Divergent paths
Bill Koch, National Columnist
Monday night marked one of the final regular season meetings between Syracuse and Pittsburgh as Big East opponents. The Orange and the Panthers are ticketed for the ACC, a football-driven decision designed to ensure the postseason standing of each program as conference realignment continues to shake the NCAA to its core.
That’s where the similarities end.
Syracuse cruised past Pittsburgh, 71-63, in a game that was nowhere near as close as the final score suggested. The Orange rolled out to 13-0 start and never allowed the Panthers within one possession the rest of the way, a performance wholly indicative of the on-court fortunes of each club this season.
Syracuse can do no wrong once it steps between the lines. The Orange are the No. 1 team in the nation, off to a program-best 20-0 start, and head coach Jim Boeheim is assured of his 34th 20-win season earlier than ever before. Syracuse looks like a national title contender thanks to its potent mix of experience, a strong backcourt, a deep frontcourt and defensive discipline.
Scoop Jardine was doing his best Sherman Douglas impersonation against Pittsburgh, firing alley-oop passes to Fab Melo that would have made the all-time Orange great only too proud. Dion Waiters came off the bench to post a team-high 16 points, highlighting Syracuse’s superior depth. Kris Joseph and Brandon Triche each continued their steady production, finishing with 12 points apiece. C.J. Fair supplied a taste of the spectacular, hammering down a first-half dunk that found its way onto SportsCenter. It’s become a standard sight for those who brave the cold and snow to make their way to the Carrier Dome every time the home team is in town.
The lone black mark on Syracuse’s season – and it is a significant one – is the disgraceful scandal involving longtime assistant coach Bernie Fine. And no, Orange fans, I’m not turning the page and moving on anytime soon. For Boeheim to grossly underestimate the severity of the molestation allegations and be essentially forced into an apology tells you all you need to know about how often denial takes hold and society’s initial reaction to such news comes up painfully short. Expect the Cameron Crazies and the Maryland student section – they of the ever-classy ‘Duck Fuke’ t-shirts – to welcome the Orange with open arms and scorn aplenty.
The Panthers, on the other hand, are confining their woes to the floor and could be a welcome sight on the road in the near future. Simply put, Pittsburgh is awful. There’s no easier or better way to say it. The team that opened at No. 7 according to the Sports Illustrated preseason poll has fewer conference victories than all five programs (South Florida, DePaul, Providence, Rutgers and Seton Hall) that missed out on the league’s record-setting 11-team haul on Selection Sunday in 2011. Pittsburgh is 0-6 in Big East play for the first time in school history and has now lost seven straight games for the first time in 16 years.
The Panthers looked nothing like the tough-as-nails bunch that had captured five straight and eight of its last nine games against Syracuse heading into Monday night. To paraphrase Larry Bird after a Game 3 NBA Finals rout at the hands of the Los Angeles Lakers in 1984, you would have thought somebody would have done something to stop it. It’s hard to believe that the likes of DeJuan Blair, Levance Fields, Sam Young, Carl Krauser and Chevon Troutman would have stood for this sort of thing over the past decade.
Pittsburgh has nobody with that kind of mettle on its roster. Ashton Gibbs would be the closest thing the Panthers have to someone who can play at the next level, and that’s a stretch. Promising freshman Khem Birch, Panthers’ coach Jamie Dixon’s first McDonald’s All-American to enroll at the school, bolted after playing just 10 games. And Birch didn’t go quietly – he shot his way out of town, blasting some unnamed teammates as selfish. It’s hard not to completely dismiss the claims of someone in Birch’s position, but losing at home to Long Beach State and Wagner in the same season should never happen to a program that has had the recent successes and boasts the facilities that Pittsburgh enjoys.
The argument could be made that this slide began after another NCAA Tournament disappointment last season. Butler beat Pittsburgh at its own game, proving tougher than the Panthers while handing them their fourth straight postseason defeat against a lower-seeded team. Exactly how a program is supposed to rebound from such a development is a mystery to me. The solution certainly appears to have eluded the Panthers as well.
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