PISCATAWAY, N.J. – From his perch in the corner of the court, Syracuse forward Paul Harris looked up and couldn’t believe what he saw: nothing.

The Rutgers defense had seemingly forgotten about him, and unknowingly parted the seas. There was open space all the way to the hoop.

‘What kind of defense is that?’ Harris said he thought to himself. ‘I don’t understand what they’re doing.’

Harris quickly called for the ball from point guard Jonny Flynn, took off toward the basket, and with three minutes remaining in the first half, threw down an alley-oop that tied the game at 34. Syracuse would take the lead two minutes later and never relinquish it en route to an 82-66 win.

The play was emblematic of the game for Harris and center Arinze Onuaku. With the Rutgers team fixated on streaking guard Andy Rautins and leading scorer Jonny Flynn, Harris and Onuaku had their way with the RU frontcourt.

‘They didn’t show no respect,’ Harris said. ‘Basically they came in, their game plan was to stop Andy Rautins, and stop Jonny Flynn, and don’t let Eric (Devendorf) shoot, leaving me and Arinze just roaming, like we were nobody.’

Both players shot at least 84 percent for the game – Harris was 11-for-13, Onuaku was 8-for-9 – as the Syracuse backcourt continually fed the ball down low and let the frontcourt go to work. Harris finished with 26 points, two short of his career high, while Onuaku matched his season-high with 19.

The duo was aided by Rutgers’ man-to-man defense, which allowed it to work their defenders in isolation, instead of facing multiple, swarming defenders brought on by a zone defense.

‘Whenever I see the man-to-man defense, I just feel like it’s a great situation,’ Onuaku said. ‘One-on-one, I feel like I can exploit my man.’

Yet while Syracuse dominated the scoring up front, the Rutgers big men had their way on the boards against Harris and Onuaku, SU’s top two rebounders. The Orange, the third-best rebounding team in the Big East, lost the battle of the boards, 34-28, to the 11th-best rebounding team in the conference. Syracuse’s 28 boards was its lowest total of the year.

But with the way Harris and Onuaku were shooting, it hardly mattered. Syracuse spent much of the game utilizing a small lineup of Flynn, Eric Devendorf, Rautins, Harris and Onuaku – which Harris called a ‘scoring lineup.’ Against a man-to-man, the lineup gives Harris the benefit of facing a larger defender who would otherwise be reserved for 6-foot-9 forward Rick Jackson. It’s a scenario the 6-4 Harris loves because it allows him to better utilize his speed.

Harris helped bring on the mismatch by strong play early. The forward started the game by making a handful of mid-range shots. To counter, Rutgers started playing up closer to the power forward. That left an oversized defender with no cushion trying to stay with the smaller, faster Harris.

Onuaku recognized the situation, and encouraged Harris to take it to the hoop, knowing the only way to stop him was for another defender to drop and help out, which would leave the Syracuse center open.

‘I told him, when he catches the ball in the high post to sweep and try to go,’ Onuaku said. ‘And if they double him, I’d be open.’

Coming into the season, Syracuse was lauded for its deep backcourt, and the SU guards have mostly lived up to the hype this year. A guard had been the leading scorer in 14 of Syracuse’s 16 games, and Flynn and Devendorf lead the team in scoring.

So when Rutgers tried to shut down the Syracuse backcourt, it provided Harris and Onuaku the opportunity to showcase an entirely different strength for the Orange.

‘If he plays like that, he’s a tremendous presence,’ Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said of Harris. ‘He’s been playing pretty good this year, but tonight he really took what was there, they left him open and he made a couple 15-footers, and then when they got up on him he went by and made big plays. I thought he was tremendous, both him and Arinze.’

kbaustin@syr.edu

Published on January 10, 2009 at 12:00 pm