In the locker room Sunday afternoon, a reporter asked Andy Rautins if he was relieved now that his team had finished the gauntlet of its Big East schedule. Syracuse’s loss to Villanova concluded a brutal 10-game stretch against some of the best teams in the conference – and the country – including No. 1 Pittsburgh, No. 2 Connecticut and No. 6 Louisville.

The Orange went just 3-7 during the span and fell out of the national polls Monday for the first time since Dec. 1. Now Syracuse has what appears to be a brief respite, with its next three games coming against opponents all in the bottom half of the Big East standings. It starts tonight, when SU (19-8, 7-7 Big East) travels to New York to take on St. John’s (13-14, 4-10) at Madison Square Garden (7:30 p.m., TW26). The Red Storm is coming off a win over Seton Hall, snapping a five-game losing streak.

But even though the Orange’s next three foes are a combined 14-28 in conference play, relief is the furthest thing from Rautins’ mind.

‘It’s a lot easier said than done,’ Rautins said. ‘We put ourselves in a pretty tough position right now. St. John’s, they’re going be battling, and they’re about as physical as any team in the Big East. It’s going to be war. We just have to come back and bounce back and play like the team we know we’re capable of playing like.’

Perhaps the key for Syracuse moving forward is how it plays in the first half. The Orange has suffered from slow starts throughout Big East play and has regularly had to play from behind. At one point earlier in the season, point guard Jonny Flynn suggested perhaps SU would play poorly early in games all season.

Against the Wildcats Sunday, SU battled back from seven points down with 47 seconds remaining to have a chance to send the game into overtime at the buzzer.

Coming from behind has been a signature of Syracuse’s season. In non-conference play, the Orange three times came back from halftime deficits of at least seven and ultimately won, including an impressive comeback victory Nov. 25 over then-No 22 Kansas in front a pro-Jayhawk crowd in Kansas City, Mo.

Recovering from slow starts, however, has been a much more difficult task since conference play began.

‘Early in the year we got behind, we fought back and we won a couple games,’ SU forward Paul Harris said Sunday. ‘Now in the Big East, you can’t get down 10-11 points and think you’re going to come back. It’s very tough.’

That’s what happened to Syracuse on multiple occasions during the last 10 games. Most notably, the Orange played possibly its worst half all season against Villanova on Feb. 7 and went down by 15 at halftime. With four minutes left, SU cut the deficit to nine, but the damage had already been done in what ended as a 102-85 Syracuse loss.

St. John’s is far from the top of the Big East, but playing from behind on the road is always a daunting challenge – one SU head coach Jim Boeheim would like to avoid altogether. But in his postgame press conference Sunday, Boeheim praised his squad’s resiliency all season long.

‘We have battled back all year,’ he said. ‘Early in the year we were behind in a lot of games and we battled back. Even when we have been behind this year at UConn and Villanova, we were way down and we battled back to try to get back in those games. We are going to keep trying. We are going to keep trying to get back into it.’

jediamon@syr.edu

Published on February 23, 2009 at 12:00 pm