Alright, so even if we acknowledge it's not 'the standard' to have a former big teaching new bigs — when you look at our program, 1) are you happy with who we're getting at C; 2) are you happy with the Cs' progress; 3) is having GMac schooling your C on the nuances of playing Center the ideal way to address 'the problem' if you think there is a problem; and 4) is #3 the best way to address the issue of not being as attractive to top-level C recruits, when perception is important to a player who hasn't yet experienced the masterful zen-like teachings of GMac as passed down from Hopkins.
I'm looking for an edge, an improvement, an advantage we can use to sell ourselves better. Optics count sometimes. Recruiting is marketing.
We now have a 7'2" guy who hasn't dunked this season, and passes to the corner when he's got the ball under the hoop. And another guy who may be still recovering from injury, but struggles to convert in the paint, even though he seemed to have those kinds of skills in HS. These things aren't new for us, and I don't see those kinds of troubles in other programs.
I don’t blame GMac for the bigs development but our staff has done a terrible job developing offense in our bigs and even stressing to the guards to get the ball down low just to atleast stretch the defense out.
I’ll take a dunk. Everyone's tired of commentators (rightfully so) and cusefaninvt getting a little jab in how Chukwu is 7’2 and doesn’t have a dunk yet.
FIFY
Nicely done.
He did itI own it.
He did it
Alright, apologies. Which former point guard is coaching them now, after Hopkins?Gmac isn’t coaching the centers!!!!
Let’s blame Gmac for everything!!!!!
So Mike Gminski is not back there coaching the big men?
Seems like they are always producing great centers.
Like who? They haven't had a very good center since the 90s
Alright, apologies. Which former point guard is coaching them now, after Hopkins?
The point wasn’t to blame whoever it is. The point was to suggest it’s possibly better to learn from someone who has done it, not someone who has just studied it. In any other area of life, that concept would prolly be embraced.
Pretend you're a talented high school center and ask yourself why you'd want to play at Syracuse. So you can fight for position every possession while your guards ignore the post?
Whether you're critical of Boeheim or an unquestioned supporter, it's clear that this position is just not a featured part of his offense. Even skilled people like Onuaku got a dozen or so touches a game. Whatever, it's not a judgment - in a zero-sum game that's increasingly micromanaged by coaches who prefer to limit possessions, there won't be enough balls to go around. At Syracuse, the preferred style of play is attractive to wings but not to bigs. Oh well.
Talented bigs get the ball plenty. Boeheim's offense is all about getting players the ball in position to exploit mismatches. When Onuaku, Jackson, or Rak had mismatches, they got fed all night long. The problem is that our centers will have zero games this year with an advantage over their defender. There is no sense in feeding them in the post.
All a talented big would have to do is watch tape of Rak in his senior year to see the potential role they could fill.
All a talented big would have to do is watch tape of Rak in his senior year to see the potential role they could fill.
I don't know that a guard can't coach a big, but I will say that I'm rarely impressed by our centers' fundamentals on offense, along with their improvement over the course of their careers (for all the 'but Rakeem!' and 'what about Arinze' stuff I hear, those guys showed glimpses of those skills as freshmen).
After that negative note, I'll move on and say that I know very little about recruiting but if Boeheim likes those centers, they'll probably be good fits at SU defensively. Maybe not immediate contributors, probably never 10-ppg scorers, but ultimately decent shot-blockers who can captain the defense, hustle to defend a corner three, and step up to deny dribble penetration. My expectations are low, but I'm sure they'll be capable of doing exactly what Boeheim wants them to do.
Yeah, that's about where I sit. I would not touch SU if I was a big man with any offensive aptitude or if I was hoping to develop my offense. No. No. And Nope.
I concur, Arinze was shockingly well developed as a Frosh from what I expected of him coming in.
Christmas was much the same - I remember watching exhibition games when he first stepped on campus and his short jumper, some of his movement seemed pretty well developed -I definitely thought he would be dominant by Soph year, or at least on the way there. The fact that we wouldn't let him touch the ball until all other options were exhausted still irks me. If Ennis/Grant come back Christmas probably puts up the same numbers Senior year as his Junior year and goes down as a hugely disappointing C, that didn't hustle enough, and never lived up to his hype.
I feel like you're leaving out an important fact about the shift in Rak's role in the offense his senior year. He was not very good offensively through his junior year. The summer before his senior year he worked really hard on his offense so that he became one of our top weapons. Our wasn't due to the decline of the team as much as it was his improvement once he got serious about it.I don't agree with this. A talented big can watch Rakeem for evidence of what I've observed: the 5 is Option 5 in Boeheim's offense. When the four guys around him stunk, he got touches on an 18-13 team. It was truly Boeheim's last resort. For the other three years he was ignored.
Obviously Chukwu's looking less reliable than he's ever looked on offense. If that's going to be used to justify not feeding the post, fair enough. But the offense has virtually never relied on scoring from this position, regardless of the skills of an individual center, whether it's Leron Ellis, Otis Hill, or Onuaku (who, again, took led his team in shots maybe half a dozen times...this has come up in threads about this topic before).
It's a wing-centric offense and a center who wants to be the focal point will always look elsewhere.
I don't agree with this. A talented big can watch Rakeem for evidence of what I've observed: the 5 is Option 5 in Boeheim's offense. When the four guys around him stunk, he got touches on an 18-13 team. It was truly Boeheim's last resort. For the other three years he was ignored.
Obviously Chukwu's looking less reliable than he's ever looked on offense. If that's going to be used to justify not feeding the post, fair enough. But the offense has virtually never relied on scoring from this position, regardless of the skills of an individual center, whether it's Leron Ellis, Otis Hill, or Onuaku (who, again, took led his team in shots maybe half a dozen times...this has come up in threads about this topic before).
It's a wing-centric offense and a center who wants to be the focal point will always look elsewhere.
The argument that a small can coach a big is irrelevant. The relevant issue is whether a big man recruit would prefer to be coached by a known big man?