Sports

Syracuse has Melo back to face St. John’s

SYRACUSE — With Fab Melo back in the lineup after missing three games to resolve an academic issue, second-ranked Syracuse would seem to be in a good place as it heads to New York to play St. John’s.

Coach Jim Boeheim isn’t so sure when he looks at the box scores. Although the Orange (22-1, 9-1 Big East) rank in the top five in 13 Big East team categories, their work on the glass has been suspect.

Their rebounding margin is minus-4.2

“We just haven’t been doing a good job on the boards, we really haven’t all year,” said Boeheim, whose next victory will be his 879th and will tie him with North Carolina’s Dean Smith for third place all-time in Division I. “And it is not the center position. Everyone is going to look at that, but Fab was averaging six rebounds a game.”

The first game Melo missed was two weeks ago at Notre Dame, and without the 7-foot Brazilian in the middle — Melo ranks second in the conference in blocks at 3 per game — the Irish dominated behind the inspired play of 6-9, 248-pound Jack Cooley. Cooley registered 17 points and 10 rebounds as Notre Dame upset then-No. 1 Syracuse 67-58 at the Joyce Center, handing the Orange their first loss after 20 straight victories.

The Irish outrebounded Syracuse 38-25.

The Orange came back two days later to win at Cincinnati, beating the Bearcats 60-53 and matching them with 40 rebounds. But in a 63-61 home win over West Virginia last Saturday, Syracuse was outrebounded 40-21, 18-5 on the offensive glass by the Mountaineers, who probably deserved a better fate.

“There’s no excuse to be that bad a rebounding team,” Boeheim said. “We have to do a better job.”

Boeheim pointed the finger at guards Scoop Jardine, Brandon Triche, and Dion Waiters, who together managed just one rebound in a combined 80 minutes on the floor against West Virginia. Freshman Rakeem Christmas started at center and had no points and one rebound in 14 minutes, while forward C.J. Fair had only three rebounds in 26 minutes.

“Our defensive guards have to get some rebounds,” Boeheim said. “It is really about our guards and forwards doing a better job rebounding the ball. That is imperative. We can get outrebounded, but not by 20 something.”

So far this season, Syracuse has been outrebounded 11 times, six in conference. Except for a subpar 46-33 effort against Marshall in nonconference play in early December, the average discrepancy in seven of those games was just over 3 rebounds, none larger than six. In the games Melo missed, however, Syracuse was outrebounded 119-85.

“The long rebounds we’ve got to get,” senior forward Kris Joseph said. “We can’t allow teams to keep getting second and third chances trying to score because eventually they will.”

Jardine, in his fifth and final year with the team and its vocal leader, brushed it off.

“We’re not going to dwell on us not rebounding because there’s games where we did rebound,” Jardine said. “We’ve had games where it was tough in the second half and it was close and we made some plays to win. We’re 22-1. That’s a lot of wins.”

The Orange have beaten St. John’s (10-12, 4-6) six straight times and are 12-point favorites. No surprise there. The Red Storm ranks 13th in the Big East in scoring (67.6 points per game), and last in scoring margin (minus-1.3), 3-point shooting (26.2 percent), assists per game (10.7), and assist-to-turnover ratio (0.8).

But St. John’s has won two of its last three with a starting lineup of five freshmen, and they gave Duke a scare before losing 83-76 on the road. The Blue Devils led 54-32 with 17:09 left before D’Angelo Harrison and Moe Harkless led a furious rally to move St. John’s within 79-75 in the final minute.

Harrison and Harkless are the only freshmen ranked in the top 10 in the league in scoring, averaging over 16 points, and Harkless is fourth in rebounding (8.7).