Like Clockwork, Orange Are Excelling

Last week's SEC/Big East Invitational, even in its absurdity that it has to exist just so every BCS league has a non-conference sparring partner, served to confirm my perceptions about a team from each conference that won a game in the "event."

So here comes a column about the profound effect Mississippi State and St. John's beating DePaul and Georgia, respectively, will have on college basketball in 2009-10. (Kidding.)

With Kentucky's win over UConn, there's not much more you can say other than the Wildcats are for real and that John Wall is everything you heard about, read or saw and possibly more. After the close calls against Miami (OH) University and Stanford, there were doubts to be had. Still, in the two signature wins Kentucky has so far, they nearly let a big lead slip against North Carolina and were sluggish in the first half offensively against UConn. The second half of Wednesday's game looked more like what this young team is capable of and should evolve into as conference play nears.

The Wildcats have what amounts to a free ride to 14-0 going into the first big Rick Pitino/John Calipari game in nearly a half a decade on January 2 against a Louisville team undergoing its annual December swoon. I wouldn't have predicted Kentucky to be 10-0, but with all those pieces in place, I'm not surprised.

On the night of November 3, when "SportsCenter" showed highlights of a Division II team named LeMoyne taking down Syracuse at the Carrier Dome in an exhibition game, one of the last teams anybody expected to be undefeated at this point was the Orange. This loss, even though it didn't count, served to further the preseason notion that Syracuse would be in trouble with the early exits by Jonny Flynn, Paul Harris, and Eric Devendorf. (Perhaps more shocking than the actual result was learning that LeMoyne is located in Syracuse and is nicknamed the Dolphins. There's mascot incongruity, and then there's this.)

Less than six weeks after that game, not only is Syracuse without a blemish in real games, but they may be the only team in the country to have four quality wins at this early stage (Florida, North Carolina, Pac-10 favorite Cal and Ivy favorite Cornell). What's more is that they actually left the state of New York before conference play began to pick up the win over Florida.

How are they doing it? Simply put, they are shooting the lights out. In every game but their season-opening (non-exhibition, of course) win over Albany, the Orange have shot 50 percent or better. They've outscored opponents by nearly 27 points per game, and have four players averaging double figures (with two others in the high nine-points) and seven guys playing 20 minutes or more per game. In my favorite stats to determine the quality of a team, Syracuse is scoring 1.17 points per possession while giving 0.81 points a trip on defense, giving them an efficiency margin of .36, ranking third in the nation. The Orange have the kind of spurtability that Jay Bilas and Bill Raftery dream about at night, as evidenced by a 22-1 run in the North Carolina game and a 10-0 run in the Florida contest Thursday night.

Perhaps the losses of Harris and Devendorf were actually good things for Syracuse. We all know about Devendorf's past off-court issues and Harris was never classified as a real big team player. But really, the player that has made the biggest impact for the 'Cuse has been Iowa State transfer Wesley Johnson.

In the build up to this season, Jim Boeheim raved about how good Johnson was. We college basketball fans are trained to tune this sort of stuff out, though. It seems like even right now, Duke is building up Liberty transfer Seth Curry to be the second coming of his brother. Johnson was so overlooked as a high schooler from a small town in between Dallas and Waco that he went to prep school for a year before being offered a scholarship by Iowa State. Injuries hobbled Johnson the two years he was in Ames and he left coach Greg McDermott's Cyclones.

The small forward leads the Orange in scoring and has become the most unexpected star of this college basketball season. Before suiting up for Syracuse, the knock on Johnson was his shot. He's currently averaging 59% from the floor and 51% from three-point range. If that's a player whose shot isn't supposed to be that great, the rest of the country is shuddering to think how good the Orange's best player can be.

The Orange have weaknesses just like any other team does at this point in the year. They turn the ball over a little more than the average team. Free throw shooting is a concern (would you believe that Arinze Onuaku's FT percentage has gone up 10% from last year ... to 40?). In addition, the Big East might not have the slightly down year that was expected. Of the 14 teams that have no blemishes on their records, five are in the Big East. Yet, this is looking like the most complete Syracuse team since the team that won the title in 2003. And no one could have expected that at the beginning of last month.