NEW YORK – Eric Devendorf has played two games in one day before. Just not in a long time. Anyway, that was in high school, not at the Big East tournament.

‘AAU, you play two games a day,’ Devendorf said. ‘It’s nothing like this. This is the top level of college basketball, at the top arena in the world. There’s nothing like it.’

That’s essentially the challenge now facing No. 18 Syracuse, which has an unusually short turnaround before its next game. The Orange needed six overtimes to beat the Huskies, 127-117, in the quarterfinals of the Big East tournament in a game that didn’t end until 1:22 a.m. Friday morning. The game took three hours, 46 minutes to complete, marking the longest game in Big East tournament history. SU is next scheduled to play West Virginia in the semifinals at 9:30 p.m. Friday night, giving it all of 20 hours to prepare.

The Mountaineers upset No. 2 Pittsburgh, 74-60, Thursday night in a contest that finished around 9:15. The winner will advance to the finals Saturday night to play the winner of Friday’s Villanova-Louisville matchup.

‘West Virginia was unbelievable tonight,’ SU head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘Pittsburgh has been a tremendous team all year, and for West Virginia to play the way they were, they were absolutely spectacular tonight.’

In the locker room early Friday morning, Jonny Flynn said he hadn’t eaten since 4 p.m. the day before and couldn’t feel his legs after playing 67 minutes. Devendorf, who tallied 61 minutes, just wanted to shower and climb into bed. Andy Rautins, who logged 49 minutes, was waiting to finally lie down.

Simply put, Syracuse does not have too much time to revel in its astounding win over UConn, but Rautins is not convinced his team won’t be ready for the challenge of West Virginia.

‘We’re going to get some rest tonight, get a meal in us, try to get up early and replenish a little bit, then go to sleep after that, try and to rest our bodies,’ Rautins said. ‘It’s all about pride at this point. West Virginia thinks they’re going to be able to run over us tomorrow night, but we’re not going to let that happen.’

Syracuse beat West Virginia, 74-61, at the Carrier Dome on Feb. 4. In that game, the Orange had an entire week to prepare and had control the entire game. This second meeting may not be so easy, considering the physical and mental fatigue Syracuse will likely be dealing with.

Nevertheless, the SU players appear to realize the difficulty of this quick turnaround and are not taking it lightly, no matter how well they played against the Mountaineers six weeks ago. In the postgame press conference, Flynn addressed West Virginia before even talking about the epic game against UConn that just ended.

‘I can’t even feel my legs right now,’ Flynn said. ‘We battled it out. It’s great we got the victory, but we got to turn around today and get a big win over West Virginia, a scrappy team we beat before, who showed a great performance tonight versus (Pittsburgh).’

jediamon@syr.edu

Published on March 12, 2009 at 12:00 pm