Andy Rautins staggered on the Carrier Dome floor writhing in pain. A swift shot to the groin rendered the senior shooting guard down-and-out while he tried to locate the culprit and signal an official.

‘He just came down and hit me with a closed fist right in the family jewels,’ Rautins said. ‘I mean, I let the ref know and I kind of felt nauseous for the rest of the game, but there’s not much you can do about it at that point.’

The strike, from St. Bonaventure’s Andrew Nicholson, was no accident, Rautins said. But luckily for the Orange, it was not a preemptive strike.

Before enduring the cheap foul, Rautins took an SU team that was floundering and recharged it. With a series of momentum-changing 3-pointers, Rautins catalyzed the Orange’s resurgence in the second half en route to an 85-72 victory over St. Bonaventure Saturday at the Carrier Dome in front of 20,578.

The win is No. 5 Syracuse’s 11th straight to begin the season, its best start since 2004-05.

‘He can hit big shots,’ SU head coach Jim Boeheim said of Rautins. ‘He’s having a very good year – a very solid year.’

It was easy for Rautins to determine that Nicholson’s shot was mal-intended. The timing was just too coincidental.

With the score at a near-deadlock early in the second half, Syracuse was desperate for a breakthrough. After being out-rebounded, out-hustled and out-shot in the first half, SU needed a big-time play to put some distance between itself and the Bonnies.

First, came a series of 3-pointers from freshman point guard Brandon Triche, a six-point swing that forced the Bonnies back on their heels. Next, came a series of Rautins 3s, which effectively delivered the knockout blow and forced St. Bonaventure into a reconstructive timeout.

The shots sent a hesitant Orange crowd into a frenzy, as it became apparent that a game that was once up in the air and uncertain was now all but in the bag.

Two quick frustrating Bonnies’ possessions later, and Rautins – who finished with 11 points and five assists – was on the floor with Nicholson disappearing into the paint, looking to evade the blame for what he’d just done.

Nicholson, at the time St. Bonaventure’s leading scorer, was later ejected from the game as a result of the foul after officials reviewed the footage.

‘No question,’ Rautins said when asked if he thought the foul was intentional. ‘He hit me two plays before that, too. He came down and hit me with an elbow, and I let that one slide. Then he came down again after I hit that shot and he hit me square in my region, so I knew it was intentional after that point.’

But Rautins’ play leading up to the confrontation wasn’t the only redeeming factor for the senior guard Saturday. In the midst of a four-guard Bonnies’ gameplan designed to frustrate the Orange backcourt, Rautins helped a relatively young pair of guards maintain offensive balance.

Acting as a second point guard, Rautins was able to effectively reset the offense and prime it for its eventual second-half run. Facing a bevy of active defenders who started pressuring SU at halfcourt, Rautins cut through the Bonnies’ defense to create pass outlets and to maintain spacing.

‘Andy is the key to everything,’ point guard Scoop Jardine said. ‘He’s the leader, the vocal leader, and he just leads by example.’

Even though Rautins helped Jardine manage the aggressive Bonnies’ defense, Jardine couldn’t help but laugh at Rautins’ situation. During the break while the officials were reviewing footage of the cheap shot, Jardine was seen joking with Rautins about the punch that sent him slumping to the ground.

Jardine remembers a similar cheap shot that caught him back in his AAU days in Philadelphia and couldn’t resist relaying a few puns in his teammate’s direction.

‘I can’t really tell you what I said to him,’ Jardine said, ‘but he laughed at it.’

ctorr@syr.edu

Published on December 21, 2009 at 12:00 pm