Abrupt change in recruiting... | Page 9 | Syracusefan.com

Abrupt change in recruiting...


If you go back and look at the year before it was 9, and 10 the year before that. Brey usually plays a deeper team, 4 guards, 2 or 3 big men, and a couple athletic wings. That's how he builds his team every year.

They always have those sharpshooting guards off the bench, a big Luke Harangody type of center, and another one a couple years younger who is "in training", and then a more athletic big and a couple wings. That's Brey.

We seldom play 4 guards, and it wouldn't hurt if we did. We seldom play that 4th forward anymore, and that's where important player development occurs. And goodness knows I would rather be playing 2 or 3 young centers just to use their fouls in some games and let them learn on the job, rather than have a 200 pound string bean filling in as our backup center.
 
There shouldn’t be.

As someone else(alsacs I think) pointed out...we’re losing more games, and more non conference games, and playing closer games in general so Boeheim doesn’t go as deep in those games.

Those years when we were winning 25+ and would cruise to mostly easy wins in the non conference and even in some BE games, you can go deeper without any worry.


Actually, this is a good point. Boeheim feels more pressure to win games where he used to be able to play more bench, pre-conference season, because we were good enough to win those games automatically. As our talent has eroded, he has felt the need to play his "Chosen Seven" every single game of the season. So I guess you're right.
 
Actually, this is a good point. Boeheim feels more pressure to win games where he used to be able to play more bench, pre-conference season, because we were good enough to win those games automatically. As our talent has eroded, he has felt the need to play his "Chosen Seven" every single game of the season. So I guess you're right.

It’s a bit of chicken and egg.

Our talent level is likely a little lower, but there’s more balance of talent across many more programs now, than there ever was in the past. So more games are more competitive than they used to be

JB is always playing to win the current game.
No matter what.

Not that coaches like Rick the Quick or Izzo aren’t also, but they (Pitino in particular) seem more open to playing more guys, even in big games -
to prep them for a potentially larger role either later that season, or in future seasons.
Even at the cost of maybe losing a game here or there because of it.

We know how Boeheim do.
So nobody is holding their breath waiting for him to change.
 
kenpom has been charting bench minutes since 2007. there is very little difference between syracuse and duke, for example, especially if you drop out the one year each was in the top 100
View attachment 191328

and although jay wright has always used his bench more often than us, his last 4 years his teams have ranked
320
302
302
345

SWC also tracked minutes and relative success. He used different metrics, but the end result was this conclusion (unlike Pom, SWC doesn't just throw out stats, he throws out conclusions!):

When JB plays too many guys, it's because he is looking for answers, not building depth. When we have too big of a rotation, it means we aren't going to be good.
 
It’s a bit of chicken and egg.

Our talent level is likely a little lower, but there’s more balance of talent across many more programs now, than there ever was in the past. So more games are more competitive than they used to be

JB is always playing to win the current game.
No matter what.

Not that coaches like Rick the Quick or Izzo aren’t also, but they (Pitino in particular) seem more open to playing more guys, even in big games -
to prep them for a potentially larger role either later that season, or in future seasons.
Even at the cost of maybe losing a game here or there because of it.

We know how Boeheim do.
So nobody is holding their breath waiting for him to change.
Yeah, this part is killing us now on development. Really haven't seen the career arc that we used to see with multiple guys on the roster every year. Maybe get a few mins as a FR, bigger mins as a SO and then maybe starting for 2 years. Now it seems like guys either play a lot as FR or their career never really gets on track.
 
It seems pretty simple to me what has happened to basketball recruiting as we all knew this was going to happen.

1) Boeheim's age. Recruits will worry about a coach retiring and then having to play for a new coach.

2) Style of play. Zone defense is effective, but does it prepare kids for the NBA? Not really.

3) Switch to the ACC. It had to happen, but Syracuse went from being in the top 2 or 3 programs in the Big East to being in a lower position in the ACC. At the top, you have Duke and UNC followed closely by Louisville and then (at this point in time) UVA, Syracuse, and Florida St. After year 1 in the ACC, Syracuse has never finished higher than 6th in the conference and has not won an ACC regular season title or a conference tournament. And, Syracuse lost their rivals leaving the Big East. Who is the ACC rival? Boston College? I don't think so.

The biggest beneficiaries of Syracuse, Louisville, Pitt, and UConn leaving the Big East were Villanova, Seton Hall, and Providence. Heck, Jay Wright didn't win a Big East conference tournament the first 12 years he coached Villanova. After the heavyweights left the Big East, Jay Wright took advantage.
 
SWC also tracked minutes and relative success. He used different metrics, but the end result was this conclusion (unlike Pom, SWC doesn't just throw out stats, he throws out conclusions!):

When JB plays too many guys, it's because he is looking for answers, not building depth. When we have too big of a rotation, it means we aren't going to be good.

Tell that to the 2000 team, which played 9 guys and was one of our all-time great teams (Etan Thomas Sr. year with that whole crew 26-6, 13-3 won the Big East outright), or our 2012 team, which played 10 guys (34-3 record).

Even the 2010 team (30-5, 13-3 Big East winners) played 7 guys regularly, but Boeheim also used James Southerland, Mookie Jones and DeShonte Riley off the bench in about half our games, each usually getting close to 10 minutes a game.

Sure, the main 7 guys made up the 2010 post-season rotation, but those other 3 guys got lots of chances to show if they could contribute, and we did wind up using each of them at key points in the season.

THAT is what I'm talking about. Sure, you have your core rotation, but USE THE OTHER GUYS, TOO!

By the way, nice to see you, Niastri. Haven't seen you post too much in a long time.
 
Tell that to the 2000 team, which played 9 guys and was one of our all-time great teams (Etan Thomas Sr. year with that whole crew 26-6, 13-3 won the Big East outright), or our 2012 team, which played 10 guys (34-3 record).

Even the 2010 team (30-5, 13-3 Big East winners) played 7 guys regularly, but Boeheim also used James Southerland, Mookie Jones and DeShonte Riley off the bench in about half our games, each usually getting close to 10 minutes a game.

Sure, the main 7 guys made up the 2010 post-season rotation, but those other 3 guys got lots of chances to show if they could contribute, and we did wind up using each of them at key points in the season.

THAT is what I'm talking about. Sure, you have your core rotation, but USE THE OTHER GUYS, TOO!

By the way, nice to see you, Niastri. Haven't seen you post too much in a long time.
What year was it when DeShonte had to suddenly play in the Tournament due to injury(?) or some other reason. Sure would have been nice for him to gain some experience during the season...
 
What year was it when DeShonte had to suddenly play in the Tournament due to injury(?) or some other reason. Sure would have been nice for him to gain some experience during the season...

That was 2010 when AO got hurt. Riley ended up transferring to Eastern Michigan but wasn't a huge contributor there
 
What year was it when DeShonte had to suddenly play in the Tournament due to injury(?) or some other reason. Sure would have been nice for him to gain some experience during the season...

He wasn’t good anyway. Experience wouldn’t have mattered.
 
Tell that to the 2000 team, which played 9 guys and was one of our all-time great teams (Etan Thomas Sr. year with that whole crew 26-6, 13-3 won the Big East outright), or our 2012 team, which played 10 guys (34-3 record).

Even the 2010 team (30-5, 13-3 Big East winners) played 7 guys regularly, but Boeheim also used James Southerland, Mookie Jones and DeShonte Riley off the bench in about half our games, each usually getting close to 10 minutes a game.

Sure, the main 7 guys made up the 2010 post-season rotation, but those other 3 guys got lots of chances to show if they could contribute, and we did wind up using each of them at key points in the season.

THAT is what I'm talking about. Sure, you have your core rotation, but USE THE OTHER GUYS, TOO!

By the way, nice to see you, Niastri. Haven't seen you post too much in a long time.
The 2012 had 10 players who averaged over 10 MPG.
Our 4th guard in 2012 was MCW.
Again our 4th guard MCW he got 10 MPG.

Sophomore Dion Waters are most talented college player since Carmelo only played 24 MPG.
That is so laughable now.

Scoop got 25 MPG.
Dion got 24 MPG
Triche got 22 MPG
MCW got 10 MPG

LoL. I wonder why we went 30-1 in the regular season.
Our best team JB played 10 guys.
4 guards Triche, Scoop then Waiters off the bench, MCW to press.

3 forwards Joseph, Fair, Southerland.
Diverse skilled forwards.

3 centers Melo, Christmas, Moussa-Keita. Perfect depth at center.

Notice our highest rated recruits in this bunch were Sophomore Waiters and Freshman MCW, Freshman Rak.

Our talent now is nowhere near our elite teams.
 
Tell that to the 2000 team, which played 9 guys and was one of our all-time great teams (Etan Thomas Sr. year with that whole crew 26-6, 13-3 won the Big East outright), or our 2012 team, which played 10 guys (34-3 record).

Even the 2010 team (30-5, 13-3 Big East winners) played 7 guys regularly, but Boeheim also used James Southerland, Mookie Jones and DeShonte Riley off the bench in about half our games, each usually getting close to 10 minutes a game.

Sure, the main 7 guys made up the 2010 post-season rotation, but those other 3 guys got lots of chances to show if they could contribute, and we did wind up using each of them at key points in the season.

THAT is what I'm talking about. Sure, you have your core rotation, but USE THE OTHER GUYS, TOO!

By the way, nice to see you, Niastri. Haven't seen you post too much in a long time.

Thanks Matt... I've been more lurking than posting for a few years. More time on my hands for posting the last few months.

As for the exact rotations correlating with records, there are of course exceptions. Also, I think SWC used 10mpg as his threshold for minutes, so a guy who played only 8mpg wouldn't have counted as a "rotation" player, where they probably would in your mind or mine.

But still, I think his conclusion holds. JB likes a short rotation because he thinks it wins more.
 
He wasn’t good anyway. Experience wouldn’t have mattered.

You don't always have to be "good" to be a contributor. Sometimes you only have to be functional.
 
also, that team was dominant & earned #1 seeding with ricky & arinze splitting the center minutes. no coach anywhere would dilute that dominance & lower seed position for unforeseeable injury insurance

hindsight geniuses are a waste of time

Right. The notion that we should’ve broken up our “7 starters” thing by playing a weak player more, to get him experience is pretty out there. Reaching, for sure. There are surely instances we can come up with where a bench player should’ve gotten more run. That’s not one of them.
 
A lot of this thread is crying over spilled milk from 2016-2018. I think recruiting has ticked up since then.

People are complaining about 2022 when we still don’t know who we will sign.

Griffin/Richmond/Anselem/Williams are all great gets. Girard is only going to get better.

It was always going to be hard to sign guys for 2022 once we knew players got an extra year.

I’m choosing to be optimistic about this year and the near future. We have a lot of underclassmen that will improve.

What's really interesting is the nuance between having good classes and the value we get from the players. And dating back to 2014 or so, it's been a mixed bag -- despite landing good "gets."

We got virtually nothing from the likes of highly rated recruits like Chris McCullough, Kaleb Joseph, and Jalen Carey. In the latter two cases, that outcome was exacerbated by us passing / missing out on some comparable recruits that we could have landed if we'd pursued them harder.

Others were highly regarded and had terrific offers, but failed to actualize their potential, for a variety of reasons [Tyler Roberson].

Several others were productive, but left before the program saw full benefit from their immense potential [Ennis, Richardson, Lydon, Brisset -- and please note that I realize that Ennis got us to 25-0, and that Lydon / Malachi were key cogs on a final four team].

We also had some costly near-misses on the recruiting trail, that would have altered the course of the past couple of seasons [Quade Green, Thomas Bryant, possibly Kevin Huerter].

And of course, those misses were exacerbated because of the depth constraints brought on by probation.

Some posters like to pretend that it was one thing to fit their narrative du jour -- i.e., recruiting has been poor -- but if you look at some of the classes we've landed, they were in the top 20 -- its just that some of the players either underachieved or left before the program realized the full benefit of them playing here.

As you point out, we've finally laid down the template of filling the roster back up with quality program-type guys. Now, we need either a couple of players to exceed their ranking or to add a higher rated player or two to the mix, and things should pick back up. That's been our formula for a while.
 
It seems pretty simple to me what has happened to basketball recruiting as we all knew this was going to happen.

1) Boeheim's age. Recruits will worry about a coach retiring and then having to play for a new coach.

2) Style of play. Zone defense is effective, but does it prepare kids for the NBA? Not really.

3) Switch to the ACC. It had to happen, but Syracuse went from being in the top 2 or 3 programs in the Big East to being in a lower position in the ACC. At the top, you have Duke and UNC followed closely by Louisville and then (at this point in time) UVA, Syracuse, and Florida St. After year 1 in the ACC, Syracuse has never finished higher than 6th in the conference and has not won an ACC regular season title or a conference tournament. And, Syracuse lost their rivals leaving the Big East. Who is the ACC rival? Boston College? I don't think so.

The biggest beneficiaries of Syracuse, Louisville, Pitt, and UConn leaving the Big East were Villanova, Seton Hall, and Providence. Heck, Jay Wright didn't win a Big East conference tournament the first 12 years he coached Villanova. After the heavyweights left the Big East, Jay Wright took advantage.
#3 and your last paragraph are spot on.
 
Consistent in that 75% of the recruits were ranked 120+ and 2 of the 3 that managed to be ranked in the top 100 have already transferred out.

We've never experienced recruiting this badly before. Atleast to my knowledge. It's the same on the football side, EVERY recruit is under-rated or under the radar but our win/loss record says otherwise.


This is the kind of talent we used to have in the mid-to-late 70s, early 80s.
 
I addressed that previously. I like our guys. I think we will be just fine. And, we add Benny to the mix next year. And, I have faith that we will put a good class together for 2022. It won’t be the ridiculous class that we all dreamed of, but it will be a class that continues the ascent back to our standard.


If Boeheim doesn't develop more consistency in how he uses these kids, they won't be around to become solid upper classmen.
 
On defense maybe but Jb is known for giving his players a lot of freedom on offense.


But he doesn't teach very much of an offense. It's one thing to say "go do your thing" and they take turns hoisting bad shots, and it's another to run motion, screens and pass the ball to get kids open shots. We do that sometimes. Once in a while.

I don't get how we can go 14 games and never once post up Quincy, and then boom, he's unstoppable down low.

We have games where Joe, Griffin or Buddy can absolutely shoot us out of a game. And then there are times when we are really awesome on offense. But consistency comes from something more than "just hitting shots".
 
I know for a fact that 100% that may have been the buzz but it wasn’t true.

Hop first off wasn’t going to leave and take a staff member with him.
That was done IMO to give GMac some leverage to negotiate a better contract with SUAD after Hop left.


It was Tony Bland who he went after.
 
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So here’s the quandary with the fan base with SU from what I have learned from this board ... everyone Wants the most elite players but complain up a storm when they don’t land them and say they should have been recruiting other players and not the top recruits because it ends up being a waste of time.
thennnn if they get the #92 ranked player, the staff shoulda been recruiting better players and didn’t work hard enough to land the big fish And the #92 ranked recruit is worthy enough to be at Syracuse

PLEASE MAKE UP YOUR MIND


Within this last decade, and for a decade before that, our typical recruiting class was one guy with star potential, a guy who could get buckets. That guy got the green light. Carmelo, of course. Eric Devendorf, Jonny Flynn, Dion Waiters, etc.

Billy Edelin, Tyler Ennis, Bazely and Chris McCullouch were supposed to be those kinds of players. So were a handful of recruits who we thought we had in the bag, until at the last moment, we didn't. That's where the decline began. We no longer got that elite guy in our last half dozen classes, or maybe a couple more than that.

Then we usually got a couple guys between 40 and 75. Guys like Gerry McNamara, Terrence Roberts, Demetris Nichols, Mookie Watkins, CJ Fair, Jerami Grant, Tyler Lydon, Michael Carter-Williams, Kris Joseph, James Southerland, Scoop Jardine, Rick Jackson, Malachi Richardson.

Those kinds of guys. We used to get a couple every year. You could see they could play, they might get 10 minutes as a frosh, but they contributed as sophomores, and were leaders by junior year, if they stayed that long.

And then we would take a flyer on a guy outside the top 100 who fit what we were looking for, more situational players, some of whom might blossom into stars with time. Once in a while they turned into Andy Rautins, Arinze Onuaku, Brandon Triche, Baye Keita, Marek Dolezaj or Oshae Brissett.

Taking out the top 2 groups, leaves us with maybe one ready-made guy per year, without going to Canada to get him. And then relying on at least 2 or 3 borderline guys from the past becoming solid contributors.

We've seen this approach to recruiting work really well from the time of the first probation until maybe the last 5 years (i.e. since Mike's last year, when he clearly had checked out), and we crapped out recruiting an important class to our future post-probation 2. Mike left and we sucked for a couple years. Now, we seem to be regaining our footing, but greatly diminished.

The way he handles (i.e. refuses to play) kids has become a big problem. You can't have so damn many kids transfer or leave just as they're starting to get good and expect to keep a program at a high level.
 
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