Creature Vs. Creature: Syracuse Tries to Collar The Hoyas

Say the phrase “Big East basketball” and immediately two teams spring to mind.

Syracuse and Georgetown. Georgetown and Syracuse.

No matter how you slice it, those two basketball giants are the premier rivalry in the Big East conference.

Now, the UConn Huskies might call a foul on that statement. After all, the Huskies have been the most dominant team in the league for close to 20 years.

UConn has two national championships along with a slew of players currently cashing an NBA paycheck. And it’s true that the Huskies have developed heated rivalries with both Syracuse and Georgetown.

But look back at when the conference was founded and you’ll see that the Big East was built on the backs of the Orange and the Hoyas (along with St. John's during the 1980s) slugging it out every year for league bragging rights.

The names alone read like a who’s who of college basketball.

Pearl Washington. Sleepy Floyd. Derrick Coleman. Patrick Ewing. Billy Owens. Dikembe Mutombo. Sherman Douglas. Reggie Williams. Carmelo Anthony. Michael Sweetney.

And don’t forget the coaches.

Jim Boeheim still patrols the sidelines for Syracuse. After matching wits with John Thompson II for so many years, Boeheim now attempts to out-X and O John Thompson III.

Wednesday will mark the first of two regular-season clashes between these two proud programs when Syracuse pays a visit to the nation’s capital.

Both teams have played four conference games but the quality of opponents has been very different.

Syracuse sits tied with Marquette atop the Big East at 4-0.

But those four teams (Seton Hall, South Florida, DePaul, and Rutgers) together have a dismal record of 1-14, with South Florida the only one of the quartet to find the win column.

Georgetown, on the other hand, stands at 2-2 with three of those contests coming against some of the heavies in the league.

The Hoyas began conference play by thumping then-No. 2 UConn on the road. The shoe was on the other foot when Pittsburgh came calling, though.

They lost their next game at Notre Dame but rebounded to beat Providence at home.

Both teams need this win and not just for bragging rights.

Syracuse, which undertakes a horrendous schedule as they play eight ranked teams over their next 10 games, needs to make a statement to the rest of the league that they are indeed for real.

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