During Tuesday’s practice, Syracuse men’s basketball assistant coach Troy Weaver gathered seven or eight players underneath the basket for a drill called War. In Weaver’s War, designed for forwards and centers, the Orangemen scrapped for rebounds in the paint and banged into each other often enough to make James Naismith roll over in his grave.

‘Elbows were flying, stuff like that,’ SU forward Hakim Warrick said. ‘We usually do (the drill) with three people.’

They’d never done it with seven or eight, Warrick said.

Weaver intended to prepare the Orangemen for the rough-and-tumble St. John’s team they’d face the following day. His strategy worked, as No. 17 Syracuse muscled out a 65-59 win over the Red Storm before 17,033 Wednesday night at the Carrier Dome.

Syracuse improved to 10-1, 1-0 Big East. St. John’s dropped to 4-7, 0-1.

‘St. John’s is gonna battle you,’ SU head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘They’re gonna reach and push and bang you.’

Weaver’s War had readied the Orangemen for such roughhousing.

But Syracuse certainly didn’t anticipate the officials hesitating with their whistles as often as they did. The ‘let-’em-play’ strategy, typical of Big East games, drew sneers from Boeheim and rolled eyes from Warrick throughout the game. St. John’s was called for 12 fouls – not counting four, desperate hacks during the final two minutes. The Orangemen were called for 10 fouls.

‘I knew they were gonna try to beat me up the whole game,’ Warrick said. ‘We just had to tough it out.’

And hang on. Syracuse mounted a 55-42 lead with 7:43 left in the game. St. John’s head coach Kevin Clark called timeout to settle his team down, and over the next three minutes, the Red Storm cut the score to 57-51.

Afterward, Boeheim bemoaned the lost lead. He was also irked with the Orangemen’s 17 turnovers and the fact that SU failed to control St. John’s guard Daryll ‘Showtime’ Hill in the game’s first few minutes.

‘He just told us how disappointed he was in our effort,’ Warrick said.

‘We didn’t guard them at the beginning of the game,’ Boeheim said. ‘We let Hill dribble past us.

‘Am I happy with the way we’re playing? No. Not at all. The defense, the rebounding, the turnovers are some of the areas where we’re not doing anything.’

Boeheim’s mood may have been even more sullen if St. John’s guard Elijah Ingram hadn’t orchestrated his second consecutive miserable performance in the Carrier Dome. Ingram, the Red Storm’s leading scorer, shot 1 of 12, including 1 of 9 from 3-point range, and finished with three points. Last year, Ingram shot 3 of 22, including 2 of 20 from beyond the arc, in the Orangemen’s 66-60 home win.

Considering the Red Storm’s soap opera season, Boeheim’s gripes are reasonable. St. John’s has lost games this year to Fairfield and Hofstra (both at home). The Red Storm beat St. Francis by six points and needed two overtimes to edge Pennsylvania by two.

Six games into the season, St. John’s fired head coach Mike Jarvis, who fans berated with chants of – what else? – ‘Fire Jarvis!’ during the Red Storm’s early season lackluster showings. Worse still, sixth man Willie Shaw was kicked off the team after police busted him for marijuana possession.

But Wednesday night at the Carrier Dome, St. John’s played like, well, St. John’s. Big men Grady Reynolds and Lamont Hamilton harassed Warrick in the paint, driving their elbows in his back every time he tried to post them up.

‘It gets tiring,’ Warrick said.

And it’s especially exhausting when there are no reserves to rely on. Boeheim used just seven players Wednesday night. Louie McCroskey, who played six minutes, was the only SU freshman to remove his warm-up outfit.

‘I haven’t felt (the young guys) have played very well in practice,’ Boeheim said.

Boeheim said he plans to use his freshmen more when the Orangemen host Boston College on Saturday at noon.

‘They’re either gonna sink or swim,’ he said.

Published on January 7, 2004 at 12:00 pm