NEW YORK – In Friday’s edition of this fine newspaper, we wrote the Syracuse men’s basketball team’s fortune as ‘unexpected storms heading your way.’

It was supposed to be a clever way to say the Orange may be in trouble. Little did I know, it predicted my future better than it did SU’s.

As I looked out the window of family’s house in suburban Central New Jersey on Sunday morning, I saw it – snow, lots of it.

That 20-some inch dumping of snow, the most recorded in Central Park ever, shut down most of the mid-Atlantic. Still, approximately 6,000 of us drudged our way to Madison Square Garden to see Syracuse take on St. John’s.

There was a basketball game to be played – a big one for SU.

Recently, the Orange has been in the middle of its own storm. After losing five of its last six games, confidence was lacking. Distractions swirled around Syracuse.

But on Sunday, the clouds cleared. SU showed up and played how the nation expects it to play basketball. That is to say, Syracuse beat a team it had more talent than and won a game it was supposed to win. Time will tell if it was a brief reprieve or a permanent one.

‘We feel good about getting a win,’ McNamara said. ‘We’re just getting back on track.’

There were still the usual hiccups. Eric Devendorf had trouble handling passes, Josh Wright hit the floor approximately every 30 seconds and Gerry McNamara mixed in a first half air ball with his best performance in a long time.

But those were small pockets of turbulence. Yesterday, the Orange showed it was capable of playing both offense and defense solidly.

Maybe all the off-court distractions the snow created for everyone, but Syracuse allowed SU to reset itself. What’s important for the Orange is if it can respond with a smooth run after weathering a tough stretch.

‘We need confidence because we only won one game out of our last six games,’ Devendorf said. ‘We got to play in the playoffs or the tournament, so we had to go out there and show what we could do. We haven’t been doing that the past six games.’

As soon as the 75-60 victory was in the books, Syracuse was eager to start the next stretch. Boeheim quickly ushered his players out of the locker room as soon as they were dressed in street clothes.

‘We’ll try to get home at some point, if we can,’ Boeheim joked.

The Orange needed to reach the closed Newark International Airport in nearby New Jersey, hoping to catch its charter flight back to Syracuse. SU had successfully made it through a figurative storm. As for the literal one, we’ll know whether or not the Orange made it home if it takes the floor for its scheduled home game against Cincinnati on Wednesday. And that goes for me, too.

Rob Anthes is an assistant sports editor at The Daily Orange, where his columns appear occasionally. E-mail him at rmanthes@syr.edu.

Published on February 12, 2006 at 12:00 pm