I expected we would be worse than 15-7

[Cusefan0307]

So I’m not overreacting like most of you here. We all should have known this was a rebuilding year. In this big scheme of things we are ahead of where we are and as much negativity Howard has received from the fan base he is way better than what I projected. Keep this nucleus together and we can be good next year, but we need to develop a post game and we need to get better shooting 3’s.

 

[CuseFaninVT]

So I’m not overreacting like most of you here. We all should have known this was a rebuilding year. In this big scheme of things we are ahead of where we are and as much negativity Howard has received from the fan base he is way better than what I projected. Keep this nucleus together and we can be good next year, but we need to develop a post game and we need to get better shooting 3’s.

There are some fundamental flaws with our offense that I truly don't believe will be fixed. I don't think JB is actually interested.

Alvarado is a shrimp. Not once when he was playing anyone (everyone who played tonight is taller than that kid) did we ever even think about posting the taller player up and letting him go to work. Brissett had 10 covering him numerous times tonight and would just fade into the corner. Get the big out, and stick OB on the block. Jesus, what has happened to fundamental basketball? Why won't SU play it?

 

[Alsacs]

I honestly don’t care about the record this year.
I knew it was a rebuild and didn’t expect anything.
I hate the fact Jim Boeheim is stubborn on his offensive system and continues to throw a slop offensive system out there and we play an awful brand of basketball.
It’s just not entertaining and he won’t make changes.
He wants to play ugly basketball.
Our games make me not want to watch college basketball.
We have had talent and it’s still brutal basketball with sloppy fundamentals, and terrible ball movement with ISO ball and hope we get bailed out on jumpers.
People complain about the NBA when it’s product is miles better.

 

[Fly Rodder]

I don’t know about worse, but seeing the same crap doesn’t inspire confidence in “rebuilding”. Same stuff next season, just swap out some names.

 

[Cusefan0307]

I don’t know about worse, but seeing the same crap doesn’t inspire confidence in “rebuilding”. Same stuff next season, just swap out some names.

What did you think our record would be? I had us at about 11-11\12-10.

 

[STEVEHOLT]

I honestly don’t care about the record this year.
I knew it was a rebuild and didn’t expect anything.
I hate the fact Jim Boeheim is stubborn on his offensive system and continues to throw a slop offensive system out there and we play an awful brand of basketball.
It’s just not entertaining and he won’t make changes.
He wants to play ugly basketball.
Our games make me not want to watch college basketball.
We have had talent and it’s still brutal basketball with sloppy fundamentals, and terrible ball movement with ISO ball and hope we get bailed out on jumpers.
People complain about the NBA when it’s product is miles better.

Nobody runs this crap in the NBA. Everyone spreads the floor, moves the ball. once in a while you'll have some iso stuff with guys like lebron , kyrie, harden...but thats really not the system. I don't know anyone that runs the crap we do. Pound the ball into the floor for 30 seconds and then take a crappy shot.

 

[cuse10]

"Rebuilding year" is a cop out. You play to win the game. Every time they lose, you can't say, "well, it's a rebuilding year." Regardless of who's on the roster, you should be able to look at the schedule and say that's a W. I saw that with St. Bonaventure, Georgia Tech and Wake Forest. This team should be 18-4. They'd be the worst 18-4 team you've seen, but they'd be comfortably in. You think they play with the notion that they're rebuilding? Only fans do that.

This is arguably the worst year of college basketball in the last decade. Rebuilding year or not, if you can't sniff the tournament, you have a problem.

 

[MSOrange]

I predicted 17-14 so I can't say we're doing worse than I expected. But my gosh, it's frustrating watching games like last night and Notre Dame, which should have been easy winnable, get away from us because we can't freaking score.

 

[Cusefan0307]

"Rebuilding year" is a cop out. You play to win the game. Every time they lose, you can't say, "well, it's a rebuilding year." Regardless of who's on the roster, you should be able to look at the schedule and say that's a W. I saw that with St. Bonaventure, Georgia Tech and Wake Forest. This team should be 18-2. They'd be the worst 18-2 team you've seen, but they'd be comfortably in. You think they play with the notion that they're rebuilding? Only fans do that.

This is arguably the worst year of college basketball in the last decade. Rebuilding year or not, if you can't sniff the tournament, you have a problem.

People can piss and moan all they want, but I said in April after Lydon left we would struggle to win with TT because we lacked shooting. I’m not at all surprised where we are and nobody else should be either. We have zero inside game and can’t make jump shots. I don’t care what offense we are in we will struggle to score. We don’t have enough offensive talent.

 

[Fly Rodder]

What did you think our record would be? I had us at about 11-11\12-10.

Unfortunately, I missed the deadline for the Iggy's, but I expected a ~20 win team and at or just below .500 in conference. SU has dropped two of the expected 9 ACC wins to this point, which makes an 8-10 season a much longer shot than it was at the end of OOC play. With the schedule that's left, I think three wins (@BC/Wake/NC State) is probably the most likely scenario now with 4 wins being a best case scenario. At four wins, no tournament, unless they smoke Duke at Cameron, but that might even be a stretch.

 

[Fly Rodder]

I don’t care what offense we are in we will struggle to score. We don’t have enough offensive talent.

There are 351 teams in D1 and few have more than one top-100 recruit, let alone four or five. A lot seem to make it work somehow. There's talent there, they're just not good enough to run this offense.

I'm not sure what the answer is though and if it were easy SU would never lose a game. Tech isn't a good team, but they made SU's offense look downright bushleague.

 

[Alsacs]

People can piss and moan all they want, but I said in April after Lydon left we would struggle to win with TT because we lacked shooting. I’m not at all surprised where we are and nobody else should be either. We have zero inside game and can’t make jump shots. I don’t care what offense we are in we will struggle to score. We don’t have enough offensive talent.

Problem I have is I want to win a NC.
You can’t win a NC with this offensive system unless we get another Melo.
I am sure we will be better next year and in the future but JB’s stubbornness is so frustrating.
It sucks to watch us play even when we have more talent.

 

[Cusefan0307]

Problem I have is I want to win a NC.
You can’t win a NC with this offensive system unless we get another Melo.
I am sure we will be better next year and in the future but JB’s stubbornness is so frustrating.
It sucks to watch us play even when we have more talent.

We were pretty close to winning in 2013 with mostly the same system so I don’t totally buy that premise. If Triche gets called for a block instead of a charge we might be playing in the title game

I really think JB believes the only way we can win this year is Battle or Howard driving. I think you will see a much better offense next year.

I disagree to a point that we can score in different sets with the guys we have. I have a bigger issue in the staff not signing more shooters though. My hope next year is we have 4 guys who can shoot and Sidibe is healthy enough to pass Chukwu.

 

[Alsacs]

We were pretty close to winning in 2013 with mostly the same system so I don’t totally buy that premise. If Triche gets called for a block instead of a charge we might be playing in the title game

I really think JB believes the only way we can win this year is Battle or Howard driving. I think you will see a much better offense next year.

I disagree to a point that we can score in different sets with the guys we have. I have a bigger issue in the staff not signing more shooters though. My hope next year is we have 4 guys who can shoot and Sidibe is healthy enough to pass Chukwu.

The offense in 2013 had Triche, Fair, Southerland, MCW and Rak/Keita, Grant and it sucked.

We had talent and the halfcourt offense was terrible.
The 2013 D was great.
The offense wasn’t good enough to win it all.
Watch that Michigan game we had one player who could score Fair.
We ran very little for anybody but Southerland out of TOs.
In the halfcourt it was on MCW/Triche to dribble it around and then Fair make tough jumpers.

 

[iommi]

I had another lengthy post that was deleted in another thread so I'll just say that my optimism next year is dampened because we will have a senior pg who is neither a leader nor a pg. Too many turnovers, not a D-1 handle. The technical foul and dribbling the ball off his foot sums it up. No matter what he's going to start and get big minutes and that's a negative.

I love the players SU is bringing in but none of them is a pg. Maybe he will get his stuff together but it's tough to change all that in a matter of months.

 

[Cusefan0307]

The offense in 2013 had Triche, Fair, Southerland, MCW and Rak/Keita, Grant and it sucked.

We had talent and the halfcourt offense was terrible.
The 2013 D was great.
The offense wasn’t good enough to win it all.
Watch that Michigan game we had one player who could score Fair.
We ran very little for anybody but Southerland out of TOs.
In the halfcourt it was on MCW/Triche to dribble it around and then Fair make tough jumpers.

JB made the mistake of not putting the ball in Triches hands sooner because when he did he was actually creating offense as MCW was terrible in that FF game. We lost a close game and had beaten Louisville earlier that year so it was plenty good enough to beat Michigan and Louisville again.

If last years team was this good defensively we would be a top 3 ACC team.

 

[Dinkyspond]

I've accepted this is who we are. I'm hoping for a few more wins and a nice run in the NIT. It will help the returning players to get some experience. Howard is wildly inconsistent. Maybe next year we will have the depth and versatility to pull him and sit him down when he is stinking up the joint. We have no choice but to keep him in. The T shows how immature he is. You can't have that from your point guard.

 

[Jasoncuse]

I thought we'd be worse than 15-7, but we've played a very weak schedule, at least in terms of playing top competition. We've played Kansas and Virginia, every other decent team is near the bubble one way or the other, or just flat out stinks (UConn, Georgetown, Pitt, etc). With the upcoming schedule we have, I still expect to finish with around 14-15 losses.

 

[pearl31]

had us pegged at either 5-4 or 4-5 after 9 ACC games. actually had us pegged to lose last night once GT got Okogie back and Lammers healthy.
so I'm certainly not dismayed in terms of W-L
But the offense. Good god. And now with HW out... I'll just say I'd be mightily impressed if we scrap our way to 8-10 ACC

 

[longislandcuse]

Struggle with calling this a "rebuilding" year. Rebuilding implies an off year. We've sucked for about 5 years with two Final 4 runs masking wildly mediocre play and didn't make the tournament last year.

Don't get me wrong, I'd rather be trash all year with a Final Four than Top 10 and flame out in the S16, but the "program" isn't rebuilding...it's just been bad, for a while.

Hopefully next year changes that but our best player is going pro/euro so we're really just sucking through another year until a normal Syracuse recruiting class finally comes in.

 

[SoBristol]

...

Hopefully next year changes that but our best player is going pro/euro so we're really just sucking through another year until a normal Syracuse recruiting class finally comes in.

A normal SU class = Bazley, Carey, Buddy B, and Hughes eligible after sitting out. We haven't had one much better than that. Lose Battle, but everyone else returns, likely better year over year, especially this year's frosh. Sidibe has a lot of potential, if healthy. Unlike this season with only 3 scorers on the entire roster, next season JB could have 4 on the court plus Sidibe.

 

[NineOneSeven]

A normal SU class = Bazley, Carey, Buddy B, and Hughes eligible after sitting out. We haven't had one much better than that. Lose Battle, but everyone else returns, likely better year over year, especially this year's frosh. Sidibe has a lot of potential, if healthy. Unlike this season with only 3 scorers on the entire roster, next season JB could have 4 on the court plus Sidibe.

That is what we had last year. Hopefully next year, we can maintain solid defense but drastically improve shooting and offensive options.

 

[Alsacs]

A normal SU class = Bazley, Carey, Buddy B, and Hughes eligible after sitting out. We haven't had one much better than that. Lose Battle, but everyone else returns, likely better year over year, especially this year's frosh. Sidibe has a lot of potential, if healthy. Unlike this season with only 3 scorers on the entire roster, next season JB could have 4 on the court plus Sidibe.

Richardson
Lydon
Howard
Was a top 10 recruiting class.
We have had great clssses.
We just struggled in 2016.
2017 was a good recruiting class.

 

[SoBristol]

Richardson
Lydon
Howard
Was a top 10 recruiting class.
We have had great clssses.
We just struggled in 2016.
2017 was a good recruiting class.

Yes -- that class was good, though Howard did not play much. The current class is rated roughly top 20, and would be higher if Hughes counted. Should have 3 contributors to the 2018-19 rotation among Bazley, Carey & Hughes.

 

[SoBeCuse]

That is what we had last year. Hopefully next year, we can maintain solid defense but drastically improve shooting and offensive options.

Carey’s the key, IMO. We can’t continue to plod, not push it, and not play downhill. SU has always been best in transition. Just like UNC/Roy. Having to plod and execute in the halfcourt is not the recipe for success with any Boehein team.