What's up everybody this is my 1st post here. I live in St. Louis, MO and am a huge Cuse fan. I'm sure most people here live in the Syracuse region and I wanted to know if you guys are hearing anything from the team about Chukwu's role? I know with Boeheim, if you don't start that doesn't mean you don't get starter minutes. After looking at last seasons rebounding woes I feel like he is going to be night and day better than Coleman but wanted to see if you guys heard anything about what the minutes distribution might look like. Go Cuse.
I'd like to chime in on this because Chukwu and Battle are my two favorite topics. Why? I think those two players are the difference makers on this team. If they under perform we're a top 10-15 team, if the over perform we're national champion caliber.
First I'd recommend reading the practice reports from RF2044 and gmacfor3. They are two of the best practice reports you'll ever see and we are lucky to have that kind of first hand info on this board. Plus, they both jive with things I've been hearing and things I know from seeing most of these guys first hand before practices started.
Second, I noticed that you mentioned being excited about Chukwu solving our rebounding problems. I can tell you that Syracuse won't have the rebounding issues they had last year, in fact its going to be a strength of ours, but not really because of Chukwu. Rebounding will not be his major responsibility. His major responsibility is to protect the rim, and protecting the rim is really the only thing we need him to excel at. This means defensively he is (by design) going to take himself out of rebounding position by going for the block and leaving the rebounds to the wings (Roberson, Lydon, and White) . Lydon and Roberson will excel at this, and White will be good enough. Offensively I have a feeling they will bring Chukwu out to set picks (and more importantly open the lane) a lot, thus limiting his offensive rebounding.
A lot of people have said this team will be our best since '12 (the team that only had 1 regular season loss, and zero losses all year with Fab Melo on the court), even Boeheim said that. I think this team can look a lot like that team but with better shooting and better rebounding (scary thought for SU's competition). For that to happen we are going to need Chukwu to fill the Fab Melo role. Fab didn't score a lot, and was a below average rebounder, so I'm not worried about those parts of Chukwu's game. What Fab was great at was blocking shots and playing great positional defense (its hard to be good at both). I'm not overly worried about Chukwu's ability to protect the rim, I think we can count on that. But if we want him on the court to protect the rim and not relegated to the bench (either because of foul trouble or defensive lapses) then he needs to be good positionally as well. We are going to have a lot of inside muscle thrown at us this year . . . just off the top of my head I can think of Meeks and Hicks on UNC, Giles and Jefferson on Duke, and Young and Artis on Pitt. If he can't bang down low and limit them from getting great inside position then his shot blocking skills won't matter much. If he can deal with those teams, then he can deal with any team in the country and teams are going to have to beat us from outside - and we know that SU's zone is one of the most difficult defenses in the country to shoot against.
Added bonus, if Chukwu can stay on the court, I think you can count on him for 3 or so blocks a game. That's 3 times when Battle will be able to reprise the Dion Waiters role and become an unstoppable one man fast break . . . the second key to us winning it all.
I've been in Chicago for the last 12 years . I grew up a huge Syracuse football/basketball fan and my younger brother went to SU, somewhat justifying my obsession with SU sports. I think the defensive learning curve with any Big Man in our system is so high, even with a year of practice under his belt. I think DC is vastly improved and will really shock people underneath this year. JB likes experience and as we know has very little patience for defensive mistakes. I think we'll know what we have with Chukwu after the first few games.
