ST. LOUIS — Jim Boeheim has watched Dayton play eight times this season. He’s seen Michigan State play 10 times. He’s watched every conceivable NCAA Tournament game this year that he can. And aside from its win over Michigan State on Friday, he’s never watched Middle Tennessee State.

“They weren’t on television. It’s hard to watch somebody. And I’m not going down there,” the Syracuse head coach said. “But I watched them enough yesterday and in tapes to know as much about them as I need to know.”

Syracuse (20-13, 9-9 Atlantic Coast) watched the first part of MTSU’s (25-9, 13-5 Conference USA) shocking 90-81 win over the Spartans in the team locker room following its victory over Dayton. Then it got back to the hotel room and the players all gathered to watch on television. After going over the scouting report and practicing Saturday afternoon, the team will continue its preparation for the short turnaround before taking on the Blue Raiders on Sunday at 6 p.m.

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Orange assistant Adrian Autry was in charge of scouting MTSU all week, and Gerry McNamara had to prepare to face the Spartans.

While the whole world was watching the Blue Raiders for the first time, Autry had spent days immersing himself with their tendencies.

“I’m never surprised,” Autry said. “At this time of year, you look at college basketball this year, there’s a lot of different games that go different ways. I don’t expect anything …We’re just prepared as if Michigan State would have won.”

Right after the game Malachi Richardson looked up their YouTube videos. Trevor Cooney looked at their schedule and who they played. Michael Gbinije went over their win over MSU to try and piece together a scouting report. Dajuan Coleman looked up how many times they go to the foul line, how many points they get in the paint, their free-throw percentage, how often they shoot from 3, and then the individual stats as well.

“I do that before every game,” Coleman said.

By now, Syracuse knows their opponent “as well as we would any team in the country”. Boeheim has estimated that he’s watched 10-to-15 game tapes on MTSU. He stayed and watched them in the stands yesterday, along with members of the coaching staff.

“They’re a great team,” Richardson said. “They just beat a team that people had actually wining the national championship. So we just gotta go out there and play.”

Published on March 19, 2016 at 5:14 pm

Contact Sam: sblum@syr.edu | @SamBlum3