General20
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I don't think you could have asked much more from a second game of the season than we saw from this game.
I didn't get a chance to do a Colgate recap, but in reply to RF2044's recap I mentioned being encouraged that Syracuse scored 83 points and won easily despite their two best players both having off days. Specifically I said "Don't worry about Lydon or Battle, they are our two best players. Instead be happy that we scored 83 points without any meaningful contribution from either of our top two players. They both had the same problem, settling for jump shots (which weren't bad jump shots) and missing them when they could have taken the ball inside. They also had no real need to step up since we were dominating the game. These are first game of the season type problems and I wouldn't give much thought to it."
Despite the overall solid performance against Colgate there were definitely some areas for improvement. Off the top of my head I can think of:
1) Neither the zone nor the press caused enough turnovers. This is a major point of interest for Boeheim. We are phenomenal in transition. Unfortunately the only reliable way to get out in transition is to force turnovers which we are not doing right now.
2) The press was bad.
3) The zone struggled. Specifically, Andrew White really struggled at the top of the zone. This is what I said about it in my comment yesterday. "White was great on offense but lost at the top of the zone. Colgate almost always had 3 guards up top and White felt like he had to cover all three instead of trusting the forwards to come up and do their job. This of course lead to him being out of position on a number of occasions. Boeheim got some great film to use as a teaching tool in this game. I expect White to look at least a little better in the zone against Holy Cross and will be disappointed if he doesn't. "
4) We rebounded poorly.
5) We shot free throws poorly.
6) When Colgate switched to zone in the second half, we stopped scoring. The reason, we missed a bunch of open shots and didn't get the rebound.
In the space of one game (and a handful of practices) Syracuse addressed most of these problems.
1) We had 9 steals and 6 blocks which is solid. This despite playing man to man for a lot of the second half. In total, Holy Cross only had 13 turnovers, which is still low. But there were some encouraging signs. I saw at half time that Syracuse scored 21 points off 8 turnovers. Think about that number for a second. Syracuse was scoring 2.6 points for every turnover Holy Cross made. Talk about making them pay! Now you know why forcing more turnovers is priority #1 for Boehiem! I don't know what the game total was, but I'm sure the numbers went down in the second half because we stopped playing zone.
2) No improvement in the press unfortunately. I think we only tried to press for one possession, and Holy Cross beat it with no problem at all so Boeheim gave up on it.
3) Andrew White was noticeably better this time, and so was the zone as a whole. I mentioned the yesterday that Boeheim would have great game tape to teach Andrew White with, and that seems to have payed off, not just with him but with everybody. We've got a lot of new players, but they are veteran players (either in years like White or Gillon, or mentally as Battle is). The zone isn't in mid season form yet, but we shouldn't expect it to be. We should be very happy that there was a huge improvement between game 1 and game 2. I have little doubt that the improvements will continue and they will get to where they need to be.
4) We rebounded GREAT out of the zone. The final rebounding numbers are misleading because the walkons gave up a truckload of rebounds and we rebounded slightly less great out of man to man because Holy Cross was dragging our big guys away from the basket.
5) 11-13 from the free throw line.
6) Holy Cross played zone all game long, and we scored 90 points (if Boeheim wanted to run up the score, it would have been over a hundred). They started out playing 2-3 zone and we, interestingly, put Roberson in that all important gap at the free throw line instead of Lydon. Roberson responded by hitting two jump shots from this position and Holy Cross responded by abandoning the 2-3 for the rest of the game. Most of the rest of the time they were switching from a 3-2 zone to a 1-3-1 zone.
As mentioned, Holy Cross kept switching defenses in an effort to confuse us, but all their defenses had something in common, they were all packed pretty close to the basket. Their coach made the sensible decision to try to force us to shoot from the outside and hope we had a cold shooting night. It didn't work. Syracuse's non-walk-on's shot an astonishing 52% from three.
In the second half Syracuse switched to man to man D for a long stretch. You might be asking why. I think a hint can be found with the guys on the floor while we played man. Gillon, Battle, Lydon, Thompson, Chukwu (soon after Lydon was switched with Roberson). You'd think that having Lydon and Thompson chasing Holy Crosses forwards (which are really guards) around the floor would not be ideal, you'd think that allowing Chukwu to cover a man who can bring him away from the basket where he was an impenetrable force might not be a good idea, and I'd agree with all of that. But the team he had playing man looks a lot like the team we are going to press with. If there was one downside to this game it was that our press still looks bad. Seems like chasing those little guys around in man is good practice for a press that needs some work. That's my theory at least.
Player evaluations:
Howard: Went 1-2 from three, and again, looked comfortable shooting the ball, but he's the kind of guy who wants you to play man to man against him. When he had space, nobody on Holy Cross could stay in front of him, not even their quick 5'11 point guard. He's obviously not going to keep shooting 75% from three point range for the year, but I expect him to look even better against high major D1 teams who try to guard him one-on-one than he did against Holy Cross. Everybody was saying how much better he got in the offseason. I'm still surprised by how good he looks. He's not just going to be a good player for us. He's going to be a star.
White: Points machine. He averaged almost 17 a game for Nebraska while shooting over 40% from 3. The optimistic viewpoint is that he'll play even better this year, because there's better talent around him. I'm not worried about the guys shooting. And I think we can count on him only taking good shots when opposing defenses make him a priority. What will ultimately determine his success is how he plays defensively. Today was a step in the right direction. Remember, too, that Holy Cross was begging us to shoot from deep. So this was an ideal game for Andrew White. Things wont always be so easy, and there will be times when he plays fewer minutes and is more of a decoy. In those games Howard and Battle will take a lot more of the shots.
Lydon: 6-7 from the field. 2-3 from three. And people were worried. Don't be worried. Lydon is going to be a very good player for us.
Roberson: I continue to be very impressed with him. The jump shots he hit were good, what's better is that he is getting himself in great scoring position down low and converting. I'm optimistic that he will have a very good senior year.
Coleman: He's going into the General20 SU fan hall of fame for the way he battled back after several bad injuries, and for the attitude he has on the court, but those injuries have taken their toll. He can rebound, and he can score around the basket, but what we need is someone to protect the rim and he no longer has the ability to do that. Unfortunately I think Coleman will be more of an off the court leader than an on the court difference maker this year.
Chukwu - He's a specialist. He's here to chew bubble gum and protect the rim . . . and he's all out of bubblegum. I honestly don't care how he does at anything else. Colgate and the two exhibition teams avoided Chukwu like the plague so there was no real way to evaluate him. Holy Cross is the first team to try attacking Chukwu and it did not go well for them. He blocked their first three attempts, and after that they pretty much gave up on going inside. Holy Cross shot 32 threes against us, which is a huge number. I don't think that was the game plan going in. Chukwu made it their game plan. That said, I've never been particularly worried about Cukwu's ability to block shots. Its how he's able to stand up against a big strong center who will bang against him down low that worries me. We won't know how capable he is until we play Wisconsin who is almost as big as we are with a front line of 6'10, 6'8, 6'8. That 6'10 guy is Happ, who had his way with Lydon last year scoring 18 and grabbing 15 rebounds. He's exactly the kind of guy we want Chukwu to neutralize. One more note on this. The officials are making a noticeable attempt to try to stop a lot of the pushing and shoving that goes on under the basket this year, and that emphasis will do nothing but help Chukwu.
Thompson - Continues to impress. He scored 10 points on 5-7 shooting and what's most impressive are the different ways he scored. 1) he made a mid range jumper. 2) he scored off a low block post move. 3) he scored by driving past his defender for a layup, and 4) he scored by dunking in rebound. That's four different ways to score five baskets. The kid is a talented offensive player already. He has a bit of a nasty streak when he rebounds as well. The problem is Boeheim is playing him 100% of the time as a forward, and that's not going to translate to big games, because he's not a forward. He's a center. Right now I don't think Boeheim wants a true freshman quarterbacking his still shaky zone. There is a chance that will change as the year goes on and everybody learns where they need to be. If it does, Thompson can earn some meaningful playing time. If it doesn't I dont think you see a lot of Thompson in the games that matter most.
The Center Position: I've noticed a lot of people talking about the center position and that makes sense because its where we have the most uncertainty. We have 4 potential centers on our team, Lydon, Chukwu, Coleman, and Thompson.
Thompson may contribute at center in the future (even this year) but he's not there yet, so lets put a pin in this.
Coleman will be an off the court leader this year, but he's not getting huge minutes.
I look at Lydon as the best offensive center Syracuse has ever had. We want to play him at center, and we will play him there as long as we can get away with it. This is going to be a match-up issue. When we play a team who is not hurting us inside then Lydon plays center. When teams start to hurt us down low we need to have an answer to that.
At least for now that answer is Chukwu. There is no way to tell right now how effective a solution he's going to be, but if he can stop teams from scoring in the paint half as effectively as he did against Holy Cross, then Syracuse has pretty much zero weaknesses as a team.
Gillon: He averaged something silly like 34 points and 20 assists per 40 minutes of playing time in this game. That's 74 points he potentially could account for by himself in 40 minutes. Not many teams will score 74 points against SU this year. So yeah, he had a pretty good game, and he's really fun to watch. We are really lucky to have the guards we do.
Battle: Had a solid game going 3-5 from three, but like Howard, Battle wants teams to play him man to man. Expect his play to improve in the ACC because unlike Holy Cross and Colgate who know they have to either zone or double team Battle, ACC teams will try to guard him one on one, even though (like Holy Cross) they don't stand a chance of sticking with him. White, Lydon, Gillon, Roberson, Howard - we have a lot of great players, but when March comes around I expect it to be obvious who the best player is, and I expect that player to be Battle. That may be what's most exciting about this SU team, they look very good now but there is still a LOT of room for improvement.
I didn't get a chance to do a Colgate recap, but in reply to RF2044's recap I mentioned being encouraged that Syracuse scored 83 points and won easily despite their two best players both having off days. Specifically I said "Don't worry about Lydon or Battle, they are our two best players. Instead be happy that we scored 83 points without any meaningful contribution from either of our top two players. They both had the same problem, settling for jump shots (which weren't bad jump shots) and missing them when they could have taken the ball inside. They also had no real need to step up since we were dominating the game. These are first game of the season type problems and I wouldn't give much thought to it."
Despite the overall solid performance against Colgate there were definitely some areas for improvement. Off the top of my head I can think of:
1) Neither the zone nor the press caused enough turnovers. This is a major point of interest for Boeheim. We are phenomenal in transition. Unfortunately the only reliable way to get out in transition is to force turnovers which we are not doing right now.
2) The press was bad.
3) The zone struggled. Specifically, Andrew White really struggled at the top of the zone. This is what I said about it in my comment yesterday. "White was great on offense but lost at the top of the zone. Colgate almost always had 3 guards up top and White felt like he had to cover all three instead of trusting the forwards to come up and do their job. This of course lead to him being out of position on a number of occasions. Boeheim got some great film to use as a teaching tool in this game. I expect White to look at least a little better in the zone against Holy Cross and will be disappointed if he doesn't. "
4) We rebounded poorly.
5) We shot free throws poorly.
6) When Colgate switched to zone in the second half, we stopped scoring. The reason, we missed a bunch of open shots and didn't get the rebound.
In the space of one game (and a handful of practices) Syracuse addressed most of these problems.
1) We had 9 steals and 6 blocks which is solid. This despite playing man to man for a lot of the second half. In total, Holy Cross only had 13 turnovers, which is still low. But there were some encouraging signs. I saw at half time that Syracuse scored 21 points off 8 turnovers. Think about that number for a second. Syracuse was scoring 2.6 points for every turnover Holy Cross made. Talk about making them pay! Now you know why forcing more turnovers is priority #1 for Boehiem! I don't know what the game total was, but I'm sure the numbers went down in the second half because we stopped playing zone.
2) No improvement in the press unfortunately. I think we only tried to press for one possession, and Holy Cross beat it with no problem at all so Boeheim gave up on it.
3) Andrew White was noticeably better this time, and so was the zone as a whole. I mentioned the yesterday that Boeheim would have great game tape to teach Andrew White with, and that seems to have payed off, not just with him but with everybody. We've got a lot of new players, but they are veteran players (either in years like White or Gillon, or mentally as Battle is). The zone isn't in mid season form yet, but we shouldn't expect it to be. We should be very happy that there was a huge improvement between game 1 and game 2. I have little doubt that the improvements will continue and they will get to where they need to be.
4) We rebounded GREAT out of the zone. The final rebounding numbers are misleading because the walkons gave up a truckload of rebounds and we rebounded slightly less great out of man to man because Holy Cross was dragging our big guys away from the basket.
5) 11-13 from the free throw line.
6) Holy Cross played zone all game long, and we scored 90 points (if Boeheim wanted to run up the score, it would have been over a hundred). They started out playing 2-3 zone and we, interestingly, put Roberson in that all important gap at the free throw line instead of Lydon. Roberson responded by hitting two jump shots from this position and Holy Cross responded by abandoning the 2-3 for the rest of the game. Most of the rest of the time they were switching from a 3-2 zone to a 1-3-1 zone.
As mentioned, Holy Cross kept switching defenses in an effort to confuse us, but all their defenses had something in common, they were all packed pretty close to the basket. Their coach made the sensible decision to try to force us to shoot from the outside and hope we had a cold shooting night. It didn't work. Syracuse's non-walk-on's shot an astonishing 52% from three.
In the second half Syracuse switched to man to man D for a long stretch. You might be asking why. I think a hint can be found with the guys on the floor while we played man. Gillon, Battle, Lydon, Thompson, Chukwu (soon after Lydon was switched with Roberson). You'd think that having Lydon and Thompson chasing Holy Crosses forwards (which are really guards) around the floor would not be ideal, you'd think that allowing Chukwu to cover a man who can bring him away from the basket where he was an impenetrable force might not be a good idea, and I'd agree with all of that. But the team he had playing man looks a lot like the team we are going to press with. If there was one downside to this game it was that our press still looks bad. Seems like chasing those little guys around in man is good practice for a press that needs some work. That's my theory at least.
Player evaluations:
Howard: Went 1-2 from three, and again, looked comfortable shooting the ball, but he's the kind of guy who wants you to play man to man against him. When he had space, nobody on Holy Cross could stay in front of him, not even their quick 5'11 point guard. He's obviously not going to keep shooting 75% from three point range for the year, but I expect him to look even better against high major D1 teams who try to guard him one-on-one than he did against Holy Cross. Everybody was saying how much better he got in the offseason. I'm still surprised by how good he looks. He's not just going to be a good player for us. He's going to be a star.
White: Points machine. He averaged almost 17 a game for Nebraska while shooting over 40% from 3. The optimistic viewpoint is that he'll play even better this year, because there's better talent around him. I'm not worried about the guys shooting. And I think we can count on him only taking good shots when opposing defenses make him a priority. What will ultimately determine his success is how he plays defensively. Today was a step in the right direction. Remember, too, that Holy Cross was begging us to shoot from deep. So this was an ideal game for Andrew White. Things wont always be so easy, and there will be times when he plays fewer minutes and is more of a decoy. In those games Howard and Battle will take a lot more of the shots.
Lydon: 6-7 from the field. 2-3 from three. And people were worried. Don't be worried. Lydon is going to be a very good player for us.
Roberson: I continue to be very impressed with him. The jump shots he hit were good, what's better is that he is getting himself in great scoring position down low and converting. I'm optimistic that he will have a very good senior year.
Coleman: He's going into the General20 SU fan hall of fame for the way he battled back after several bad injuries, and for the attitude he has on the court, but those injuries have taken their toll. He can rebound, and he can score around the basket, but what we need is someone to protect the rim and he no longer has the ability to do that. Unfortunately I think Coleman will be more of an off the court leader than an on the court difference maker this year.
Chukwu - He's a specialist. He's here to chew bubble gum and protect the rim . . . and he's all out of bubblegum. I honestly don't care how he does at anything else. Colgate and the two exhibition teams avoided Chukwu like the plague so there was no real way to evaluate him. Holy Cross is the first team to try attacking Chukwu and it did not go well for them. He blocked their first three attempts, and after that they pretty much gave up on going inside. Holy Cross shot 32 threes against us, which is a huge number. I don't think that was the game plan going in. Chukwu made it their game plan. That said, I've never been particularly worried about Cukwu's ability to block shots. Its how he's able to stand up against a big strong center who will bang against him down low that worries me. We won't know how capable he is until we play Wisconsin who is almost as big as we are with a front line of 6'10, 6'8, 6'8. That 6'10 guy is Happ, who had his way with Lydon last year scoring 18 and grabbing 15 rebounds. He's exactly the kind of guy we want Chukwu to neutralize. One more note on this. The officials are making a noticeable attempt to try to stop a lot of the pushing and shoving that goes on under the basket this year, and that emphasis will do nothing but help Chukwu.
Thompson - Continues to impress. He scored 10 points on 5-7 shooting and what's most impressive are the different ways he scored. 1) he made a mid range jumper. 2) he scored off a low block post move. 3) he scored by driving past his defender for a layup, and 4) he scored by dunking in rebound. That's four different ways to score five baskets. The kid is a talented offensive player already. He has a bit of a nasty streak when he rebounds as well. The problem is Boeheim is playing him 100% of the time as a forward, and that's not going to translate to big games, because he's not a forward. He's a center. Right now I don't think Boeheim wants a true freshman quarterbacking his still shaky zone. There is a chance that will change as the year goes on and everybody learns where they need to be. If it does, Thompson can earn some meaningful playing time. If it doesn't I dont think you see a lot of Thompson in the games that matter most.
The Center Position: I've noticed a lot of people talking about the center position and that makes sense because its where we have the most uncertainty. We have 4 potential centers on our team, Lydon, Chukwu, Coleman, and Thompson.
Thompson may contribute at center in the future (even this year) but he's not there yet, so lets put a pin in this.
Coleman will be an off the court leader this year, but he's not getting huge minutes.
I look at Lydon as the best offensive center Syracuse has ever had. We want to play him at center, and we will play him there as long as we can get away with it. This is going to be a match-up issue. When we play a team who is not hurting us inside then Lydon plays center. When teams start to hurt us down low we need to have an answer to that.
At least for now that answer is Chukwu. There is no way to tell right now how effective a solution he's going to be, but if he can stop teams from scoring in the paint half as effectively as he did against Holy Cross, then Syracuse has pretty much zero weaknesses as a team.
Gillon: He averaged something silly like 34 points and 20 assists per 40 minutes of playing time in this game. That's 74 points he potentially could account for by himself in 40 minutes. Not many teams will score 74 points against SU this year. So yeah, he had a pretty good game, and he's really fun to watch. We are really lucky to have the guards we do.
Battle: Had a solid game going 3-5 from three, but like Howard, Battle wants teams to play him man to man. Expect his play to improve in the ACC because unlike Holy Cross and Colgate who know they have to either zone or double team Battle, ACC teams will try to guard him one on one, even though (like Holy Cross) they don't stand a chance of sticking with him. White, Lydon, Gillon, Roberson, Howard - we have a lot of great players, but when March comes around I expect it to be obvious who the best player is, and I expect that player to be Battle. That may be what's most exciting about this SU team, they look very good now but there is still a LOT of room for improvement.
