My friend was coaching a hoops clinic for high school girls in my town. Baye and his wife live with one of the other coaches right now and so Baye came tonight to help out. My friend called me when Baye showed up and I scrambled to get to the gym right away.
Needless to say, Baye might be one of the nicest former players I've ever met. He was very cool and surprisingly outspoken about a lot of Syracuse stuff. He's still very much in tune with what's going on with the program and is very close with a lot of our former players. I'll get to some of that stuff in a minute.
I spoke with Baye for a long part of the hour or so I was there. He was so engaging but when he wasn't talking to me, my friend would call upon Baye to show the girls something. It was cool to watch. Baye might be able to coach some day. He struggled shooting with the smaller women's ball (he told me he was shooting yesterday with an NBA ball) but he did all the drills well and instructed them very well. He even dunked once. It was funny- my friend even had him running suicides (don't think they call them that anymore to be p.c.) with the girls.
Anyway, he did say that although he was surprised by Hop leaving, in retrospect he did notice that Hop wasn't himself this year. He said his body language wasn't the Hop he knew (he said he was closest to Hop than any of the coaches). He said his feeling and the feeling of other former players is that JB wasn't going to retire any time soon so he was glad that Hop got a head coaching job. Baye did say he often wondered if Hop did get the SU job, would he have retained Gerry and Autry or would he have cleared house.
This is funny: he said that when Hop left, Baye called JB and offered to help out instructing the big men (I don't think he meant he wanted a full-time coaching gig). He laughed and said JB never called him back but that he heard through the grapevine that JB thought Baye was too young. He said Hop became a great big men coach due to his time with USA Basketball. Hop learned a bunch of drills and worked with some of the best bigs on the planet. (He also said Autry did great work with the forwards but mentioned it is so odd they have nothing but guards for coaches.).
I told Baye he was such a great zone defender and he said he was amazed at how bad the defenders were this year. He put his hands against his sides and said that most of the guys stood there like soldiers. I joked that he could definitely help with Taurean. He laughed. He did say he couldn't believe how bad some of those guys are at zone. "Is it so hard to spread out and get your hands to your side" (as a big man inside)? He's good friends with Nick Resavy (who now works for the Nets) and Baye does hear that some guys are concerned that the all-zone defense hurts some SU players' stock. He said that he thought James Southerland, for example, wanted to play man and would've been a great as a man defender. I said, "tell that zone hurts our players to all the first round draft picks we have been churning out." Again, he laughed (he laughed at pretty much everything).
We talked about how bad the refereeing is in college and we talked about the brutal Elite 8 loss to Ohio State and how we got screwed by the refs. He said the players were livid after that game. Baye said he would breathe on Sullinger and they'd call a foul on him, He mentioned how bad Michael Stephens is and how he couldn't believe they let him ref the title game last night.
He also talked about the players-only meeting they had after the blowout loss to G-town in 2013 helped lead to the Final Four run. He said Brandon Triche was really outspoken in the meeting. He reminisced about the Indiana Sweet 16 game and laughed at how clueless they were against the zone.
He also talked about Nick Resavy bringing him in to do some casual scrimmaging work with the Nets and how he held his own.
Baye met Bourama Sidibe briefly (they only had time to exchange pleasantries). He said he used it as a chance to screw with JB. Baye and Bourama were talking to each other in French (I think Sidibe told me he speaks 5 languages). JB walked by and Baye joked with JB that they were talking trash about JB in French. Ha.
Baye needs shoulder surgery soon. He's not working (it took him a long time to get his green card). Super nice guy. He said he hopes to see me again. There was a lot more but those are the bullet points. We both went on and on. LOL.
