LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Wes Johnson was expecting more of a day off Saturday.

And why not? Technically speaking, the Louisville game was meaningless for Syracuse. The Orange had already secured the top seed in the Big East tournament, and consensus has them a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Couple that with the fact that Johnson’s hand swells like a boxing mitt after every game, and it was easy to see why the Orange’s star forward envisioned spending most of the game in track pants in order to rest up for the most important part of the season.

‘I thought (SU head coach Jim Boeheim) was going to take me in and out more,’ Johnson said.

But by halftime, Johnson and the Orange realized they were in a dogfight. The energy at Freedom Hall was infectious, and the team was in the midst of the most competitive atmosphere it had been in all season.

Faced with the decision to play it safe or go for the win, Boeheim decided this would not be a Jim Caldwell moment. The Orange would play Johnson, and the rest of its starters, in the second half.

It would treat this game like any other, not as a spa day for its regular starters and not as a hands-on learning experience for the walk-ons.

‘I felt like (Boeheim) needed me to play tonight,’ Johnson said. ‘So I just tried to do my best out there.’

We all know the result — Syracuse ended up losing its first road game of the season anyway. Consequently, it won’t hold down the No. 1 spot in The Associated Press or ESPN/USA Today Top 25 come Monday afternoon. So the skeptics will argue that if all this was going to happen anyway, why not make sure everyone is healthy at the same time?

The answer: to set a precedent and gain some valuable experience.

Syracuse has yet to play a team with everything to lose as it did against the Cardinals Saturday. On the line was a guaranteed ticket to the NCAA Tournament, getting a win in the last-ever game at Freedom Hall and appeasing packs of legendary alumni.

Rick Pitino, admittedly, had to win this game.

‘I never really felt pressure, but tonight I felt pressure for the first time as a coach,’ Pitino said. ‘There were so many festivities, so many guys coming back, the NCAA berth being on the line, the No. 1 team in the country. … Last night I got up at about 2 a.m. and thought, ‘What if we lose?’ No bid, people will go home very sad, the legends came all this way and they have to pack up and go home — I just started thinking that way.’

This will be the environment in the NCAA Tournament. Every team will be fighting for its postseason life.

Every team will throw in the random, full-throttle presses like the Cardinals did on Saturday. Every team will be scrambling for loose balls and thriving on pure adrenaline just like Edgar Sosa — whose mom saw him play at Freedom Hall for the first time in the victory.

The Orange has played in big games before this season. On the road at West Virginia showed what it was like to play in a hostile atmosphere, same with Georgetown. Villanova was a great way to learn about dealing with mounting pressure.

But Louisville was different. And with the starters playing the entire game, they now know why and what to expect.

‘When you go out there, you want to play as hard as you can because you want to win all your games,’ forward Rick Jackson said. ‘I never thought Coach would not play us.’

Let’s say Boeheim decided to pull Johnson at halftime. To ease Rautins out midway through the second half and to rotate Arinze Onuaku and Jackson to be sure nobody would get hurt. Brandon Triche would man the point with James Southerland on one side, maybe Kris Joseph on the other.

Then, a few weeks later, Syracuse gets down five with a minute left in the Sweet 16 and starts to panic like it did Saturday. Where’s the point of reference?

The team will whiz errant passes out of bounds, force bad shots and get itself into foul trouble like it did against the Cardinals without the intuition to stop the flood.

But now, at the first sign of distress, Orange players will know when to settle down. Why doing certain things on the court will be a determent.

Something they couldn’t learn by just watching.

Conor Orr is the sports editor at The Daily Orange, where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at ctorr@syr.edu.

Published on March 7, 2010 at 12:00 pm