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This is the Syracuse University men’s basketball team with James Southerland: 16-1 and 79.3 points per game. And this is the Orange without Southerland: 4-2 and 64.7 points per game. Welcome back, James.
Southerland, a 6-foot-8 senior forward, returned on Sunday, Feb. 10, and, not surprisingly, the SU offense played one of its best games of the season as the No. 9 Orangemen crushed St. John’s University 77-58 at the Carrier Dome.
After a cold first half, Southerland warmed up in the second half with three 3-pointers and a monster dunk. His two 3-pointers in less than a minute midway through the second half highlighted a 10-2 SU run that turned a close game into a rout.
We’ll say it again: Welcome back, James.
“It was a great uplift for me and the team,” sophomore point guard Michael Carter-Williams said. “Him coming back is amazing for us and he’s going to help us out a lot. He brings us energy and senior leadership and he’s a great player also.”
“Emotionally we are more confident, obviously,” senior guard Brandon Triche added. “You can make the extra pass and he’s going to open it up for everyone else. You are going to see Mike’s {Carter-Williams} assists go up. You will probably see my assists go up a little more. It just spreads the court out.”
Southerland was declared ineligible because of an academic issue prior to Syracuse’s game against Villanova on Jan. 12. Nearly one month later, on Feb. 8, he had an appeal before a university hearings panel. No official announcement was made, but Southerland obviously won the appeal and suited up for Sunday’s game. He had been practicing with the team and had been watching the games from the bench in street clothes.
“Having him back was great because he’s our senior leader and for him to have his last year go like this, it kind of hurt the team,” junior forward C.J. Fair said. “I know if I was in his position it would be killing me, but I’m glad for him to be back right now.”
By all accounts, Southerland—one of the most likable and popular players on the team—remained positive and supportive of his teammates while awaiting his appeal. He said he was confident all along that he would return to play this season. “It was tough, but at the same time you have to stay mentally focused and still be a leader out there off the court and cheer them on,” Southerland said.
Southerland entered the St. John’s game with 13 minutes, 16 seconds left in the first half. He received a standing ovation from the 27,169 fans that made up the second-largest Carrier Dome crowd of the season.
Southerland said he wasn’t nervous, but he missed all four of his field-goal attempts in the first half (although he was 2-for-2 from the foul line). He entered the second half at the 17:56 mark and made his first shot of the half, a 3-pointer from the corner. “I came out not thinking about the first half and just firing,” he said.
“When he missed those four {shots} to start, it was really hard,” SU coach Jim Boeheim said. “Then he hit his first in the second half. Then he made a good run out and got the dunk and then made a pass to Brandon {Triche}. Then we ran a little play at the top for him and he hit the 3 up there. So I was surprised he got going. It’s tough when you have a bad first half your first time back, but he got it going.”
Southerland is the Orange’s best shooter (49 percent overall, 38 percent from 3-point range), so he opens the floor for the rest of the SU players because the defense has to cover him. It’s no wonder that Carter-Williams, whose assists had gone down with Southerland out, notched eight assists against St. Johns and Triche had seven.
Southerland’s return also increases SU’s depth, especially with freshman forward DaJuan Coleman sidelined for at least another three weeks after surgery on his left knee. While Boeheim repeatedly said it wasn’t a big deal that forwards Fair and Jerami Grant were playing 40 minutes a game, it would have been a big deal if SU had a game with foul trouble or if someone else got hurt.
“Seven {scholarship} guys are really not enough,” Boeheim said after Sunday’s game. “You can get by with seven but if you have foul problems or if you get into a fast-paced game, you need that one extra guy. It gives us three forwards and we have three guards.”
The Orange didn’t exactly fold with Southerland out; SU went 4-2 with wins over three ranked teams, Louisville, Cincinnati and Notre Dame. And Grant, a 6-8 freshman forward, showed he’s the real deal by averaging 9.8 points and 5.5 rebounds in those six games.
“He really came through big time in tough situations,” Boeheim said of Grant. “We won four games out of six and it could have been two out of six very easily. To play those games with seven guys was a very difficult stretch, but Jerami stepped it up big time. He’s got great experience that’s going to really help him the rest of this year and he’ll continue to start the rest of the year. He’ll get a lot of good, productive minutes.”
Southerland, meanwhile, will continue to come off the bench and help make what was a very good team into a potentially great one. “Obviously, {Southerland} was excited to come back,” said St. John’s assistant coach Rico Hines, who filled in for head coach Steve Lavin this past Sunday because Lavin’s father died. “When you take a guy who’s a basketball player, when you take the game from him, he’s anxious to get back. He’s a good player and we knew he was going to come out and play well. He hit some big shots.”
Orange Slices: SU’s win over St. John’s extended the Orange’s Carrier Dome winning streak to 37, a school record and the longest current streak in the nation.
SU now has won at least 20 games for 16 consecutive seasons and in 35 of Boeheim’s 37 campaigns.
SU’s Carter-Williams is one of the finalists for the 2013 Bob Cousy Collegiate Point Guard of the Year Award. An original list of 80 was trimmed to 12 by a nationally based committee.
Syracuse and St. John’s—two charter members of the Big East Conference and longtime rivals—will play a home-and-home series the next two years even though the Orange is heading to the Atlantic Coast Conference.
