Certainly, this wasn’t how they envisioned it. Led by the outspoken Terrence Roberts, the Syracuse men’s basketball team’s freshmen would glide up and down the Carrier Dome floor, first-year wonders taking the Big East by storm with every rim-shaking alley-oop, just like their early pick-up games together at Archbold Gymnasium.

But Saturday, a wholly different scene unfolded against rough-and-tumble Pittsburgh. All three freshmen but Roberts – Darryl Watkins, Louie McCroskey and Demetris Nichols – saw significant playing time against a quality opponent for the first time this season.

But the freshmen didn’t mesh, they melted. Aside from a Nichols 3-point stroke and Watkins showing off a McNeilian right arm, SU’s freshmen fumbled and bumbled against the brutish Panthers, justifying head coach Jim Boeheim’s decision to keep SU’s freshmen mostly confined to the bench.

Watkins played 17 minutes, Nichols 20 and McCroskey 13. And Syracuse lost by 19, scoring the fewest points it has under Jim Boeheim.’Some of our young guys maybe needed a game like this to understand that this is a pretty tough league,’ Boeheim said. ‘Maybe they might not be quite so anxious to think that they should be playing a lot of minutes.’Indeed, Boeheim’s freshmen did yelp for more court time, banking on their preseason fantasies of making major contributions. Roberts grumbled more than anyone, and the shy Watkins quietly acknowledged he would like more playing time before facing the Panthers.

But they forgot a couple things, a few details that were highlighted Saturday night on national television: They’re freshmen, they’re in the Big East and they’re playing for the defending national champions. However talented this group may be – and they are – it’s going to take more than half a season to ingratiate themselves into the regular SU lineup.

Despite their inglorious start, this year’s crop of freshmen will be fine. Their expectations were simply a little too high, that’s all.Last year certainly didn’t help those expectations.Carmelo Anthony, like a comet, soared through the Carrier Dome, all the way to New Orleans, to a distant galaxy known as the NBA and out of our sight for a generation or two. A freshman like Anthony comes around with the frequency of a deluge in the Sahara, and with the influx of high schoolers jumping to the draft, may never come again.

Add to his side Gerry McNamara and you have a first-year combination as likely as a camel trapped in a flood. No team as young as Syracuse last year had ever won a national title. Freshmen just aren’t supposed to have that kind of impact.

Of course, that’s starting to change. The upperclassman superstar is quickly becoming a dinosaur, and phenomenal freshmen, like Duke’s Luol Deng and Pittsburgh’s Chris Taft, are having tremendous success this season.

Still, SU’s Frosh Four need to keep in mind that, no matter how many players not qualified to imbibe alcohol who play professionally or use Dick Vitale as a mouthpiece to become household names, a freshman who starts and plays a key role on a top-caliber team is still an exception, not the rule.

When Boeheim says his freshmen aren’t quite ready for the Big East, he’s exactly right. And he’s not knocking the class, either. All four are talented and could be excellent players. But they’re freshmen, still closer to their first spin behind the wheel than their first beer. No matter what happened to SU last year or what’s happening around college basketball, first-year players, more often than not, need time.

Before Saturday’s loss to Pitt, Watkins admitted being envious of former prep teammates who received ample playing time with their teams right away this season – and those teammates told him he should be playing more. Then, for at least one game, he supplanted senior shot-swatter Jeremy McNeil and his bionic right arm as the Orangemen’s backup center. He blocked four shots but also displayed the typical rawness that keep freshmen plastered to the bench.

He missed all four free throws he tried and, for the second straight game, missed a lay-up without striking so much as the rim.

It took time for Watkins to play, and it will take more time for him to play well enough to topple a brutish team like Pittsburgh. Same goes for his classmates.

Someday, some game – and maybe sooner than later – all four will take the court together, fulfilling Roberts’ prognostications that this is a special group. It’ll be everything they envisioned, everything but what the calendar says.

Adam Kilgore is the sports editor at The Daily Orange where his columns appear regularly. E-mail him at adkilgor@syr.edu.

Published on January 26, 2004 at 12:00 pm