What are those red Xs on the Syracuse basketball scoreboard and how do they involve fans?

Syracuse, N.Y. – Before Syracuse’s last two men’s basketball games, a video of Adrian Autry played in the JMA Wireless Dome.

On it, Autry talks about the importance of getting three straight stops on defense. When that happens, he explains, three large red Xs will appear on the giant stadium video board.

Syracuse will have entered what Autry describes as the “Orange Zone.”

It happened early on Saturday.

Syracuse started its game against Delaware State with three straight stops. With 17 minutes and 27 seconds left in the first half, the Triple X flashed in the right corner of the video board.

Nobody in the crowd reacted.

“I would like the crowd to go crazy,” Autry said later, after his SU team blew out a second-straight opponent, this time winning 83-43 over Delaware State. “Because that’s very hard to do, get three stops in a row.”

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Syracuse got a lot of stops against the Hornets. Binghamton wasn’t all that effective, either.

In two games, against two overmatched opponents, SU has won by an average score of 84-45.

Autry’s emphasis throughout the summer and into the fall was on defense.

It was an area the Orange vastly needed to improve. SU now publicizes a “Fighter of the Game” award it bestows after each contest. William Kyle, who blocked six shots Saturday, was the most recent recipient. Naithan George, who had five steals in the opener, was the inaugural winner.

This Orange defense, said Delaware State coach Stan Waterman, looks much different than the 2-3 zone SU played (and at times perfected) during the Jim Boeheim Era.

“These guys are pretty athletic and they get after it,” Waterman said. “They contest every shot. They’re there. They’re athletic. They close out hard to the ball. Even in the backcourt, they make you handle it and you’re well into the shot clock by the time you get it over the half-court line.”

Neither of Syracuse’s first two opponents this season will be mistaken for a Power Five program. Binghamton ranks 339th in Ken Pomeroy’s advanced metrics. Delaware State ranks 354th. There are 365 teams in Division I men’s college basketball.

But still, the Orange held two straight opponents under 50 points for the first time since the start of the 2014-15 season.

This is the kind of defense Autry envisioned when he switched defensive philosophies from zone to man.

He wanted to see his players fly around the basketball court, contest shots, switch in switchable situations, rotate aggressively to help teammates who got beat. He wanted to go deep into his bench so that each guy could give every ounce of effort before a teammate was ushered into the game to do the same.

Guarding middle ball screens was one of SU’s big problems last year. Syracuse is covering that basic basketball play better this season.

“The biggest thing is we switch up our coverage depending on the player and the personnel,” sophomore forward Donnie Freeman said, “but whatever it is, we want to be disruptive. So, if I’m stepping, I’m stepping out aggressive. I want to alter the ball-handler, I want to make them uncomfortable. If I’m switching, I’m switching up aggressive, keeping the guard in front and just trying to make it as uncomfortable for the opposing team as I can.”

Freeman said the Orange goes over its coverages before every game. By now, he said, SU players understand how each teammate will react in certain coverages, which helps determine where they need to be if something breaks down.

Freeman and Kyle were involved in most of those ball-screen situations on Saturday. Because both players are nimble and athletic, they recover quickly from a hard hedge and can swiftly locate their assigned man.

Their quickness helps when they switch, too.

Kyle and George said Orange coaches have emphasized talking on defense to help keep everybody on the same page.

“It’s definitely our communication with the guards. Sometimes it can get loud out there, so you gotta be loud loud. Early communication is really, really important,” Kyle said. “And I would say being there early defensively helps. If you’re late, that’s when things really break down.”

Freeman, who played just 14 games last year before a foot fracture benched him for the rest of the season, said he never switched on defense last year.

The Orange did not have nearly the same personnel.

So far this year, Syracuse is guarding teams.

The scoreboard emphasis on three stops in a row, generally called “kills” in basketball parlance, is a way to celebrate and motivate Syracuse players.

Autry said the team has a specific kill goal for each game, a number backed by metrics.

He declined to reveal it, but players said it was eight per game.

That’s 24 stops.

“When we get a kill it just ignites the team because it shows that we’ve just been playing pretty good defense to get three in a row,” George said. “And if we get a certain amount of kills in the game, there’s a high percentage that we’ll win the game. So yeah, we really honor ourselves with the kills.”