This is the sort of game Big Monday was intended for. Defending national champion Connecticut on the road at surprising sixth-ranked Syracuse, the last undefeated team in the land: Dynasty vs. Destiny.
The eighth-ranked Huskies (13-3) will take a record 13 straight league road wins into the Carrier Dome tonight (ESPN, 7 p.m.). And the Orangemen, who have the look of a team on a mission, will test themselves against a team that’s won the Big East three of the last four years and become the league’s vanguard.
The Orangemen are 11-0 at home and 5-0 atop the Big East, and far more important, they’ve already tied the best start in 23 years under Jim Boeheim. The only other Boeheim-coached Syracuse team to open 15-0 was the 1986-87 squad that reached the NCAA Final. A win tonight will match the best start in school history.
But they’re far from taking UConn lightly, three losses or not. Granted, they’ve already lost three games, more than last year’s championship season. And they are just seventh in the league at 2-2. Still, they’ve won a Big East-record 13 straight league road games, and with star point guard Khalid El-Amin surrounded by a plethora of talented big men, Syracuse knows the Huskies are dangerous.
“They had a lot of close gams last year, but Richard Hamilton would pull ’em out and the end, just take over. They definitely have a lot of good players, depth. Maybe it’s just that Hamilton was a really special player,” said Syracuse’s star center Etan Thomas. And teammate Preston Shumpert agreed that the Huskies may still be going through withdrawal from missing their departed All-American star.
“They’re just having a little identity crisis right now. They’re used to getting points from him. Once they realize they can still accomplish their goals, they’ll be very good.”
Syracuse knows about beating UConn. Even though the Orangemen had a disappointing season last year — going 3-6 at home and losing to Oklahoma State in the first round of the NCAA Tourney — they went into Hartford last Feb. 1 and handed the shorthanded Huskies their first loss after opening the season 19-0. So tonight they’ll have UConn’s full attention.
El-Amin had 19 of his 22 points in the second half of UConn’s 92-71 win at Georgetown Saturday, and both he and coach Jim Calhoun know the point guard will shoulder a heavy burden against Syracuse and pointman Jason Hart.
“Khalid was special in the second half and he showed why he is one of America’s best players,” Calhoun said. “[It] was a good win for us and gives us good momentum heading into Syracuse on Monday night.”
They’ll have their hands full with a Syracuse team that has that rarest of commodities, senior leadership, in tri-captains Hart, Thomas and Ryan Blackwell. And the Orangemen finally have a reliable off-guard in Tony Bland and shooting depth in Shumpert, freshman DeShaun Williams and Brooklynite Allen Griffin.
Saturday Calhoun shook up his lineup by moving Paterson’s Kevin Freeman to power forward and giving Doug Wrenn his first start of the season. The 6-6 freshman from Seattle could start at small forward and 6-11 senior Jake Voskuhl will try to deal with Thomas.