First, we need to take a breath and realize there's a long way to go. It may be a painful slog, it may improve, but either way it's probably not worth flipping out over. Having said that, I can't imagine many here believing this team has either A) played well this season (even in some of the easy wins there's been ... issues) or B) shown much indication that better things are to come.
But, regardless, I'll recount the issues I see on this team and theoretically we may even be able to discuss them without throwing our computers against the wall and vowing never to watch basketball again.
We don't get good looks
We'll talk about JB in a bit but regardless of how you view the coaching staff's role in this, the bottom line is that this team -- as Bilas (who's great even though I'm biased b/c he usually says nice things about the cuse) pointed out -- wasn't scoring for 6 minutes b/c they failed to generate good looks ... ever, basically. Early I was bemoaning the fact that we were just jacking up 3s. Then, we decided to attack the basket and finished 8 of 28 from inside the arc and missed 8 FTs to boot. Maybe we should stick to 3s. What's more -- that's the second time this season we've managed to make a total of 8 2-point FGs in a game this season (we actually shot worse vs. USC going 8 of 29) AND miss at least 8 FTs (we missed 10 FTs vs. USC). The problem is where do we go for shots? I don't know (more on that in a minute -- see Lydon, Tyler). This is a scary, scary prospect not just in the sense that we may lose lots of games because of it, but it may be yet another year of atrociously ugly offensive basketball. That makes me depressed.
AWIII is, in the words of George Costanza, a chucker
I'm going to be careful not to hammer White b/c, well, for one the guy can shoot and, perhaps more importantly, if he didn't shoot half the time we might just take shot clock violations. But, against the three real teams Syracuse has played this year, AWIII is 12-for-39 or 30.7%. Somewhere Michael Carter-Williams and Brandon Triche are cringing ... which is saying something. Now, to be fair, White has been valuable. He is about the only good thing that happened vs. North Florida and he is the sole reason Monmouth turned into a laugher. But with 1 assist and 30% shooting in three games vs. legit opposition, it's hard not to wonder if he is really the guy we should be running our offense through.
Our guards could be better on both ends of the floor (that's being nice)
I think Howard will be a great player here and I'm starting to get the feeling that the minutes doled out to Gillon earlier in the season may not have been the best strategy but regardless Gillon had a solid stint vs. Wisconsin but has been brutal in three of the last four. Howard was 0-for-9 and has really, really struggled to finish around the basket. And Battle, while he's shot well, has shown almost no ability to create his own shot -- something this offense desperately needs. Defensively, forget it. The guards get lost on defense so much that Chukwu is shaking his head on the bench. When teams nonchalantly pass it to the high post and then quickly pick a wide open shooter on the wing to feed ... that's a bad look. We can talk about a bunch of things vs. UConn but they missed a ton of open jumpers from the wing that made this game look closer than it might have been otherwise.
Here's a thought -- get Lydon the ball and have him shoot it.
I get it -- he's missed shots and hasn't played well. He doesn't look real comfortable in the post. Forget about the NBA for a minute: the bottom line is that Lydon is the most talented player on this team period (Battle is an athlete but spends most of his time going east/west; howard is inconsistent; white is one-dimensional, etc). Get him the ball and force him to run this offense. Get it to him in the paint. Run plays for him to take shots. Make him part of a hi/low set with whomever else you want. Bottom line is that they need him playing more aggresively in the paint -- Dude has 22 FTs attempted which is behind Coleman (half the minutes) Howard and White. He should be doubling up those dudes. They have to get him going and why that hasn't been a priority is confusing to me.
DC's a great story but ...
I love the DC story and if I had had to bet prior to the season I think I would have bet that DC never reached double-figures or 30 mins in a game this season. Instead he's more or less done both in each of the past three games. That said, he still really struggles on defense and it's hard not to think that this team is at it's best when he's more of a support player. So maybe he's still playing a big role, but 15-20 minutes instead of 30.
Can we please play Tyler Roberson?
I get it -- Roberson on the court isn't going to help the offense. The issue I have is that this is a kid that played a huge -- I mean HUGE -- role in the final four run last season. He is an athlete who hustles. He's a senior. Please get him the ball.
Thank God Lydon is the leader this team needs
Oops, not sure that's true but somebody needs to step up and breath some life into this group.
Which brings us to ... this staff has, ahem, some questions to answer
I'll get this out of the way early -- I'm a JB apologist. I love his ornery, f-you attitude and the fact that he doesn't give a s--t what people think. But, it's hard not to look at JB and wonder about what's going on this year. It drives people crazy but JB is a probabilities guy -- he sticks to the defense he thinks statistically will work the highest percentage of time (zone) by forcing opponents into the lowest percentage shots (outside shots), he sticks with guys he trusts (veterans) and has no qualms about riding his best players like rented mules. You can hate all that, but this year, he hasn't done that. He's tinkering around with the offense so much that Roberson is nowhere to be found despite being a huge reason we made the final four (that never happens). Battle didn't play at all, now he's playing a ton. Howard and Gillon were splitting time, then it looked like Gillon had a decent edge, now Gillon plays pretty sparingly. We pressed a lot, now we never press.
Point is, we're all over the place. As many have pointed out, the thrilling run last March has covered up some ugly warts in this program and as bad as the defense has been at times during that stretch, JB's freewheeling make-it-up-as-you-go offense has been a major cuprit and the recruiting (to a lesser degree, I think) hasn't been impressive either.
So where to from here?
I don't know how you fix it or what happened to this team. I still look at the individual parts and think they are dramatically better than the past two teams -- last year you had Richardson on a rollercoaster all season, G playing out of position at PG (having a great year, obviously, but not a real PG) Cooney who was solid on D but never quite figured out how to play with any sort of efficiency offensively, a limited roberson, a young Howard, and a huge surprise in Lydon, who was great but forced to play C. Two years ago, many of the same issues but inexplicably Rak went from a guy who was dreadfully bad on the offensive end to a complete stud, which saved us from a sub-.500 season.
At least this year you have a shooter in White, a couple potentially difference-making bigs in Roberson and Lydon, a couple more decent big bodies in DC and Thompson and a couple guys who should be adequate at PG in Howard and Gillon. Add in a wild card in Battle and there's stuff there to work with.
So if we assume this team has some chance at still kicking in March (not a guarantee by any stretch), what I'd guess needs to happen (and no, I don't pretend to be a coach) is this:
They need to force the ball through Lydon on most possessions -- and work the hi/low
He's looked awful thus far but they have to go to him in the post and/or find other ways for him to score. White is fine, you cannot run an offense through him. High volume shooters who do nothing else are an issue. He's not steph curry, he's mostly a standstill shooter. And whether it's roberson/thompson/DC -- they need to take advantage of the fact that they have multiple post players who can at least catch and finish and, in the case of TT/DC/Lydon actually bring a fair amount of skill to the table.
Play Robey
I get it, he's limited offensively. But they've got to get him playing and fired up. They have to, he's just too much of a factor for a team that doesn't appear to have game-changers otherwise. He obvoiusly needs to do his part too, but his riding pine makes not sense to me.
They need to figure out how handle the FT line area on defense
Teams are passing to the FT line, that guy is standing there calmly and flicking it to wide open shooters on each wing or turning and finding a wide open teammate on the baseline. I don't mean a few times, I mean basically every time the ball goes to the high post. This is ... a problem. The guards look lost defensively, DC really struggles to cover ground in the middle and TT on a wing is awful. I don't know if this will be a good defensive team at any point, but there is no excuse for executing that poorly. I'd argue that the only reason we lost to UConn by two instead of 10 is that they actually missed a bunch of open looks and made some atrocious decisions in the final minute.
Oh, and force a turnover or two
They are too long and too talented to play a crappy team like UConn and not be more disruptive than they were. I was actually surprised to see they had six steals, though one of those was just horrific offense by UConn and they threw a ball directly too AWIII. Anyway, need to get scrappier and more opportunistic.
We need a set play or two
This -- along with feeding the post -- has been one area where I'm fine with folks being critical of JB. It's one thing to have a mostly freestyle offense. But you cannot go 6 minutes (and it's been longer in other games) without getting a good look. 6 minutes without a bucket is bad but it happens. 6 minutes without a good look -- which bilas pointed out -- is absolutely inexcusable. I don't know what the play is, but someone on that bench should have one that basically works to at least get them a decent shot when they get into a rut.
If they do those three things are they a good team? I have no clue. Maybe those aren't even the real keys. But they feel like the only hope of salvaging this trainwreck of a season.
But, regardless, I'll recount the issues I see on this team and theoretically we may even be able to discuss them without throwing our computers against the wall and vowing never to watch basketball again.
We don't get good looks
We'll talk about JB in a bit but regardless of how you view the coaching staff's role in this, the bottom line is that this team -- as Bilas (who's great even though I'm biased b/c he usually says nice things about the cuse) pointed out -- wasn't scoring for 6 minutes b/c they failed to generate good looks ... ever, basically. Early I was bemoaning the fact that we were just jacking up 3s. Then, we decided to attack the basket and finished 8 of 28 from inside the arc and missed 8 FTs to boot. Maybe we should stick to 3s. What's more -- that's the second time this season we've managed to make a total of 8 2-point FGs in a game this season (we actually shot worse vs. USC going 8 of 29) AND miss at least 8 FTs (we missed 10 FTs vs. USC). The problem is where do we go for shots? I don't know (more on that in a minute -- see Lydon, Tyler). This is a scary, scary prospect not just in the sense that we may lose lots of games because of it, but it may be yet another year of atrociously ugly offensive basketball. That makes me depressed.
AWIII is, in the words of George Costanza, a chucker
I'm going to be careful not to hammer White b/c, well, for one the guy can shoot and, perhaps more importantly, if he didn't shoot half the time we might just take shot clock violations. But, against the three real teams Syracuse has played this year, AWIII is 12-for-39 or 30.7%. Somewhere Michael Carter-Williams and Brandon Triche are cringing ... which is saying something. Now, to be fair, White has been valuable. He is about the only good thing that happened vs. North Florida and he is the sole reason Monmouth turned into a laugher. But with 1 assist and 30% shooting in three games vs. legit opposition, it's hard not to wonder if he is really the guy we should be running our offense through.
Our guards could be better on both ends of the floor (that's being nice)
I think Howard will be a great player here and I'm starting to get the feeling that the minutes doled out to Gillon earlier in the season may not have been the best strategy but regardless Gillon had a solid stint vs. Wisconsin but has been brutal in three of the last four. Howard was 0-for-9 and has really, really struggled to finish around the basket. And Battle, while he's shot well, has shown almost no ability to create his own shot -- something this offense desperately needs. Defensively, forget it. The guards get lost on defense so much that Chukwu is shaking his head on the bench. When teams nonchalantly pass it to the high post and then quickly pick a wide open shooter on the wing to feed ... that's a bad look. We can talk about a bunch of things vs. UConn but they missed a ton of open jumpers from the wing that made this game look closer than it might have been otherwise.
Here's a thought -- get Lydon the ball and have him shoot it.
I get it -- he's missed shots and hasn't played well. He doesn't look real comfortable in the post. Forget about the NBA for a minute: the bottom line is that Lydon is the most talented player on this team period (Battle is an athlete but spends most of his time going east/west; howard is inconsistent; white is one-dimensional, etc). Get him the ball and force him to run this offense. Get it to him in the paint. Run plays for him to take shots. Make him part of a hi/low set with whomever else you want. Bottom line is that they need him playing more aggresively in the paint -- Dude has 22 FTs attempted which is behind Coleman (half the minutes) Howard and White. He should be doubling up those dudes. They have to get him going and why that hasn't been a priority is confusing to me.
DC's a great story but ...
I love the DC story and if I had had to bet prior to the season I think I would have bet that DC never reached double-figures or 30 mins in a game this season. Instead he's more or less done both in each of the past three games. That said, he still really struggles on defense and it's hard not to think that this team is at it's best when he's more of a support player. So maybe he's still playing a big role, but 15-20 minutes instead of 30.
Can we please play Tyler Roberson?
I get it -- Roberson on the court isn't going to help the offense. The issue I have is that this is a kid that played a huge -- I mean HUGE -- role in the final four run last season. He is an athlete who hustles. He's a senior. Please get him the ball.
Thank God Lydon is the leader this team needs
Oops, not sure that's true but somebody needs to step up and breath some life into this group.
Which brings us to ... this staff has, ahem, some questions to answer
I'll get this out of the way early -- I'm a JB apologist. I love his ornery, f-you attitude and the fact that he doesn't give a s--t what people think. But, it's hard not to look at JB and wonder about what's going on this year. It drives people crazy but JB is a probabilities guy -- he sticks to the defense he thinks statistically will work the highest percentage of time (zone) by forcing opponents into the lowest percentage shots (outside shots), he sticks with guys he trusts (veterans) and has no qualms about riding his best players like rented mules. You can hate all that, but this year, he hasn't done that. He's tinkering around with the offense so much that Roberson is nowhere to be found despite being a huge reason we made the final four (that never happens). Battle didn't play at all, now he's playing a ton. Howard and Gillon were splitting time, then it looked like Gillon had a decent edge, now Gillon plays pretty sparingly. We pressed a lot, now we never press.
Point is, we're all over the place. As many have pointed out, the thrilling run last March has covered up some ugly warts in this program and as bad as the defense has been at times during that stretch, JB's freewheeling make-it-up-as-you-go offense has been a major cuprit and the recruiting (to a lesser degree, I think) hasn't been impressive either.
So where to from here?
I don't know how you fix it or what happened to this team. I still look at the individual parts and think they are dramatically better than the past two teams -- last year you had Richardson on a rollercoaster all season, G playing out of position at PG (having a great year, obviously, but not a real PG) Cooney who was solid on D but never quite figured out how to play with any sort of efficiency offensively, a limited roberson, a young Howard, and a huge surprise in Lydon, who was great but forced to play C. Two years ago, many of the same issues but inexplicably Rak went from a guy who was dreadfully bad on the offensive end to a complete stud, which saved us from a sub-.500 season.
At least this year you have a shooter in White, a couple potentially difference-making bigs in Roberson and Lydon, a couple more decent big bodies in DC and Thompson and a couple guys who should be adequate at PG in Howard and Gillon. Add in a wild card in Battle and there's stuff there to work with.
So if we assume this team has some chance at still kicking in March (not a guarantee by any stretch), what I'd guess needs to happen (and no, I don't pretend to be a coach) is this:
They need to force the ball through Lydon on most possessions -- and work the hi/low
He's looked awful thus far but they have to go to him in the post and/or find other ways for him to score. White is fine, you cannot run an offense through him. High volume shooters who do nothing else are an issue. He's not steph curry, he's mostly a standstill shooter. And whether it's roberson/thompson/DC -- they need to take advantage of the fact that they have multiple post players who can at least catch and finish and, in the case of TT/DC/Lydon actually bring a fair amount of skill to the table.
Play Robey
I get it, he's limited offensively. But they've got to get him playing and fired up. They have to, he's just too much of a factor for a team that doesn't appear to have game-changers otherwise. He obvoiusly needs to do his part too, but his riding pine makes not sense to me.
They need to figure out how handle the FT line area on defense
Teams are passing to the FT line, that guy is standing there calmly and flicking it to wide open shooters on each wing or turning and finding a wide open teammate on the baseline. I don't mean a few times, I mean basically every time the ball goes to the high post. This is ... a problem. The guards look lost defensively, DC really struggles to cover ground in the middle and TT on a wing is awful. I don't know if this will be a good defensive team at any point, but there is no excuse for executing that poorly. I'd argue that the only reason we lost to UConn by two instead of 10 is that they actually missed a bunch of open looks and made some atrocious decisions in the final minute.
Oh, and force a turnover or two
They are too long and too talented to play a crappy team like UConn and not be more disruptive than they were. I was actually surprised to see they had six steals, though one of those was just horrific offense by UConn and they threw a ball directly too AWIII. Anyway, need to get scrappier and more opportunistic.
We need a set play or two
This -- along with feeding the post -- has been one area where I'm fine with folks being critical of JB. It's one thing to have a mostly freestyle offense. But you cannot go 6 minutes (and it's been longer in other games) without getting a good look. 6 minutes without a bucket is bad but it happens. 6 minutes without a good look -- which bilas pointed out -- is absolutely inexcusable. I don't know what the play is, but someone on that bench should have one that basically works to at least get them a decent shot when they get into a rut.
If they do those three things are they a good team? I have no clue. Maybe those aren't even the real keys. But they feel like the only hope of salvaging this trainwreck of a season.
