Syracuse is Embarrassed in the Queen City

Dictionary.com defines embarrass as "to cause confusion and shame to; make uncomfortably self-conscious; disconcert; abash." I would say Syracuse did all that and a little more tonight in losing to Cincinnati 74-66.

Syracuse came out of the gates firing on all cylinders, jumping out to a very early 14-5 lead. After that, things got ugly, really ugly, frighteningly ugly, embarrassingly ugly. The Bearcats go on a 30-9 run to end the half. Cincy shot three after three after three, but very few fell. Syracuse was so bad on offense it didn't matter.

The Orange just didn't know what to do on offense when the Bearcats took Arinze Onuaku out of the game by constantly double teaming him in the post. That forced the ball out of the post and into the hands of Jonny Flynn, Paul Harris, and Scoop Jardine for jump shots. When those three are forced into jump shots, S.U. isn't going to score consistently. Flynn went 0-5 from three, 2-13 from the field, and miss three free throws. It's become clear this team can win when Donte Green has an off night, but when Flynn is off this team is horrendous.

It also didn't help on all those missed threes for the Bearcats, 19 misses in all, they kept getting offensive rebounds. Syracuse had trouble last year rebounding out of the zone and it happened again tonight. Cincy was able to find the seams in the zone off misses and get to the offensive rebounds. The Bearcats out rebounded the Orange by nine and grabbed 17 offensive rebounds.

Syracuse also went back to their age old practice of allowing one player to go nuts on them. Last year it was Marcus Sikes scoring 24 points on eight threes, this year Deonta Vaughn scored 29 points including 20 in the first half.

Maybe getting Josh Wright back on this team wouldn't be too bad of a thing after all. As much as I hate guys who quit on their teams, it might be necessary to have someone who's been through all the motions on the court. There were times Flynn just looked awful. He took several shots early in the shot clock. He's not the first option on this team, nor the second. His job is find Donte Green in a spot Donte can shoot or give it to A.O. down low. If neither of those options are there it's time to create a shot for himself or someone else. Unless he's got a very hot hand, he should not be the one to come down court and pull up from three with 28 seconds left on the shot clock.

Donte Green showed once again he's already one of the best players in the conference. He scored 25 points and grabbed 12 boards. He shot 8-17 from the field was perfect from the line. Jim Boeheim needs to find a better way to make Green the center of this offense because Green has to create most of his looks off turn around jumpers and catch and shoots from three. Boeheim has to come up with a way to get Green open more to get better shots. Green is about one tier away from being able to score 25 a game.

What's next for Syracuse? They travel to West Virginia this weekend for a match up with Coach Huggins' squad.

The loss drops Syracuse to 12-4 and 2-1 in the Big East. Cincinnati is 7-8 and 2-1 in the Big East.