Paul Harris heard the question asked, and lowered his voice, so that it was barely above a whisper.

The topic: Shooting guard Eric Devendorf was handed a semester-long and season-ending suspension by the SU judicial board on Wednesday, following allegations that he struck a female student back on Nov. 1. He remains eligible to play while his appeal is pending.

Was that a distraction to the team in Devendorf’s first game following the ruling?

‘We won by like 25 points,’ said Harris, the Syracuse forward. ‘I wouldn’t say it distracted us at all,’

True, Syracuse had just won by 24 points over Long Beach State, 79-55. Devendorf had an average performance: 13 points on 5-of-13 shooting and five assists.

Yet the allegations hung over the locker room after the game. Devendorf was not available for postgame interviews. So Harris provided a look into what his teammate is going through.

‘I would expect him to have a better game than that,’ Harris said. ‘Because people don’t realize, when you go through things, this is the only place where you can just let everything out, in basketball. This is what you love to do. It’s a game, you want to have fun. Everything that happened off the court can be off the court.’

Harris has been through his share of off-the-court troubles, including an arrest and jail stint during high school that nearly kept him from even going to college. So when asked to comment on Devendorf’s situation, he seemed to draw from his own experiences

When Boeheim was asked to evaluate Devendorf’s play in light of his situation, he commented only on his shooting.

Boeheim has already made his piece about the Devendorf case, though. On Thursday, the day after the news of the suspension broke, Boeheim spoke to reporters at practice in the morning. He said that there were ‘mitigating circumstances in the case,’ and called into question the accusation that Devendorf had struck the girl.

‘If he had punched this girl, he should be thrown out of school,’ Boeheim said Thursday. ‘He did not, according to all the people that were there. That’s the bottom line. So to me, it’s an unreasonable punishment.’

It seems the Syracuse fans agree. When Devendorf was announced in the starting lineup before the game, the Carrier Dome crowd greeted him with a loud ovation.

But for now, all anyone can do is wait, as Devendorf’s status remains in limbo and the team presses on with five games in the next 10 games. Devendorf has until Wednesday to file his appeal, which Boeheim said he will do. From there, the appeal board has 10 university business days to render a decision.

‘We’re going to leave all that to Coach Boeheim, let him deal with that thing,’ center Arinze Onuaku said. ‘We’re not going to comment on that issue.’

Why the slow start?

Everyone had an explanation for Syracuse’s slow start. The Orange went into halftime with a 37-30 lead after shooting a lackluster 13-of-32 from the field in the first half, and seemed to be out of sync.

For Kris Joseph, it was the 10-day break the Orange had before Saturday’s game.

‘Ten-day breaks are a killer because you know you don’t really play at that pace for a long, long time,’ Joseph said.

Boeheim agreed that the team ‘showed a little rust,’ as a result of the lack of games. For backup center Rick Jackson, who finished with 11 points and nine rebounds, it was the time change. Syracuse had yet to play an afternoon game this year, after eight evening games.

‘I just think it was an early game,’ Jackson said. ‘Guys have been up since seven something. First 12 o’clock game of the year, guys just have to get used to the games. I think that’s why we didn’t come out like right on top. But once guys got loose, it turned out for the better.’

For Harris, the explanation was much simpler.

‘I wouldn’t even say it was that,’ Harris said of the layoff. ‘They just came out playing and we wasn’t ready to play.’ Jonny comes down to earth

Breaking news: Jonny Flynn is human. The SU guard came into the game averaging 19.5 points per game and had been the leading scorer in all but one game. In Saturday’s game, Flynn finished with nine points on 2-of-7 shooting.

‘This was the first game Jonny hasn’t shot the ball, hasn’t played great,’ Boeheim said. ‘He’s human, he’s going to have those kind of games. All things considered, I thought we were able to overcome guys not playing their best, and that’s good.’

But Flynn’s poor shooting night allowed some of the younger players to see increased action. Freshman Mookie Jones had five points in 13 minutes, and Joseph totaled 19 minutes. ‘We can’t rely on Jonny the whole year, Joseph said. ‘We can’t do that. We need to be productive.’

Flynn, ever the optimist, noted only how he can have a poor shooting night, and his team can still come up with a 24-point win.

‘Last year if I ever had a game like this, we would have lost the game,’ Flynn said. ‘It is good. It says a lot for our team. How much better we got as a team through the course of the year from last year to this year.’

Home for Marrone

In Boeheim’s postgame press conference, his longest and most thorough response came from a question that had nothing to do with basketball. Boeheim, the 33-year head coach, was asked about the news that Syracuse had hired alumnus Doug Marrone to be its next head football coach.

‘I don’t know Doug that well,’ Boeheim said. ‘I’ve talked to him, he seems like a great guy. He seems really enthusiastic.’

From there, it turned into Boeheim the critic. Marrone, like his predecessor Greg Robinson when he took the job, has never been a head football coach. Some have said this makes him unqualified for the job. Boeheim disagreed.

‘I would like to say that 90 percent of the good coaches in the country, when they got their first job, they had no previous [head coaching] job,’ Boeheim said. ‘I don’t know why people keep talking about ‘You’re not a head coach.’ I guess I shouldn’t be here either then.’

kbaustin@syr.edu

Published on December 13, 2008 at 12:00 pm