Immediately following Syracuse’s exhibition win over St. Rose on Tuesday, Fab Melo was thinking about getting into the film room. He needed an explanation.

The 7-foot sophomore center could not understand how the Golden Knights, whose tallest player is 6 feet 8 inches, managed to pull in five more rebounds than the much taller Orange squad that had a height advantage at every position.

‘I couldn’t figure out what they were doing,’ Melo said. ‘I told coach I wanted to watch the video tomorrow to see what we can do differently. Sometimes, some things just happen some way. We just had a bad night rebounding.’

St. Rose outrebounded SU 38-33 on Tuesday despite having just two players taller than 6 feet 6 inches see significant action. In the locker room after the game, it seemed that the Orange players’ pride had been bruised by allowing the Golden Knights to grab more boards. And rebounding was the first thing head coach Jim Boeheim discussed in his postgame press conference.

‘I think the one thing that happens when you play a smaller team, you get spread out and you get stationary,’ Boeheim said. ‘And I thought they did a great job of getting us spread out and then rebounding. We did not rebound because we were kind of spread out and we weren’t aggressive.’

No. 5 Syracuse gets its first chance to fix any lingering rebounding issues in the season opener against Fordham on Saturday at 4 p.m. in the Carrier Dome. And though Boeheim said the rebounding disparity was a concern going forward, he wasn’t at all ready to hit the panic button.

In his mind, St. Rose did exactly what it needed to do to hang with the Orange on the boards. They spaced the floor on offense to pull SU’s big men away from the basket. They also drove to the hoop against Syracuse’s man defense, forcing the Orange defenders to slide away from their men and help on the ball.

Although the head coach would have liked to see his team adjust to St. Rose’s style of offense better, he doesn’t believe it will be a major issue moving forward.

‘The one thing about this team is they’re not like Big East teams or most Big East teams,’ Boeheim said. ‘You don’t want to draw a lot of conclusions about games like this. They got our big guys away from the basket, which is what they should do. … But at the same token, when we see that, we have to adjust to it better.’

Boeheim didn’t seem to think it was a huge issue, but some of the veteran players took losing the rebounding battle to a much smaller team personally.

Junior guard Brandon Triche said he has seen it occasionally in the past with this team. Despite having advantages in size and athleticism, the Orange has been outworked by its opponents on the boards.

‘The last two years, we had athletic guys at the 3 and the 5, and we should outrebound everybody,’ Triche said. ‘All that comes down to is if we want it or not and our energy and our passion for the game. Just being lazy out there is definitely not going to cut it.’

Kris Joseph, who at 6-foot-7 was the same height as St. Rose’s starting center, agreed with Triche.

Especially considering he felt it was a matter of hustling for loose balls that gave St. Rose the edge Tuesday.

‘They got a lot of loose ones, the scrambles,’ Joseph said. ‘They were a scrappy team. They beat us to a few balls, and that’s something that we can’t allow to happen going forward.’

Though Fordham will bring more height to the Carrier Dome this weekend than St. Rose did, SU will still have a size advantage and should be the more athletic team.

And even though Boeheim felt the rebounding problem won’t carry over into future games, Joseph said it was definitely a concern looking ahead to the regular season.

‘We have to use our height, our physicality to our advantage,’ Joseph said. ‘Across the board at every position, we were probably taller (than St. Rose). And that’s something that when you get into the Big East and we’re evenly matched, that can’t happen. We’re going to have to rebound the ball a lot better going forward.’

zjbrown@syr.edu

Published on November 9, 2011 at 12:00 pm