Jim Boeheim breathed a sigh of relief after his eighth-ranked Orange finally had an easy win.
Rick Jackson had 18 points and 10 rebounds, his eighth double-double of the season, and Syracuse clamped down on another opponent as the No. 8 Orange humbled upstate New York rival Colgate 100-43 on Saturday night.
Coming off close wins over Michigan (53-50), Georgia Tech (80-76) and North Carolina State (65-59) and a hard-fought 72-58 victory over No. 7 Michigan State on Tuesday night in the Jimmy V Classic at Madison Square Garden, Boeheim's big smile after his 839th career win was understandable.
''It's been a tough year. We haven't had a game like this. I'm happy to get one of them,'' Boeheim said. ''If you think back to our first nine games, it was two- or three-point games at halftime.''
The triumph matched the largest margin of victory for the Orange (10-0) in Boeheim's 35 years as head coach, tying the 57-point margin in a 129-72 win over C.W. Post 21 years ago to the day.
It was the 45th straight win in the series for Syracuse, and it was no contest from the opening tip. Colgate (0-8), which lost at top-ranked Duke 110-58 three weeks ago, made only three baskets and scored just eight points in the first half. That marked the fewest points allowed in a half by Syracuse since Boeheim took over in 1976. Princeton scored 11 in the first half of a 60-43 loss in November 1999.
''That was a fun game, just to get some of the guys involved that haven't played much,'' Jackson said. ''Just for them to get in there and get some solid minutes, have a lot of fun, that's good to see.''
Brandon Triche hit a pair of 3s as the Orange scored the first 12 points of the game, and their defense stymied Colgate's shooters the entire period, allowing few, if any, open looks. The Raiders had 15 turnovers and Syracuse scored 20 points off those miscues in building a 46-8 halftime lead.
''There's not much to say,'' Colgate coach Emmett Davis said. ''We're not playing very well right now, they are. We're not a very confident basketball team, and they just took our heart away in the first five minutes of the game. Our guys didn't respond the way I would anticipate they would. I was disappointed in that.''
Syracuse also had 12 steals and 10 blocks as Colgate missed all six of its 3-point attempts in the opening period and made just 3 of 28 shots (10.7 percent). The Raiders finished 1 of 13 from beyond the arc in the game, were 10 of 56 from the field (17.9 percent), and trailed by 63 points in the closing minutes.
''We competed much better in the Duke game,'' Davis said. ''It's not about Syracuse or Duke, it's about us. We went in there (Duke), it was 9-8 at the first media (timeout), they had a big run in the second half and pulled away a little bit, but we battled the whole game. That wasn't the case tonight.''
Dion Waiters had 17 points, Triche finished with 14, and Scoop Jardine 13 for Syracuse.
Mookie Jones had nine points, all on 3-pointers, in 17 minutes, and James Southerland had seven points, nine rebounds, three blocks and three steals in 22 minutes. Neither had played in the previous two games.
About the only thing that went wrong for Syracuse was an injury to freshman center Fab Melo. Melo, who's been nursing a sore right Achilles' tendon, played only 6 minutes and didn't score. Boeheim said the injury had been lingering and that the training staff was hoping to treat it before Syracuse hosts Iona in a week.
Joe Hoban had 14 points, 11 from the free throw line, to lead Colgate. Nick Pascale, a 6-foot-10 junior from the Syracuse suburb of DeWitt, had six points in his first start of the season, and Brandon James also had six. Yaw Gyawu, Colgate's top scorer with a 13.7 average, finished with four points. The Raiders played their second straight game without second-leading scorer and co-captain Mike Venezia, who was out with a knee injury.
Gyawu finally broke through for Colgate's first points with a layup at 16:12. But after Mitch Rolls converted a runner in the lane at 14:45, Colgate didn't get another basket until John Brandenburg converted an inbound pass with a pretty shot off the glass with 65 seconds left in the half. Sterling Melville hit a pair of free throws for Colgate's other points.
Colgate hasn't come close to that initial victory since its first game of the season, a 62-60 home loss to Binghamton. The Raiders' last win over the Orange was a 67-63 triumph on Feb. 24, 1962, a few months before Boeheim enrolled as a student at Syracuse.
