SYRACUSE - The Carrier Dome has a new chant: Donte Greene! Donte Greene!

The freshman forward had 25 points and nine rebounds, stealing some of classmate Jonny Flynn's thunder, and Syracuse beat Fordham 80-63 on Friday night.

“I was just doing what I think I can do,” said Greene, whose four-point play jump-started the sluggish Orange offense early in the game. “My team was down, and no one was really hitting.”

The Rams, who started four seniors, led the first seven minutes as their methodical attack struck against the Syracuse zone for three wide-open 3-pointers, two by Brenton Butler and one by Marcus Stout. A basket off the glass by Bryant Dunston gave Fordham an 11-5 lead at 16:52.

Then it was good-bye zone, and good-bye Rams.

Syracuse switched to man-to-man, the Rams lost their patience, and the game quickly slipped away.

“The first two games we played all zone,” Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said. “We worked hard all night. Fordham is a team you should play zone against. They made their first three (3-pointers). We played man the rest of the game. We made some mistakes, but we did a pretty good job.”

It was the first meeting between the teams in 25 years, and the Rams (2-2) were no match for the Orange (3-0), who built a double-digit lead in the closing minutes of the first half and steadily pulled away in the second.

After Greene's four-point play, he hit a layup off a pass from Paul Harris. Eric Devendorf sank a 3-pointer from left wing and then fed Arinze Onuaku for a layup to tie it at 16-all with 12:48 left.

Then the Orange took off on a 15-5 run to take the lead for good.

Freshman Rick Jackson converted a pair of layups to start the spurt and Flynn finished it with a steal from the 6-foot-8 Dunston and a fast-break, one-handed dunk to put the Orange up 30-21 with 7:09 left.

“We were very, very prepared,” Fordham head coach Dereck Whittenburg said. “I changed the starting lineup. I knew how to work the zone. We were ready for the zone. They did play some solid man-to-man for a while. That's what we wanted to get. That's what we thought was to our advantage.”

It wasn't.

Syracuse scored 21 points off Fordham's 15 turnovers. Devendorf finished with 17 points, Onuaku had 12, Jackson nine, and Flynn had six points, eight assists and no turnovers.

Dunston led the Rams with 20 points and nine rebounds, Butler had 16 points, and Marcus Stout 12 points and seven assists.

Devendorf followed his own miss to boost the Syracuse lead to 36-26 with 2:23 left in the first half. Greene had the crowd chanting his name instead of Flynn's when he converted a stunning one-handed dunk off an underhanded lob from Flynn with 63 seconds left. The pass was behind Greene, and he somehow managed to reach back with his right hand and slam it cleanly through the rim.

“It was a bad pass,” said Flynn, who scored 28 points against Siena in his first collegiate start on Monday to set a school record and hit the game-winning shot in a tough win over Saint Joseph's on Tuesday as the crowd chanted his name both nights. “I threw it way too late for Donte. He was kind of at a standstill, but his athleticism is going to save you from a lot of those passes.”

Flynn fed Jackson for a layup, and he completed a three-point play with 3 seconds left to give the Orange a 43-29 halftime lead.

Syracuse shot 55.2 percent, had 13 assists on its 16 baskets, and committed only four turnovers in the opening period.

The Rams moved within 11 points twice in the second half. The first came on Stout's 3-pointer from the right side at 16:20, which pulled Fordham within 47-36, and the second was on Butler's 3 from the top of the key at 11:35, which made it 57-46.

“We just kind of started rushing our offense,” said Stout, who was 4-of-10 on 3-pointers. “We didn't stick to our game plan by staying patient. We did a good job at the beginning of the game, we just kind of got out of that a little bit. We do that sometimes. We just have to stay focused throughout the whole 40 minutes.”

Guard Josh Wright, Syracuse's lone senior scholarship player, was not on the bench, and Boeheim would only say that Wright was at home.

“He doesn't feel well. I haven't seen him,” Boeheim said. “That's all I know.”

Wright, who had not practiced the previous two days, did not play in Syracuse's two exhibition games because of an ankle injury. He logged just four minutes in the season opener and did not play on Tuesday as Flynn was given the bulk of the playing time.

Flynn averaged 36 minutes the first two games and played 31 minutes against Fordham. He has 39 points, 23 assists and only six turnovers in the three games.