Syracuse’s last two games in the Carrier Dome pitted the Orange against teams with similar focuses on offense, but different types of players were responsible for making it happen.

St. Francis pounded the ball inside last Monday with a pair of 6-foot-6 forwards. They slipped past SU’s towering post players to the tune of 22 points in the paint.

Indiana has Noah Vonleh, a 6-foot-10 freshman, and insisted on dumping the ball down to him on nearly every possession on Tuesday. He finished with a team-leading 17 points, but 13 came at the line. Syracuse’s big men performed better against a fringe Top 25 team than it did against a 5-3 St. Francis team.

“They played good position,” SU head coach Jim Boeheim said after his team’s 69-52 win against the Hoosiers. “They kept people out of there.”

During the first handful of games of the season, Baye Moussa Keita, Rakeem Christmas and DaJuan Coleman formed an evident weakness in the Orange’s (8-0) starting lineup. The shredding against St. Francis (N.Y.) was just the pinnacle of the big men’s collective struggles.

But after better performances during tournament play at the EA Sports Maui Invitational and during Tuesday’s Big Ten-Atlantic Coast Conference Challenge, the centers are showing continued signs of improvement — especially defensively — as No. 4 Syracuse heads into a matchup with Binghamton (2-6) on Saturday at 7 p.m. in the Carrier Dome.

Although IU lacks one traditional center — Vonleh is truly more of a power forward — the talented freshman and an oversized lineup around him provided the Orange with as stiff an interior test as it has seen this season. Four of Indiana’s starters are 6 feet, 7 inches or taller and the Hoosiers entered Tuesday as the nation’s top rebounding team.

SU matched IU blow for blow. Indiana scored 22 points in the paint; Syracuse had 32. The Hoosiers blocked four shots; the Orange swatted seven. SU and the IU split the rebounds with an even 29 apiece.

“Their main focus in the second half was to get the ball down low, but Coach (Boeheim) said once they got the ball down low that kind of took all the other players out of the game,” Coleman said after the win. “I think defense definitely played a big role in that today.”

The Bearcats don’t feature the same talent as the Hoosiers or No. 20 Baylor, the Orange’s final opponent in Lahaina, Hawaii, but their starting big men are closer to the hulking presences in the paint of the major conference foes than the Terriers’ undersized front court.

Two of Binghamton’s forwards, Magnus Richards and Nick Madray, stand at 6 feet, 7 inches and 6 feet, 9 inches tall, respectively. St. Francis nearly upset SU because of its small, quick forwards. Syracuse has handled larger forwards like Vonleh and the Bears’ Isaiah Austin and Cory Jefferson more effectively — the Orange outscored Baylor 36-22 in the paint.

“Their contributions aren’t necessarily on who they’re playing,” Boeheim said. “It’s on the whole set of the defense and how they play it.”

Tuesday was the first time that defense won SU the game, Boeheim said. The centers were better against a jumbo-sized IU lineup, but Boeheim also saw better help collapsing into the interior.

Syracuse forced Indiana into 16 turnovers and Boeheim praised his team’s traps and the zone that suffocated the Hoosiers for a second consecutive meeting. He was happy with the way his guards, Trevor Cooney and Tyler Ennis, have been lively in the zone and the wings’ length, like always, helps wreak havoc.

“We try to be as active as possible,” Ennis said after the win, “and I think with our length in the back it helps us a lot.”

But it’s still those same centers in the back end, anchoring the zone for the second year in a row, even if there were still moments where the low-post defense was hopeless against the opposing big men.

Vonleh simply lowered his shoulder to knock Coleman off balance for a layup early in the second half to tie the game for the final time at 33.

The fouls were a concern, too. Both Coleman and star forward C.J. Fair sat on the bench for part of the second half with four fouls. But even that is a positive step. SU’s size should let it be physical and Coleman used that for a better performance against Indiana.

“Nothing easy,” Coleman said. “I don’t really think much about the fouls. Coach kind of liked that.”

Published on December 5, 2013 at 2:28 am

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