Brad Shove raced up the court and pulled to the line just in time for Terry George’s feed, draining a 3-pointer. A little more than two minutes into Monday night’s exhibition at the Carrier Dome, the Saint Rose junior gave the Golden Knights its first basket of the evening and a slim, 3-2 lead.

The inside-out ball movement of the Golden Knights gave St. Rose hope – albeit for 11 minutes – that it could somehow stick with the Orange in Monday night’s men’s basketball exhibition game.

While St. Rose proved to be more of a matchup than Division II Le Moyne last Tuesday, Syracuse still won handily, 91-59.

‘Give St. Rose a lot of credit,’ Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘They’re well coached. They move the ball well and they’re tough kids. They played well.’

The Golden Knights weren’t upset with their loss, though. It’ll prove to be the highlight for many of the players’ college careers.

‘When we found out four or five months ago (we were playing Syracuse), our entire team was excited,’ freshman St. Rose guard Steve Dagostino said. ‘In front of 7,000 people, it was amazing.’

Said junior forward Adam McGuire: ‘It was a great thing for us to do. It was a good thing for our program.’

Both players hope that the exhibition becomes a yearly event, and why not?

The crowd of 6,819 seemed paltry to Orange fans, but for the Golden Knights, it matched nearly their entire home attendance from last season. St. Rose averaged 557 fans per home game and totaled 7,247 for the season.

St. Rose even provided the small contingent of fans who made the trek from Albany a first-half treat, too. Until 11:25 remained in the first half, Saint Rose was actually leading the Orange, 11-10. After falling behind 10-3, the Golden Knights went on an 8-2 run, capped off by a McGuire jumper.

‘We were expecting the run,’ McGuire said. ‘We’re going to make runs. What we wanted to do was compete and that’s what we did.’

The advantage even forced Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim to reinsert his starters. The move certainly paid off. The Orange ran off a 20-2 run, eradicating St. Rose’s faint hopes of keeping the game close.

But while the Golden Knights could have taken solace in the short time span, they kept the game close and focused on the missed opportunities.

‘We were good enough to play with them,’ McGuire said. ‘The ball just didn’t go into the basket. If we shot close to 40 percent, the game would have been a lot closer.’

Instead, St. Rose shot a dismal 23.7 percent from the floor.

‘(St. Rose) had some open looks in the first half,’ Boeheim said. ‘If they knocked down a couple of those, it would have been a pretty respectable game.’

The one thing St. Rose could be particularly pleased with, though, was its rebounding. The Orange held only a 54-42 edge in the category, despite towering over the Golden Knights at every position. Its tallest player was 6-foot-7 Clayton Longmire because 7-foot-2 Dominique Cambron is injured.

While St. Rose rarely outjumped the Orange, the Golden Knights parlayed their speed into several loose rebounds, including one offensive possession in the first half when St. Rose garnered three straight offensive boards.

‘Our team is, overall from top to bottom, the quickest team in our conference,’ McGuire said. ‘We don’t have a lot of size so we make it up with our quickness.’

Still, the rebounding and speed wasn’t enough. St. Rose was reminded that it plays in the Northeast 10 conference, not the Big East.

‘Syracuse is a great team – a very talented team,’ St. Rose head coach Brian Beaury said. ‘It was very humbling to come here.’

Published on November 8, 2004 at 12:00 pm