Good and Bad vs LSU

[CLMintz]

Starling looks to me to be struggling with a shoulder injury. You can see it in the hitch in his shot.

Are you a doctor? lol

 

[721Comstock]

Syracuse beat LSU on the boards 43 to 36 and also beat them on offensive boards 17 to 13 so it wasn't just about LSU missing more shots. Brown being able to jump helps a lot.

The whole "our rebounding SUX!!" thing is totally overblown.
Did nobody watch the 2nd half??

YES - they were destroying us on the boards - Oboards in particular - in the 1st half.

Yet, we only were down about 5 boards net or so at halftime, IIRC.

We totally turned that around in the 2nd half.
While a certain amount of that was their dumb shot selection - more bricked 3's - the bottom line is, we cut off their O-Rebs dramatically in the 2nd half.

 

[AlaskaSU]

I'm completely nit picking, as he was really good last night. When he doesn't think he needs to do everything himself, he is an even better player. He's started to move the ball more and more as the season goes on. I've liked the improvement!

Sometimes Judah does need to do it all.
Red knew JJ when he was growing up. He is partial to him, teachers pet. I fear that this will hurt us. JJ probably has a shoulder issue. No I'm not a doctor but I stayed at a Holiday Inn.

 

[Oakland]

Wish I had more time to write/talk about SU. This game felt significant to me.

Good

Team D - When you have a 7'4 center you want to funnel the ball towards him, obviously the offense is not trying to get trapped under the armpit of a shot blocker, so you need to be organized to make it happen. SU hasn't been organized enough on D yet this season to make that happen much, but in this game they did it despite LSU's center being able to step out and hit jumpers.

Judah's D - Its not easy to overlook 33 points, but try. His D has been horrendous so far this year, in this game it was much much better. Obviously Judah has the athletic ability to be a great defender, Autrey's coaching is starting to pay off.

Brown's D - He looked noticeably more healthy in this one, got up a lot higher to challenge shots around the basket and grabbed a lot more rebounds. This is very welcome to see and I think there is still some improvement to come as he gets healthy. LSU's center is their leading scorerer and Brown/McLoud held him to 3 points.

Autrey's game coaching. In the NBA when one guy has a match up advantage they will feed that guy over and over non-stop all game long. For some reason that doesn't happen enough in the college game. Boeheim was never afraid to do it. He was the best and identifying favorable match ups and not letting his team forget to exploit them. Autrey did the same today. Mintz had a huge advantage and they ran tons of different plays for him. It always looked different, but they kept feeding him the ball in good places to exploit LSU.

Bell - The days of him being nothing but a shooter are over. He's quite a good defender now (looks so much better in man than in zone) blocks some shots as well as playing solid positional D. He still can't rebound, but he's trying to tip the ball to teammates, which might be the best we can get. Hard to argue against him being the teams second best player.

Bad

Starling played as bad a game as you will ever see an SU player have. Im not sure what the solution is here. He looks like a broken man.

Taylor's slow release. Taylor was a good 2-5 from 3 today, but didn't look very good from 2. This is not surprizing he had a 6'10 athletic guy guarding him for a lot of the game. Ideally he would have taken more 3's and stayed away from the paint, but his release is so slow he's easy to close out on, forcing him into shots he doesn't want. Taylor plays good defense, rebound really well, and can stretch the floor, he's valuable, but there are times we need Benny William's skill set.

Williams - Put himself behind the 8 ball with those suspensions. He isn't playing much and just looks off when he's in there. Was 1-4 in this game with 2 turnovers, which isn't good enough. Though in his defense most of his minutes came when the game got sloppy in garbage time. We need him. How he improves (or doesn't) will determine this teams ceiling. The 2 guard is going to be a problem for us. We need everything else to work out if we are going to become a good team.

LSU isn't very good, but they are a peer team who already has a win against an ACC opponent. They would have been favored against us on a neutral floor and we won by 23 even after taking our foot off the gas. Really great win for the team.

Taylor’s jump shot starts behind his head which I think is different from last season.

 

[CuseFaninVT]

Taylor’s jump shot starts behind his head which I think is different from last season.

I switched from the game over to the Celtics game last night and came to a realization. JT is trying to emulate Jayson Tatum. Except Justin’s shot is more off to the right side. And slower.

 

[swish7]

I switched from the game over to the Celtics game last night and came to a realization. JT is trying to emulate Jayson Tatum. Except Justin’s shot is more off to the right side. And slower.

I just quick looked at a couple clips of Jayson Tatum. I didn't notice any where his guide hand was on top of the ball. Curious why JT has his guide hand above the ball. What is he trying to accomplish?

 

[Newhouser]

LSU was horrific shooting threes and more generally on offense. If they shoot an average percentage from three this is a very different game.

The good things I saw:
- help D was somewhat improved
- initial D was still pretty good
- there was more of an attempt to structure the offense to get easy shots
- Judah seems to have next leveled his game
- Bell is improving his all around game
- Naheem!

The not so good things:
- Starling... enough said
- Rebounding is terrible... we just got lucky that LSU couldn't shoot
- I'm not convinced Taylor can get his shot off against ACC caliber athletes

Red really needs to figure out where the offense outside of Judah is going to come from and these guys need to figure out the rebounding otherwise there will be some ugly ugly games. I would consider moving Copeland to the starting lineup over JJ and letting him play lead guard and let Judah stay off the ball.

Q is the most interesting player on the team in that he has a moment of magic followed immediately by a moment of "What the ---- is he doing?"

Oddly I like him off the bench for that reason - good energy boost, and something (good or bad) always happens.

 

[CuseFaninVT]

I just quick looked at a couple clips of Jayson Tatum. I didn't notice any where his guide hand was on top of the ball. Curious why JT has his guide hand above the ball. What is he trying to accomplish?

I didn’t say it was a good emulation of Tatum. I think he’s trying to increase the height of his release point with his form. Maybe he’s had trouble controlling the ball, due to hand size or something, and that’s why he’s over-including the off hand.

 

[OrangeFoo]

Q is the most interesting player on the team in that he has a moment of magic followed immediately by a moment of "What the ---- is he doing?"

Oddly I like him off the bench for that reason - good energy boost, and something (good or bad) always happens.

Fair... he definitely needs to find some consistency. But so does our starting lead guard. Getting some consistent offense outside of Judah going on 1 v 1 is going to be a challenge for Red all year long.

I love the pick and roll action we have seen with Naheem. It's a mystery to me why we don't run that action with Benny or Maliq setting the pick. Or running any action to get Benny some easy looks... he just sits there on the perimeter where he needs to iso and he doesn't seem like an iso player. We also need to run some action to get JT some open shots where he can set his feet so he can be effective.

Two starters whom I wonder if they will be starters at year end are JT and JJ.

 

[Cusefan0307]

Fair... he definitely needs to find some consistency. But so does our starting lead guard. Getting some consistent offense outside of Judah going on 1 v 1 is going to be a challenge for Red all year long.

I love the pick and roll action we have seen with Naheem. It's a mystery to me why we don't run that action with Benny or Maliq setting the pick. Or running any action to get Benny some easy looks... he just sits there on the perimeter where he needs to iso and he doesn't seem like an iso player. We also need to run some action to get JT some open shots where he can set his feet so he can be effective.

Two starters whom I wonder if they will be starters at year end are JT and JJ.

Red doesn't seem to want to play two bigs together ever. The sooner we accept that the better.

 

[swish7]

I didn’t say it was a good emulation of Tatum. I think he’s trying to increase the height of his release point with his form. Maybe he’s had trouble controlling the ball, due to hand size or something, and that’s why he’s over-including the off hand.

I'm surprised there is no attempt to correct it. Its poor form, and just not something I think I've ever seen before.

 

[General20]

Red doesn't seem to want to play two bigs together ever. The sooner we accept that the better.

And for good reason. Naheem is a 15-20 per minute guy and nobody besides Brown is good enough yet. We need both just to cover the center position.

 

[Cusefan0307]

I suspect what keeps Taylor in the lineup over Benny right now is he rebounds and defends which the metrics back up. The offense is a wash. Our fans are bit drunk in Benny's athleticism that rarely gets put to use.

 

[swish7]

I didn’t say it was a good emulation of Tatum. I think he’s trying to increase the height of his release point with his form. Maybe he’s had trouble controlling the ball, due to hand size or something, and that’s why he’s over-including the off hand.

Watched some clips of Tatum in slow motion. I see what you are saying. There is definitely something there, especially with the moves and body language before the shot.

Having his guide hand on top and trying to increase his release point seem counter-productive. It limits the height of the release point, or causes an awkward transition where he has to draw it back early leaving the ball unguided. Just don't see the benefit to his form. Curious why he's doing it.

 

[Nicknack]

The whole "our rebounding SUX!!" thing is totally overblown.
Did nobody watch the 2nd half??

YES - they were destroying us on the boards - Oboards in particular - in the 1st half.

Yet, we only were down about 5 boards net or so at halftime, IIRC.

We totally turned that around in the 2nd half.
While a certain amount of that was their dumb shot selection - more bricked 3's - the bottom line is, we cut off their O-Rebs dramatically in the 2nd half.

Comstock... not sure why it took me until now to put two and two together - you a sig ep? If so, when were you there?

 

[Niastri]

There are some graphs you can get with the free version too:

View attachment 234083

Average or so a defending the three and not very good at making them relative to the ACC.

I wonder what they would look like if LSU hasn't just missed 20 mostly wide open threes?

Their defense seems to be "go for the block or steal inside the arc, let them shoot open shots from three, hope the ball bounces to you if they miss."

I didn't see an LSU team that was forced into taking lots of bad threes, thus having a low percentage. I saw an LSU team that took a lot of wide open threes and missed them at a historic rate. The good news is that we still beat them even if they made an additional 7 threes and shot their average coming in. The better teams that whipped us in Maui made those open threes, and played us even everywhere else.

I can't decide if LSU is terrible, if they just shot really badly for whatever reason, or if Syracuse turned the corner in some way.

LSU hasn't beaten anybody of note, and lousy too some teams we would be appalled at losing to. I don't think they are any good, and them getting blown out is going to be routine going forward.

I guess we'll see, going forward.

 

[Red Holzman]

JJ is by far biggest issue we have right now. He was suppose to be a lead guy for us. These other guys were expected to be role players.

JJ is an issue, but down far fewer miles of bad road than Benny, who also was supposed to be a lead guy.
Benny's long-term Bad Ball/Bad Behavior resume trumps JJ IMO.
An elite athlete who doesn't work for rebounding position and gives up baseline drives is either a.) clueless or b.) checked out.
Despite flashes, find myself checking out on Benny. Given every opportunity, and becoming toxic.
JJ I still have hope for. A post said JJ was working on his shot this AM.
What was Benny doing, I wonder.

 

[721Comstock]

Comstock... not sure why it took me until now to put two and two together - you a sig ep? If so, when were you there?

Dude, you're losing it.

We DM'd about this a while back.

Yes. '88 grad.
(pledge class - Beta)

 

[NorSyr66]

I think the rim protection at the start of the game was huge. 7'4 with some skill is a factor.

This was definitely a game changer for LSU game plan with their big man.

 

[NorSyr66]

Red doesn't seem to want to play two bigs together ever. The sooner we accept that the better.

Possibly needs them separate to give each other rest. If they play together, how do you give them a breather?

 

[OrangeFoo]

I wonder what they would look like if LSU hasn't just missed 20 mostly wide open threes?

Their defense seems to be "go for the block or steal inside the arc, let them shoot open shots from three, hope the ball bounces to you if they miss."

I didn't see an LSU team that was forced into taking lots of bad threes, thus having a low percentage. I saw an LSU team that took a lot of wide open threes and missed them at a historic rate. The good news is that we still beat them even if they made an additional 7 threes and shot their average coming in. The better teams that whipped us in Maui made those open threes, and played us even everywhere else.

I can't decide if LSU is terrible, if they just shot really badly for whatever reason, or if Syracuse turned the corner in some way.

LSU hasn't beaten anybody of note, and lousy too some teams we would be appalled at losing to. I don't think they are any good, and them getting blown out is going to be routine going forward.

I guess we'll see, going forward.

This is where I am at. I’ve seen nothing to convince me that we have made changes vs the quality of opposition. The offense did seem more structured at times… just not consistently so. The defense seemed unorganized as ever and LSU had plenty of good looks.

 

[CusefanATL]

Taylor is frustrating in that he doesn't seem to want to try and shoot even where there is enough room. He will do a good job of moving the ball but defaults to that too much. Definitely a hard worker and doing a decent job of rebounding.

Benny just doesn't look like he's into the game much of the time. We'd all like to see him get more aggressive but maybe he doesn't have enough faith in himself at this point to try and take the ball to the basket. He starts to go sometimes but backs out quickly. He needs to move more without the ball and become more than a 3 pt. shooter.

he is averaging 5 3 attempts per game?

His only problem is that he shoots over his head like it is 1945 so it is slow as molasses to get off.

 

[tbonezone]

the bad. i guess i no longer know what a charge is. when you have to run a special segment to try and explain it ... 'THE REFS NOW HAVE TO WATCH THE DEFENDERS FEET AND THE DRIVERS FEET... ? just like the nfl monkeying with the rules i no longer know what a catch is. game has changed again for the worse imo. what used to be a rather easy call will now take several minutes of replay review.

 

[Nicknack]

Dude, you're losing it.

We DM'd about this a while back.

Yes. '88 grad.
(pledge class - Beta)

Ha. I must have had a few IPAs in me at the time. I don't remember at all.

 

[FRANKIEFAN]

It was a great performance this team isn't perfect but they played hard wanted it more hit some shots and cleaned up the poor rebounding at half.

Need that marquee quad 1 road win Saturday and then we are in good shape.