TAMPA, Fla. – The gameplan was not to intentionally feed Rick Jackson the ball. Not at all.

Things just worked out that way for the 6-foot-11 forward.

‘I told Rick, ‘We’re not going to throw you the ball at all. Just go get,” head coach Jim Boeheim said.

Scavenging offensive rebounds around the rim, Jackson was SU’s primary offensive punch in the first half. Sixteen of his 21 points came in the before intermission, with Florida stalking forward Wes Johnson at every pivot. Boeheim called this Jackson’s best game with Syracuse.

Easy to see why. Jackson reached a career-high in points with 15 minutes still to go. It wasn’t rocket science.

‘Guys were missing shots, and I was just rebounding,’ Jackson said. ‘I felt like the ball was just falling in my hands every time, and I was just going right back up with it.’

Jackson’s play of the night was no mistake, though. With time dwindling, Jackson caught an alley-oop for a slam to send SU into the locker room with a wave of momentum. Jackson screamed – his mouth guard nearly falling out – and he tunneled through an assembly line of high fives.

So many times this season, Boeheim has telegraphed his signature are-you-kidding? stares at Jackson. Not this game. With Johnson blanketed early, Jackson stepped up to power SU’s offense. His nifty reverse layups and tip-ins around the tin took center stage.

‘We have so many good penetrators, he can just kind of get post position,’ Boeheim said. ‘They need to stop penetration, and he’s going to get in good position down there. He’s a force. He’s a sneaky left-hander. He sneaks around back there.’

Syracuse has been working extra in practice on rebounding. On Thursday, it showed. Syracuse outrebounded Florida, 43-31. Jackson was at the forefront.

‘We haven’t been a good rebounding team,’ the junior said. ‘So we’ve been working on that.’

Syracuse withstands pressure

It’s not like Brandon Triche has never faced full-court pressure before. At Jamesville-DeWitt, he always did. So when Florida unleashed its swarming pressure on the freshman point guard, he didn’t panic.

Still, this is a tad different.

‘High school was the only full-court pressure I had faced,’ Triche said. ‘A little bit against Cal. But this was real pressure.’

His predecessor Jonny Flynn turned the court into maze, darting and dunking into the smallest alleyways. The 6-foot-4 Triche is a bull, changing speeds from Point A to Point B with his boxer-like physique.

After a shaky start, Triche and Scoop Jardine had no trouble cracking Florida’s press. The duo combined for nine assists, as Triche only committed one turnover. Triche often anticipated where traps were coming and found the open man before getting harassed into a mistake.

Seeing pressure is good for the team in general, he said. Syracuse encountered issues Thursday it hasn’t all season.

‘Right now we’ve seen about everything a team can with pressure and zones,’ Brandon Triche said. ‘It just tells you what type of team we are. We have a lot of chemistry. When they hit us with the 3’s, we punched right back.

‘Every time they had a run, we had a run too.’

Small ball wins

As Florida’s offense ran gassers baseline-to-baseline, Boeheim realized he needed to adjust. His overbearing frontcourt needed to give way to a speed-oriented lineup. So in the second half, forward Kris Joseph received the majority of minutes over center Arinze Onuaku.

Off the bench, Joseph played 31 minutes. Onuaku played 22. The move worked. Joseph finished with 12 points and 10 rebounds. Eight of his 12 came in the second half.

‘The game was fast for Arinze, so we went smaller,’ Boeheim said. ‘We wanted to get Kris out and in some running situations.’

Joseph’s key moment came with 11:53 left in the second half. He knifed down the lane uncontested for a one-handed slam to increase SU’s lead to 56-50.

The gradual move to Joseph made sense to Onuaku. The Orange can play a game of cause-and-effect.

‘It’s an inside-out thing,’ Onuaku said. ‘First, you pound them in and make them play that. When they start helping with that, you make your outside shots.’

This and That

Syracuse had three players with at least 10 rebounds (Rick Jackson, Wes Johnson, Kris Joseph). …All of Florida’s 12 3-pointers came from Kenny Boynton (5-of-14), Erving Walker (4-of-9) and Chandler Parsons (3-of-5). …Friday night was Billy Donovan’s 500th career game as a head coach. …On the bench next to Donovan is Richard Pitino, the son of Louisville’s Rick. …The opener to the SEC/Big East Challenge was no challenge. Mississippi State thrashed DePaul, 76-45.

Published on December 10, 2009 at 12:00 pm