Orange and Onuaku Bull-ish on South Florida

The much anticipated season of American Gladiators (known in some circles as Big East conference play) began earnestly this week.

Did it ever, as the Georgetown Hoyas, behind super frosh Greg Monroe, marched into Connecticut and promptly hammered the previously undefeated Huskies.

The Hoyas’ reward for knocking off the No. 2 team in the nation was being clawed at home yesterday at the hands of manchild DeJuan Blair and the Pittsburgh Panthers.

Welcome to the Big East.

Prior to the season, the conventional wisdom was that the muscle of the league would have spent most of the conference portion of their schedules trading haymakers.

The teams riding the caboose of the conference, such as St. Johns and South Florida, were expected to be layups.

Think again.

Notre Dame found out the hard way on Saturday when they lost to the Johnnies, and Syracuse almost learned the same lesson Friday night when they were taken to the wire at South Florida.

So even though the Orange boarded their flight back to New York with an ugly 59-54 win in tow, what made this victory so difficult?

First of all, injuries did play a part.

Paul Harris sat out of the game after injuring his finger in the Big East opener this week vs. Seton Hall and Eric Devendorf hurt his hip very early in the game after colliding with South Florida’s Mobolaji Ajayi.

This isn’t to make an excuse for the team, but when one of their best players doesn’t play and another is hampered almost from the opening tip, they’re going to struggle some.

Injuries aside, there were several other areas in which Syracuse has shown a disturbing season long trend.

The Orange, averaging 16 turnovers per game this season, coughed it up 15 times to the Bulls. They simply must take better care of the ball. Give a team like Pittsburgh or UConn all those extra possessions, and Syracuse will be hard-pressed to win the game.

Another way they can make life easier on themselves is to hit their free throws.

For the season, Syracuse is making only 64.6 percent from the line.  The shots from the stripe have been anything but charity.

In their defense though, that statistic is a bit misleading due to the performance of two players.

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