Syracuse (1-0) kicked off its season by beating Lehigh (0-1), picked as the Patriot League favorite, 57-47, in the Carrier Dome on Friday night. The Orange was superior to the Mountain Hawks in the first half but then had to stave off an aggressive comeback bid out of the break.

Here are three things we learned about SU from the game.

1. Syracuse will shoot, through thick and thin

Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said his team would take a lot of 3s this season, but 34 against a Division I opponent still seemed like a high number. The Orange also made just 11 of those attempts, but never wavered from its perimeter approach.

Boeheim said that Lehigh, like a lot of teams will do, packed it in on defense and had five players collapsing whenever a Syracuse player drove toward the rim. And while that defensive approach created open 3s for the shot-happy Orange, the looks weren’t falling. Michael Gbinije, Trevor Cooney and Malachi Richardson scored 43 of SU’s 57 points, and shot a combined 9-for-27 from beyond the arc.

“If we get 30 good 3s, which we got tonight, they were all good,” Boeheim said. “… I think with this team we can make 15, 16 of them.

“I watched Golden State the other night, they made like two 3s. They were even or they were behind. The second half they made about 100. When you’re shooting 3s, you’re going to have some of those nights, you’re going to miss some.”

2. The Orange can do more than float (at least against Lehigh) without Dajuan Coleman at center

Coleman picked up his second foul at the 15:05 mark of the first half and then his third with 15:36 left in the second. Against some opponents down the road, that could spell big trouble for the Orange. But against a mid-major team with a more-than-capable frontcourt, Tyler Lydon and Chinonso Obokoh proved viable options behind Coleman at the five.

Lydon, the 6-foot-8, 210-pound freshman, was the first to come off the bench to play center in SU’s three-forward lineup. He finished with four points, a team-high 11 rebounds, two blocks and three steals in 28 minutes. Obokoh, a 6-foot-9 junior, was surprising in grabbing four rebounds and blocking a game-high four shots in 15 minutes off the bench.

“I feel pretty comfortable being down there playing the five position,” Lydon said. “I’ve been doing it a lot in practice and stuff, it’s been going pretty well. Hopefully I can continue to improve.”

Boeheim was impressed with Lydon’s defense and also pleased with Obokoh’s effort on the end. He was, however, critical of the centers’ defense when the Mountain Hawks started to break down the defense at the start of the second half. Either way, Lydon showed he has the athleticism to rebound against decently sized bigs, while Obokoh flashed potential to be a dependable defensive stopgap moving forward.

3. Boeheim’s guard rotation, for now, looks very tight

Kaleb Joseph was Syracuse’s most efficient player on Friday, scoring eights points on 2-of-3 shooting in just 14 minutes off the bench. He hit a 3 just before the first-half buzzer and then another from the top of the key when the Orange was stalling against Lehigh’s 2-3 zone. But more playing time, Boeheim said, may be slightly out of his hands.

“He’ll probably play more, it’s difficult because we really get small when he’s in there with Trevor (Cooney) and Mike (Gbinije), they’re going to be in the game,” Boeheim said. “Now, the problem is that Malachi is your best player in the game and you want to keep him in the game and now you really are going small.

“You can do it a little bit but it’s not ideal. You can do it a little bit. I think we will, but that’s the problem for Kaleb. He played great.”

True to what Boeheim said about his starting backcourt, Cooney played a game-high 38 minutes and Gbinije played 37. That left little room for Joseph, who, at 6-foot-2, is the only player in Syracuse’s nine-man rotation shorter than 6 feet 4 inches.

Freshman guard Franklin Howard also played just four minutes, which was by far the least of any Orange player to see the court.

Published on November 13, 2015 at 11:40 pm

Contact Jesse: jcdoug01@syr.edu | @dougherty_jesse