Older and wiser, the latest Scoop

SYRACUSE, N.Y. - As Scoop Jardine shuffled toward a chair in Syracuse's Carmelo K. Anthony Center last week, a student manager inadvertently wheeled into his path one of those adjustable-armed mannequins that successful Big East programs can afford to employ as workout defenders.

The Philadelphia-born point guard, who will finally get a chance to play in his hometown Monday night when his 17th-ranked Orange meet No. 15 Villanova, made a quick cut and avoided a charge.

Trouble hasn't always been so easy for Jardine to sidestep.

It followed him from South Philly's hard streets to this hillside campus in Central New York, nearly derailing a basketball future as shiny as the polished court in the Orange's new $19 million practice facility.

Fortunately for Jardine, 22, he seems to have collided with maturity at last.

"I left Philly a boy," he said before a recent Syracuse practice, "and now that I'm coming back, I can honestly say I'm a man."

A senior who because of a redshirt season is a junior eligibility-wise, Jardine has reinvented himself. He lost weight and learned to eat well, sleep right, manage his time, and for the most part, avoid adversity.

"Scoop's always wanted to be a good kid," said Carl Arrigale, his coach at Neumann-Goretti High. "It just took him a little longer to get there."

Jardine is averaging 12.2 points as 22-6 Syracuse rumbles toward another NCAA berth. His nearly six assists a game rank him among the national leaders. He is, coaches said, making better decisions - on and off the court.

"He came into college, like most frosh, and didn't really get what it's all about," said Mike Hopkins, the Syracuse assistant who has become the player's mentor. "Scoop learned from his mistakes and tried in all aspects of his life to get better."

That was difficult to envision when, after leading Neumann-Goretti to the Catholic League title in 2006 and playing on Jay Wright's U.S. under-18 team, Jardine arrived at Syracuse as a much-hyped and unworldly recruit. On his own for the first time, he had more than Jim Boeheim's offense to learn.

Basketball, Arrigale said, saved him. It gave him a place to go every day, a hardwood safe haven from the drugs and violence Jardine had witnessed as a kid on South Fifth Street.

"City life," Jardine called it. "The drugs, the violence, the list goes on as to what I'd seen growing up. My mind-set was just 'Get out of Philly.' So I went."

He was 18 when he fled, "the age limit," he called it, the point at which so many of his neighborhood pals were either dead, addicted, or incarcerated.

"I passed that four years ago," he said proudly. "Now I'm winning."

But he was double digits behind during a troubled freshman year, when two run-ins with authority briefly had him thinking about transferring back home, to La Salle.

That year he and two teammates - fellow Neumann-Goretti product Rick Jackson and Jonny Flynn - were implicated in a campus sexual assault. A district attorney's investigation eventually cleared all three.

Later that same season, a 40-year-old cousin staying with him bought $100 worth of a food with an ID stolen from a Syracuse student. Though he hadn't used the card nor eaten any of the cheesesteaks, burgers, and Gatorade it purchased, Jardine did know about the scam, carried some of the food into his apartment, and tried to cover up the crime when it was discovered.

"I wouldn't have thought I needed to grow up when I got here," Jardine said. "I thought I had all the answers to the questions. Looking back now, I was really immature. There were a lot of things I didn't know. You come to college and you learn them quickly."

He was on the periphery of trouble, not the instigator but someone who willingly went along because, as his high school coach noted, he desperately wanted to make everyone happy.

"He's a good kid, a smart kid," said Arrigale. "He would never maliciously hurt anyone. He just wants to try to keep everybody happy. He needs to be nudged in the right direction, and I really think that's what Coach Hopkins has done up there."

A broken leg, ironically, might have provided Jardine with his Road to Damascus moment. Sitting on the sideline in 2008-09, he had time to reflect. He was better, he believed, than how he had played, how he had behaved, as a freshman.

So he rededicated himself, shedding 15 pounds from his 6-foot-2 frame, altering his junk food-heavy diet, getting to bed early, hitting the weight room, even opening the books.

Now Jardine has a 2.9 GPA and is on track to graduate with a degree in child and family studies. If he doesn't make it to the NBA - or when his career is over if he does - he hopes to be a coach in the inner city.

"Basketball has been opening doors for me all my life," he said. "This will be my way to give back and try to help kids."

Believing he's mature enough to face Philly's temptations now, he might even do that coaching in his hometown.

Surprisingly, Monday night's game will mark the first time Jardine will have played as a collegian in Philadelphia - except for a three-minute span as a freshman.

Playing time against Villanova was limited on that freshman trip because he was coming off a suspension for his role in the stolen-ID incident. He was hurt and inactive the following season. And last year Syracuse didn't play at Villanova.

"I know he's really excited about coming home," said Arrigale. "I hope to be able to talk to him about it because he has a tendency to get over-amped sometimes. When that happens, he doesn't do the things he's capable of."

In fact, Boeheim criticized Jardine and fellow point guard Brandon Triche after Syracuse's January home-dome loss to the Wildcats. In his career against Villanova, Jardine is just 14 for 42 from the field.

Embarrassed by that defeat and his performance in it, he will be gunning for redemption at the Wells Fargo Center.

"I'm really looking forward to it," he said. "This is going to be fun. It'll also be a chance to redeem myself, playing a Villanova team that came up here and beat us."

He and his homey Jackson remain tight, though after living together for a few years, they now have separate apartments. And even when he's completely innocent, trouble occasionally still finds him.

Earlier this month, a reporter for a Rochester TV station tweeted that Jardine, fellow Philadelphian Dion Waiters, and a third Orangeman were being investigated for point-shaving. It was a completely unfounded charge, but one that quickly exploded in cyberspace.

It made for some anxious moments for Jardine, until the reporter apologized and admitted he had no source for his tweet.

"I was stressing," said Jardine. "I knew the truth, but there was nothing I could do. It was something that could have taken away everything I'd worked for. "

When he was finished talking, Jardine began a rigorous workout, one that included scores of shots over a mannequin's outstretched artificial arms.

"Coach Boeheim will tell you, I'm one of the few people he's ever coached that's done a complete turnaround. He's never seen anybody make such a big change like that."

Jardine, Hopkins said, did so because he developed a road map for the life he wants.

"He changed so much. He became a person who went out of his way to help people," Hopkins said. "And he learned that he had to work hard and have a plan with his life. Not basketball, but his life. . . . I have so much respect for the person he's become."