanted to make a statement on defense.’

The carnage came early. Unlike its flawed first half against Columbia when zone-buster Noruwa Agho drilled a flurry of open 3-pointers, Syracuse gave Colgate minimal wiggle room. Nearly every skip pass was tipped and devoured. Quickly, the Raiders were scared into a bore of perimeter passes.

A smothering SU trap was never too far away. And the result was a blizzard of turnovers and missed shots.

Syracuse quickly redirected the ball up-court, resulting in a season-high 35 assists. Then again, head coach Jim Boeheim chided that a ‘relative’ must have been keeping track of that statistic.

Either way, Colgate’s 17 turnovers sparked a blistering transition offense for the Orange, which has now held its opponent to 60 points or fewer four different times.

By the time, Rautins stripped a Raiders guard and flung the ball to Scoop Jardine for an easy lay-up with 11:25 left in the first half, Boeheim began sifting deep into his bench for reserves. This is the spawn of an active 2-3. With two guards up top ready to pounce, defense morphs to offense instantly.

Rautins leads the Big East with four steals per game, and Jardine loves it. The point guard is often the benefactor.

‘Definitely, definitely,’ Jardine said. ‘Andy is so active, getting his hands on a lot of loose balls, and it’s allowing me to leak out a little. We’re active. We all committed ourselves, one to five. We’re just active, we’re talking, and it’s going to help us down the stretch.’

The tell-tale sign that Syracuse’s zone was truly terrorizing the Raiders came in the second half. Boeheim switched to man-to-man, the same defense that doomed SU in its shocking preseason loss to Le Moyne. Since that SportsCenter-hogging upset, Syracuse hasn’t dared to go back to man.

Sophomore Mookie Jones isn’t sure what everybody was thinking when Boeheim called for man. But sitting at his locker afterward, Jones squinted and had a good idea.

‘I’m pretty sure everyone went, ‘Ahhh, man,” Jones said. ‘We’re so comfortable playing in this zone.’

That’s why SU will likely stick with it the rest of the season. The Orange allowed 42 second-half points Monday playing man. Afterward, Boeheim was in pure form.

In his motivate-first, praise-second tone, Boeheim didn’t exactly bow down to his team’s defensive effort, despite its stellar first half. Columbia simply made their shots and Colgate didn’t, he shrugged.

And as for that man-to-man defense? He’ll gladly tuck that away into obscurity and let the dust collect.

No use messing with the zone if any game is on the line.

‘We won’t see much more of that,’ said Boeheim, his sarcasm picking up with each sentence. ‘We held them to 42 points in the second half.’

thdunne@syr.edu

Published on November 30, 2009 at 12:00 pm