Early in the year my dad and I had a discussion about whether teams would try to double Battle. It didn't take long for us to come to the conclusion that they probably wouldn't employ that strategy often because the best way to defend Syracuse is clearly to let Battle have his 20 points, and clamp down on everybody else. Every coach Syracuse has gone up against so far has agreed with us, until Buffalo.
They were willing to double and even triple team Battle to get the ball out of his hands, even if it meant leaving Matt Moyer completely unguarded. It was a bad strategy. Battle still scored 13 points on 50% shooting (give him credit for not forcing bad shots). Had they guarded him normally he would have probably had 7-10 more points, so they saved those points, but they cost themselves easily another 20 points elsewhere ... Moyer got 12 basically free points, and SU had maybe another 10 random points on lay ups they probably wouldn't have gotten had Battle not occupied more than one defender. I guess UB was hoping that Battle would force a bunch of bad shots and Moyer would be completely incapable of scoring under any circumstances, but that seems like a dumb strategy to me. To their credit, they eased off it in the second half, and still tried to make life hard on Battle, but without going so far as to leave any Syracuse player unguarded.
Another thing I have to say about Buffalo's defense is that there's a difference between tough basketball and dirty basketball. In the first half UB played good tough basketball. When they were down double digits in the second half that tough basketball crossed a line and became dirty basketball. Moyer, Brissett, Dolezaj, and Chukwu all took hard falls while rebounding because UB players undercut them and didn't give them a safe place to land - Moyer never came back from his fall. Landing on another player is the easiest way to get hurt in basketball, and failing to give somebody a safe landing spot really should be called a foul every time. Even though it happened after most every shot, I don't remember any calls, and that's a crime. Brissett and Dolezaj especially rely on their jumping ability to grab rebounds, and they both got banged up pretty good when UB players didn't let them land. To me that's inexcusable by the officials.
I also hated the fact that UB grabbed our guards all game long, but at least that's not going to hurt anybody. I got the feeling listening to their coach after the game that Buffalo is a team with a fragile ego when it comes to Syracuse, and they couldn't handle losing to us without making asinine excuses about it. If playing them means they are going to play dirty and put our guys in danger because they can't handle losing to us, then I hope we never play them again.
Onto our defense. When Boeheim's zone is executed well it is the best defense I have ever seen at taking away the opponent's #1 option. The biggest red flag last year was that our opponent's best player regularly had big games against us. This young team has understandably taken a little while to come together defensively, but there are promising signs of improvement. Georgetown's best player, Govan, really struggled against our zone. UB's best player, Massinberg, struggled even more. He came into the game averaging 20ppg on just under 50% shooting from 3. Against us he shot 2-13 from the floor (1-9 fom 3). His only two field goals were an extremely difficult 3 with Battle's hand in his face and a lay up in transition. Great sign.
Clark, not Massinbeg, might be Buffalo's most talented player, but since this was the first time he played for Buffalo all year, and from what I understand was cleared to play just a few hours before the game, I can forgive Syracuse for losing him a few times early and letting him knock down 3 early threes. What I appreciate is that an adjustment was made and Clark never made another shot, going 3-8 from three for the day. Another great sign.
To Buffalo's credit, they have a lot of players who can score on that team. Harris, their forward, made 3 really tough shots against us. Perkins lead them in scoring once we shut down their first two options, but his 18 points came on 8-18 from the field, 44%, which is not a great percentage for a big guy in the post. Chukwu block him at least 5 times. Buffalo as a team only shot 37% from the field and 29% from 3, but they made up for it somewhat by making almost all their foul shots, and grabbing a lot of rebounds (even though dirty play was the secret to their success on the boards).
Again Syracuse's D showed clear signs of improvement, and again Syracuse shot well - this time 50% from the field, and 45% from 3. I am encouraged by the progress I am seeing ... get ready because I'm going to compare this SU team to the 2003 championship team (though probably not in the way you want me to). The last time we had so many freshman playing and so little experience was probably 2003. That team was also coming off an NIT appearance the year before.
That team had one really big weakness. They were never able to hold onto a lead. Almost every game all season came down to the wire (if they were down big they fought back and if they were up big they blew the lead). Their 30-5 record was an result of Anthony and Edelin being two of the best late game clutch basket-getters we've ever had. Blowing leads really only burned them once (when Rutgers' center banked in a 3 to beat us) and maybe that's why they never did figure out how to put teams away - even in the National Championship game SU had a sizable lead against Kansas that they blew only to secure the win late.
This year's team has a similar amount of experience and a similar problem. Even though Buffalo is a better team than Colgate, and we played better against Buffalo than we did against Colgate, the two games had almost the exact same flow to them - Syracuse got up by 13-15 points in the second half and were on the verge of putting the game away, when the other team made a push and cut the lead basically down to nothing before Syracuse made the plays they needed to make to win by 8 or so.
Battle and Howard seem to have that late game clutch basket gene that Anthony and Edelin had, which is a good thing, (Brissett's not bad either, he's such a match up problem for everybody) but I'd feel a lot better if Syracuse showed an ability to run and hide from a team they have on the ropes.
One last note about Buffalo. They are playing Texas A&M tomorrow - don't feel bad when they get smashed. They left it all on the court against us, and they are not going to be able to come up with a similar performance again tomorrow. They are also unlikely to have officials who let them get away with the dirty stuff. Texas A&M will likely be facing a very different UB team than we did, so they should win by more than we did.
Individual performances:
Howard - He had his pocket picked twice, and I have a pet peeve about never letting that happen (once is a mistake, it should never happen twice). But honestly I think Howard had a good game. UB hand checked him the whole game, which we know is Howard's weakness, but he only committed 5 turnovers. An improvement from the 9 he had when UConn did it. Take away those two times he got his pocked picked and Howard had a fantastic game scoring 18 points on over 50% shooting and only making 3 turnovers against a team that harassed him. Seems like a fixable problem to me.
Battle - The unsung hero of this game for NOT shooting. UB's ill advised game plan would have only worked if Battle had insisted on taking a lot of shots against double teams. He did not, SU got a lot of lay ups. SU won. Battle had 13 points on 50% shooting and would have had 2 more had he not got hurt on a collision and not been able to jump for a lay up attempt.
Brissett - He was on the ground a lot on both ends of the court on this one, but it didn't seem to affect his shot any. He went 1-2 from 3 and 16-16 from the line. Down the stretch Syracuse looked to Brissett to get the big baskets, and be "the man." Brissett delivered. Probably the best sign we could have gotten.
Moyer- This was a perfect game for Moyer (and not just because UB decided to leave him unguarded). He was by far the most effective down low against UB's dirty play. With about 9 minutes in the game Moyer went up for a rebound and got undercut by a UB player who then fell on top of him and hit him in the balls on the way down. Moyer never came back in the game. That might have been because he was hurting. It might have been because Dolezaj was playing well. It might have been because Moyer made a defensive mistake and let Buffalo hit an open 3 the possession before. It may have been a combination of all these factors. Whatever the reason, Buffalo did most of its damage on the boards when Moyer was on the bench. Moyer's ability to catch passes and go up to the basket strong is starting to become a factor in games. His rebounding is an even bigger factor. His success is a welcome development, and I don't think too many teams will decide to leave him open after seeing the film on this game.
Chukwu - I don't think he's getting enough credit for his 8 blocks. 8 is a lot of blocks. Yes Perkins was the first person all year who was able to push Chukwu out of position and score on him that way, but he converted those shots at a low percentage and had a few turnovers. Perkins high point total tells us more about Buffalo's willingness to keep pounding the ball down low despite getting turned back 8 times, than it does about any weakness Chukwu might have. If the best offense a team can generate on us is low percentage post moves, then we're doing something right.
Washington - It took him a few possessions to settle in against Buffalo's physical D. But after that he looked good.
Dolezaj- He took 5 shots. I've been dying for him to shoot the ball 4 times or more for a while now. And guess what, good things happened. He made 3 of them (although he did miss a lay up he should have made) and scored 6 big points. I thought he had a good game despite not playing at all in the first half because Moyer was killing it.
