Bilas Index: 'Cuse behind KY without Melo

[arbitragegls]

...and without transition points. He debunks the half court offense saying we are at .93 per position and second in BE...see below for partial write-up from insider:
2. Syracuse Orange

Syracuse has four Sagarin top-50 wins and remains at its best in transition. But when Notre Dame was able to limit Syracuse in the open floor, the Cuse struggled to consistently make shots. Perhaps the notion that Syracuse is not a great half-court team is overblown, as the Cuse averages 0.93 points per possession in half-court situations, second in the Big East. But clearly the Orange are far more dangerous in transition. Notre Dame was able to get the ball inside without Fab Melo in the middle of the zone, and even though the Irish had close to 20 turnovers, they were not "live ball" turnovers that Syracuse could turn into easy baskets. If Melo is out for longer than a couple of games, maybe Syracuse drops. If he's back, all is well.

This is a fair assessment of 'Cuse...lets pause and just know that if we shot better we would have been in the game and possibly won...ND shot 50% overall and 50% from three...but we had 19 TOs...so if we had made some baskets it would have been different outcome. However, we do need Melo back or for Keita and Xmas to step up...it is almost AO scenario all over again.

What do you think?




"

 

[All4SU]

Sounds about right.

 

[Orangemen]

If Fab comes back, this game not only did not happen, but is the best thing that could have happened long term.

Nothing like having a few warts exposed in an exhibition game. See LeMoyne, 2009.

If Fab doesn't come back, disregard everything above.

 

[bevosu]

I'm not sure I understand how allowing a team like ND, that shoots at 43% from the field and 33% from 3, the kind of shooting night that they had is not at least partly the fault of our defense. A defense that most, including me, thought was one of the toughest in the country.

Good D and we don't have to have a good or great offensive game. We were bad last night in every aspect of the game. It wasn't just shooting.

Good D was supposed to carry us when our offense is below par.

Melo makes a difference.

 

[orangefan13]

We play without Fab for 40 minutes we are behind a few teams we have Fab for atleast 15 minutes we can be the best without a shadow of a doubt.

 

[HoustonCuse]

Scoop is our Tony Romo, Fab is our Peyton Manning.

 

[MyMeloMyMan]

I'm not sure I understand how allowing a team like ND, that shoots at 43% from the field and 33% from 3, the kind of shooting night that they had is not at least partly the fault of our defense. A defense that most, including me, thought was one of the toughest in the country.

Because anyone who hits 3's against us is just lucky... that's why. The defense is perfect.

 

[reedny]

If Fab comes back, this game not only did not happen, but is the best thing that could have happened long term.

Nothing like having a few warts exposed in an exhibition game. See LeMoyne, 2009.

If Fab doesn't come back, disregard everything above.

This is exactly right. Assuming he clears up his academics (my guess is that he didn't finish his coursework for last semester), there are a bunch of positives here.

1- This team was going to loose at some point. I had them loosing at the Dumb center, at UConn, and one What game -- ND fits the bill. No team goes undefeated these days;

2- The loss 'exposed' (re-exposed) SU weaknesses: Streaky half court offense, lack of depth inside, defensive lapses against outside shooters - are the three that stick out to me. Now, the team gets a chance before crucial conference/tourney games to go to work improving half court sets and perimeter defense (rotating to provide weakside help);

3- Sooner or later in the NCAA's or in conference, Fab is going to run into (more) foul trouble. When this happens against a really good team (and it will), Keita and Rak have GOT to be able to step in and do a better job. Baye needs work on offense (catching the ball inside and pivoting), and on defense holding position. Rak needs to be more physical, and not allow other post players to catch the ball so deep in the paint (e.g., Cooley). These guys need to get better, or the elite teams we play will go hard at Fab until they can play against Keita/Rak.

 

[arbitragegls]

disagree with your point on half court offense; Bilas says metrics show 'Cuse to be #2 in BE with .93 possessions in half court...and JB says that half court offense is good...just doesnt look to lay person as good because he wants team to take early shot...one or two passes to open shot...

 

[reedny]

Second in the BE in one category (ppp) does not mean he thinks our half-court is stellar. That's his way of saying we're not uniformly terrible, just not elite in our execution of half court sets.

It's been the rap on our team since day 1, as Bilas has observed many times (including in the Pitt game). In some games (at Providence) we shot it well and our half court looked good. Other times (second half of Marquette, most of the Pitt game, ND), we don't shoot it well. When that happens, we struggle when the other team takes care of the ball (we don't get runouts).

ND was a classic example. They turned it over, but many of the TO's were dead ball. They also out-rebounded us. The result of these two factors (and the stalled tempo) is that the game slowed down and we had virtually no transition game. Without those transition points, we were forced to win the game in the half-court. You saw what happened.

We're not terrible in the half-court. But we need to improve in that area to compete at the elite level, or you will see the ND strategy many more times.

While Fab's out, I like the idea (floated by Moqui and others) of running more half-court sets for Southerland. He's an excellent shooter that needs to be worked into our half-court offense more. Right now, we have no one in the middle to feed, so we're easy to cheat out on and we need to get dirty open. When Fab comes back, we'll have another option.