Iona Thoughts

[General20]

First, let me say I like this SU team. When people say they like a team they usually mean the team is going to win a lot. I mean that its a long, athletic team, with the skill to play positionless basketball. That is the future of basketball and that is what I want to watch. We have all the tools to play that way - the tools are not finished products yet, but I think its going to be a ton of fun to watch them develop.

The immediate take away from this game was that Boeheim treated Iona as an equal. You can take this two ways . . . maybe it means Syracuse isn't any good, and maybe it means Iona is quite good. Boehiem didn't play Washington, didn't press, and didn't play man D. He would have done all 3 if he thought Iona had no chance of beating us. For the record, I think of this as more a sign that Iona is good than anything, because I remember Boeheim doing the same against decent Iona teams in the past. Perhaps someone with a better memory than me can confirm?

Boeheim playing Iona as an equal gave us a great view of what this Syracuse team is going to look like when it matters. I think we can say with confidence that SU will go 8 deep, for instance.

I will say this, Iona is really well coached. We won't go up against 5 more teams this year as prepared to play us as Iona was last night. Here is what they did ...

They played match up zone. A match up zone is basically man to man, but instead of following your man all over the court, you play man D against whoever is in your zone. Its a notoriously confusing D for young players to go up against when done right (which is was last night). It even seemed to confuse the announcers. Perhaps you remember an SU team a few years back that put up a total stinker of a loss against Temple early in the year because they couldn't figure out their match up zone. This team did a lot better than that one, and that one went to the Final 4 and the Big East tournament final if I remember correctly.

Iona put 3 great shooters behind the arc, one skilled player in the free throw gap area, and had another player just outside of the paint ready to catch an ally oop if the D left him to cover all the shooters. There didn't seem to be a lot of diversity to their offense, but I've always thought diversity is overrated. They had a solid strategy and the skill to pull it off.

They packed their zone in and dared us to shoot 3's, and even beyond that they were willing to leave Chukwu and Dolezaj open if it meant swarming our more reliable scorers.

They used their lack of size to their advantage, getting back into their tricky zone quickly and forcing us to play slow offensively, while at the same time beating us down the court for easy baskets when they had the ball.

Here is how we countered ...

First we threw it down to Chukwu early and often, making the statement that if they left him alone they would pay for it. This changed their D immediately, forcing them to guard all five players on the court. Next we started hitting some outside shots. Our percentage for the game was not great, but it was good enough to open things up for us inside. I mentioned this before the season, we might not have any great shooters, but we have a ton of guys that you need to at least guard, so even though our shooting wont be our strength it will be good enough to stretch the D, and open up spots for our athletes to attack. That is exactly what happened in this game.

Side note: is it just me or has Syracuse had a TON of jump shots go half way down just to pop out again this year? Not just in this game either, in all four games they've played. I don't know exactly what to make of this, but my guess is we are a little bit better shooting team than our percentage has showed so far.

Once we had Iona's zone guarding all five guys and stretched out, you know what happened. Battle took the ball to the hoop over and over again with great efficiency.

We had to play slow, but overall we were patient and able to score efficiently despite not getting many transition baskets. Exactly the thing many people feared we couldn't do. It really was a great gameplan from Iona and an even better counter from us. I thought the game was a joy to watch. We would have won the game by 20 or more had Iona not gotten way too many easy baskets in transition.

If there is one thing you can count on in college basketball its that young players will always let up a few easy transition baskets until they figure out just how fast the game is at this level. Its the kind of thing you can warn a player about, but it won't do any good until they actually see it for themselves. Usually we have to wait until we play a P5 team to learn this lesson. Thanks to Iona we learned the lesson early, which is a very good thing. This will not be a continuing problem, because we've got an athletic team.

Our half court defense was very good again, this time against a team that had the tools to score against us.

Some thoughts on individual players ...

Howard - Did a lot of things well, but made some BAD turnovers. That needs to stop, and the ball needs to be in Battle's hands to run the offense more than his.

Battle - Not sure what there is to say that everybody didn't already see. I think he'll be one of the best players in college basketball this year.

Brissett - Did you notice that they used him a few times to bring the ball up against the press? This is a great sign. Syracuse is a better team when one of their forwards can take some of the ballhandling pressure off the guards. Brissett is a better shooter than I thought he would be but needs to improve going to the basket, specifically he needs to pick and choose his spots better, and needs to get better using both hands.

Moyer - His primary function on this team is to rebound, and get garbage baskets. Iona is a small, poor rebounding team who plays zone. We were able to dominate the boards without Moyer, and his skills don't translate well to playing against a zone D. Bottom line, this was not the game to judge Moyer on, he shouldn't have played as many minutes as he did. Judge him when we play a big strong team who wants to score inside against us. Maybe Kansas.

Chukwu - The Chukwu we've seen so far this year is the guy I was expecting to see last year. Not a finished product by any means, but a guy who can affect the game. Iona's big guy was a big strong veteran who played physical. He was only 6'7, but I think you got a glimpse of how Chukwu can cope with big strong centers. I concede that Chukwu may struggle against REALLY big strong guys with post moves, but how many of those are we going to see this year?

Thorpe - He played terrible, but as others have mentioned, he looked pretty comfortable in the zone. He clearly has not been practicing with the team, and doesn't really know what he's doing out there yet. But he averaged 15ppg last year, so we know he can score. Assuming he is healthy, I think he is the big X factor for our team. Imagine this team with another 15ppg scorer on it! I wouldn't be at all surprised if he ended up being our second leading scorer this season. I, for one, am really glad we ended up with him instead of Green.

Dolezaj - Is it me or is this guy one of the most intriguing basketball players we've ever had? Its hard to make out exactly how good he will be, but I'm going to give it a shot. I watched four of his games overseas when he first signed with us and my opinion was that he could average 10ppg for us this year but he would really struggle rebounding. I'm going to stick with that assessment, with the caveat that he's a better defensive player than I imagined. You might be thinking that he doesn't really look like a 10ppg player right now. This is mostly because he is deferring to his teammates. But have you noticed that every time he drives to the basket good things tend to happen? And have you noticed that he's becoming just slightly more aggressive each game? Right now he is figuring out how things work on this side of the Atlantic. The two biggest changes seem to be that they call fouls here on things that were not fouls there, and they call travels here that were not travels there. I think he figures that out and gets more aggressive as the year goes on. So long as he can hit his free throws at a decent clip (say high 60's) I think we will be counting on him for 10 ppg or so every game.

Sidibe - This was his worst game, and the only game so far he was not as good as Chukwu, but that is going to happen with a freshman big. I really like Sidibe's game, and I think he can be the best freshman center SU has had in my life (full disclosure that's a pretty low bar, Otis Hill is the best freshman center I can remember, and he was mediocre at best).

Washington - Didn't play in this game, won't play in most games that matter, but I think he'll be a really good solid point guard for us down the line. He's got good size, he can shoot, and he makes good decisions. He could be ever bit as good as Tyler Ennis was for us, but it will take him until is junior or senior year. SU has a pretty good history with point guards named Washington.

 

[reedny]

Great write-up, G-20. You nailed it on Iona's strategy and JB's countermoves. As you noted, Howard's game is much improved, although not his PG skills. His scoring and driving abilities are strong, and he can certainly run point at times. But he's really not a natural distributor and gets into trouble and turns it over if he has to think too much. On the other hand, TB looks good bringing up the ball and he's obviously a threat at the top of the zone, where he has many options.

One positive you didn't mention that I LOVED in this game was the high-low that TB ran with Brissett. TB's drawing attention. And with Howard on the wing and bigs who can score, that opens up the middle so that Brissett can (and he did) bury that foul line jumper.

One negative you didn't mention is that we seem to have no idea how to run a P/R. That's been a B/B play for SU in the past. And we may get there. I'm hopeful, since we have guys actually feeding the post early in the season (a critically endangered part of our offense the last few years).

Good to read your game takes again. Personally, I like our team D, our positionless play, and I could even learn to like TB and FH as our 1/2. But a fourth (reliable) scorer better step up soon.

 

[pearl31]

the only take that really matters on here

 

[realorange]

the only take that really matters on here

Ah, but not with the accompanying color commentary that Tomcat gives us.

 

[iommi]

I'm worried about my guy Moyer offensively. How do you think his skills will translate against man defense? He seems unable to take anyone off the dribble and he doesn't have much explosion off the floor.

One thing about Battle I still don't get: he doesn't finish with his left hand. On that really tough and-one finish across the lane he finished on the left side with his right hand. Very odd. He finished lefty a lot in high school.

On Thorpe, he looks very sluggish. He looks uncomfortable in our system. Really wish he got here earlier.

You mentioned HW's size, he looks close to 6'1" than his advertised height. Are they counting the cartoonish hair style towards his height?

 

[pearl31]

Ah, but not with the accompanying color commentary that Tomcat gives us.

apples - oranges

 

[NateW]

Excellent stuff! Thanks for the effort.

This is an interesting team, for sure. The pieces seem to be there but is one season enough time to put it all together? It will be fun to watch!

One thing that this team needs to do is avoid is bad losses. Losing to St John's, BC, Georgetown last year were absolute killers when the committee evaluated us in March.

If we can avoid those losses early and get some big wins as we grow into our own as our youth gains their experience then our resume should be fine.

I agree with the sentiment that we have a group of solid shooters, no pure shooters but a group that will all need to be checked. I also agree that we have forwards that can handle some, whether it be to break a press or attack the rim. This year's Orange are also interested in and capable of playing good defense, unlike last year. All of these factors lead me to believe we will play more consistently and can keep "bad losses" off the resume.

 

[General20]

I'm worried about my guy Moyer offensively. How do you think his skills will translate against man defense? He seems unable to take anyone off the dribble and he doesn't have much explosion off the floor.

One thing about Battle I still don't get: he doesn't finish with his left hand. On that really tough and-one finish across the lane he finished on the left side with his right hand. Very odd. He finished lefty a lot in high school.

On Thorpe, he looks very sluggish. He looks uncomfortable in our system. Really wish he got here earlier.

You mentioned HW's size, he looks close to 6'1" than his advertised height. Are they counting the cartoonish hair style towards his height?

Obviously the jury is still out on Moyer. I've noticed he's taken quite a few mid range jump shots from the baseline. This is a shot you almost never see anybody take (for good reason, its an inefficient shot), and he hasn't made one yet, but I assume that if he's taking them its because he is making them in practice. I can't remember anybody scoring from there consistently since Lawrence Moten. If he can make a shot or two a game from that spot it will be good for us, and force defenses to guard a new area of the court. His main offense will come from rebounds/put backs. I think he will be a good garbage-man type player, and every team needs one of them. We just need to remember when evaluating Moyer that garbage players don't show their value against the worst teams on the schedule, they show their value against the best teams on the schedule when things are hardest. Thus we won't be able to truly evaluate Moyer until we play those teams.

Agree with you about Thorpe. He is way behind. I'm hoping he will catch up by ACC play. The good news is we know he can do it, because he's done it in the past. I still think he will be a very important player for us.

 

[iommi]

General, I think Moyer has taken a few baseline jumpers because he was open. He's had a hard time creating his own looks. It's a concern. I've been a big supporter and think he will help us but he looks a little overwhelmed, almost upset out there. He's used to a lot of success and he's worked very hard and I think he is trying too hard to make things happen after the long layoff. Still, his lack of explosion off the floor and his inability to drive by his guy is concerning.

 

[Killdozer]

First, let me say I like this SU team. When people say they like a team they usually mean the team is going to win a lot. I mean that its a long, athletic team, with the skill to play positionless basketball. That is the future of basketball and that is what I want to watch. We have all the tools to play that way - the tools are not finished products yet, but I think its going to be a ton of fun to watch them develop.

The immediate take away from this game was that Boeheim treated Iona as an equal. You can take this two ways . . . maybe it means Syracuse isn't any good, and maybe it means Iona is quite good. Boehiem didn't play Washington, didn't press, and didn't play man D. He would have done all 3 if he thought Iona had no chance of beating us. For the record, I think of this as more a sign that Iona is good than anything, because I remember Boeheim doing the same against decent Iona teams in the past. Perhaps someone with a better memory than me can confirm?

Boeheim playing Iona as an equal gave us a great view of what this Syracuse team is going to look like when it matters. I think we can say with confidence that SU will go 8 deep, for instance.

I will say this, Iona is really well coached. We won't go up against 5 more teams this year as prepared to play us as Iona was last night. Here is what they did ...

They played match up zone. A match up zone is basically man to man, but instead of following your man all over the court, you play man D against whoever is in your zone. Its a notoriously confusing D for young players to go up against when done right (which is was last night). It even seemed to confuse the announcers. Perhaps you remember an SU team a few years back that put up a total stinker of a loss against Temple early in the year because they couldn't figure out their match up zone. This team did a lot better than that one, and that one went to the Final 4 and the Big East tournament final if I remember correctly.

Iona put 3 great shooters behind the arc, one skilled player in the free throw gap area, and had another player just outside of the paint ready to catch an ally oop if the D left him to cover all the shooters. There didn't seem to be a lot of diversity to their offense, but I've always thought diversity is overrated. They had a solid strategy and the skill to pull it off.

They packed their zone in and dared us to shoot 3's, and even beyond that they were willing to leave Chukwu and Dolezaj open if it meant swarming our more reliable scorers.

They used their lack of size to their advantage, getting back into their tricky zone quickly and forcing us to play slow offensively, while at the same time beating us down the court for easy baskets when they had the ball.

Here is how we countered ...

First we threw it down to Chukwu early and often, making the statement that if they left him alone they would pay for it. This changed their D immediately, forcing them to guard all five players on the court. Next we started hitting some outside shots. Our percentage for the game was not great, but it was good enough to open things up for us inside. I mentioned this before the season, we might not have any great shooters, but we have a ton of guys that you need to at least guard, so even though our shooting wont be our strength it will be good enough to stretch the D, and open up spots for our athletes to attack. That is exactly what happened in this game.

Side note: is it just me or has Syracuse had a TON of jump shots go half way down just to pop out again this year? Not just in this game either, in all four games they've played. I don't know exactly what to make of this, but my guess is we are a little bit better shooting team than our percentage has showed so far.

Once we had Iona's zone guarding all five guys and stretched out, you know what happened. Battle took the ball to the hoop over and over again with great efficiency.

We had to play slow, but overall we were patient and able to score efficiently despite not getting many transition baskets. Exactly the thing many people feared we couldn't do. It really was a great gameplan from Iona and an even better counter from us. I thought the game was a joy to watch. We would have won the game by 20 or more had Iona not gotten way too many easy baskets in transition.

If there is one thing you can count on in college basketball its that young players will always let up a few easy transition baskets until they figure out just how fast the game is at this level. Its the kind of thing you can warn a player about, but it won't do any good until they actually see it for themselves. Usually we have to wait until we play a P5 team to learn this lesson. Thanks to Iona we learned the lesson early, which is a very good thing. This will not be a continuing problem, because we've got an athletic team.

Our half court defense was very good again, this time against a team that had the tools to score against us.

Some thoughts on individual players ...

Howard - Did a lot of things well, but made some BAD turnovers. That needs to stop, and the ball needs to be in Battle's hands to run the offense more than his.

Battle - Not sure what there is to say that everybody didn't already see. I think he'll be one of the best players in college basketball this year.

Brissett - Did you notice that they used him a few times to bring the ball up against the press? This is a great sign. Syracuse is a better team when one of their forwards can take some of the ballhandling pressure off the guards. Brissett is a better shooter than I thought he would be but needs to improve going to the basket, specifically he needs to pick and choose his spots better, and needs to get better using both hands.

Moyer - His primary function on this team is to rebound, and get garbage baskets. Iona is a small, poor rebounding team who plays zone. We were able to dominate the boards without Moyer, and his skills don't translate well to playing against a zone D. Bottom line, this was not the game to judge Moyer on, he shouldn't have played as many minutes as he did. Judge him when we play a big strong team who wants to score inside against us. Maybe Kansas.

Chukwu - The Chukwu we've seen so far this year is the guy I was expecting to see last year. Not a finished product by any means, but a guy who can affect the game. Iona's big guy was a big strong veteran who played physical. He was only 6'7, but I think you got a glimpse of how Chukwu can cope with big strong centers. I concede that Chukwu may struggle against REALLY big strong guys with post moves, but how many of those are we going to see this year?

Thorpe - He played terrible, but as others have mentioned, he looked pretty comfortable in the zone. He clearly has not been practicing with the team, and doesn't really know what he's doing out there yet. But he averaged 15ppg last year, so we know he can score. Assuming he is healthy, I think he is the big X factor for our team. Imagine this team with another 15ppg scorer on it! I wouldn't be at all surprised if he ended up being our second leading scorer this season. I, for one, am really glad we ended up with him instead of Green.

Dolezaj - Is it me or is this guy one of the most intriguing basketball players we've ever had? Its hard to make out exactly how good he will be, but I'm going to give it a shot. I watched four of his games overseas when he first signed with us and my opinion was that he could average 10ppg for us this year but he would really struggle rebounding. I'm going to stick with that assessment, with the caveat that he's a better defensive player than I imagined. You might be thinking that he doesn't really look like a 10ppg player right now. This is mostly because he is deferring to his teammates. But have you noticed that every time he drives to the basket good things tend to happen? And have you noticed that he's becoming just slightly more aggressive each game? Right now he is figuring out how things work on this side of the Atlantic. The two biggest changes seem to be that they call fouls here on things that were not fouls there, and they call travels here that were not travels there. I think he figures that out and gets more aggressive as the year goes on. So long as he can hit his free throws at a decent clip (say high 60's) I think we will be counting on him for 10 ppg or so every game.

Sidibe - This was his worst game, and the only game so far he was not as good as Chukwu, but that is going to happen with a freshman big. I really like Sidibe's game, and I think he can be the best freshman center SU has had in my life (full disclosure that's a pretty low bar, Otis Hill is the best freshman center I can remember, and he was mediocre at best).

Washington - Didn't play in this game, won't play in most games that matter, but I think he'll be a really good solid point guard for us down the line. He's got good size, he can shoot, and he makes good decisions. He could be ever bit as good as Tyler Ennis was for us, but it will take him until is junior or senior year. SU has a pretty good history with point guards named Washington.

Great write uo. I agree about the ball bouncing out! Seems like it is only on one end if the court. Noticed this in every game.

 

[dollarbill44]

I'm not sure Iona is all that good. They lost to Albany in their first game.

 

[stuckinbig11]

your wisdom is appreciated

 

[bballbeadle]

Ah, but not with the accompanying color commentary that Tomcat gives us.

Or the stats of SWC!

 

[bballbeadle]

Here comes the General!(Rise up!)
Here comes the General! (Rise up!)

Sorry, sorry, “Hamilton” again. I curse the day I listened to that damn show 200 times!

I am always fascinated by your insights. One thing that consistently happens is that you make Boeheim’s coaching seem so much smarter than I ever give him credit for. I become aware of my collosal ignorance, then a flash of shame, a soupçon of chagrin, then I shake it all off to become a regular fan again, a wee bit smarter than before. Thanks!

Alexander Hamilton. My name is Alexander Hamilton. There’s a million things I haven’t done.

D’oh!

 

[Orangezoo]

First, let me say I like this SU team. When people say they like a team they usually mean the team is going to win a lot. I mean that its a long, athletic team, with the skill to play positionless basketball. That is the future of basketball and that is what I want to watch. We have all the tools to play that way - the tools are not finished products yet, but I think its going to be a ton of fun to watch them develop.

The immediate take away from this game was that Boeheim treated Iona as an equal. You can take this two ways . . . maybe it means Syracuse isn't any good, and maybe it means Iona is quite good. Boehiem didn't play Washington, didn't press, and didn't play man D. He would have done all 3 if he thought Iona had no chance of beating us. For the record, I think of this as more a sign that Iona is good than anything, because I remember Boeheim doing the same against decent Iona teams in the past. Perhaps someone with a better memory than me can confirm?

Boeheim playing Iona as an equal gave us a great view of what this Syracuse team is going to look like when it matters. I think we can say with confidence that SU will go 8 deep, for instance.

I will say this, Iona is really well coached. We won't go up against 5 more teams this year as prepared to play us as Iona was last night. Here is what they did ...

They played match up zone. A match up zone is basically man to man, but instead of following your man all over the court, you play man D against whoever is in your zone. Its a notoriously confusing D for young players to go up against when done right (which is was last night). It even seemed to confuse the announcers. Perhaps you remember an SU team a few years back that put up a total stinker of a loss against Temple early in the year because they couldn't figure out their match up zone. This team did a lot better than that one, and that one went to the Final 4 and the Big East tournament final if I remember correctly.

Iona put 3 great shooters behind the arc, one skilled player in the free throw gap area, and had another player just outside of the paint ready to catch an ally oop if the D left him to cover all the shooters. There didn't seem to be a lot of diversity to their offense, but I've always thought diversity is overrated. They had a solid strategy and the skill to pull it off.

They packed their zone in and dared us to shoot 3's, and even beyond that they were willing to leave Chukwu and Dolezaj open if it meant swarming our more reliable scorers.

They used their lack of size to their advantage, getting back into their tricky zone quickly and forcing us to play slow offensively, while at the same time beating us down the court for easy baskets when they had the ball.

Here is how we countered ...

First we threw it down to Chukwu early and often, making the statement that if they left him alone they would pay for it. This changed their D immediately, forcing them to guard all five players on the court. Next we started hitting some outside shots. Our percentage for the game was not great, but it was good enough to open things up for us inside. I mentioned this before the season, we might not have any great shooters, but we have a ton of guys that you need to at least guard, so even though our shooting wont be our strength it will be good enough to stretch the D, and open up spots for our athletes to attack. That is exactly what happened in this game.

Side note: is it just me or has Syracuse had a TON of jump shots go half way down just to pop out again this year? Not just in this game either, in all four games they've played. I don't know exactly what to make of this, but my guess is we are a little bit better shooting team than our percentage has showed so far.

Once we had Iona's zone guarding all five guys and stretched out, you know what happened. Battle took the ball to the hoop over and over again with great efficiency.

We had to play slow, but overall we were patient and able to score efficiently despite not getting many transition baskets. Exactly the thing many people feared we couldn't do. It really was a great gameplan from Iona and an even better counter from us. I thought the game was a joy to watch. We would have won the game by 20 or more had Iona not gotten way too many easy baskets in transition.

If there is one thing you can count on in college basketball its that young players will always let up a few easy transition baskets until they figure out just how fast the game is at this level. Its the kind of thing you can warn a player about, but it won't do any good until they actually see it for themselves. Usually we have to wait until we play a P5 team to learn this lesson. Thanks to Iona we learned the lesson early, which is a very good thing. This will not be a continuing problem, because we've got an athletic team.

Our half court defense was very good again, this time against a team that had the tools to score against us.

Some thoughts on individual players ...

Howard - Did a lot of things well, but made some BAD turnovers. That needs to stop, and the ball needs to be in Battle's hands to run the offense more than his.

Battle - Not sure what there is to say that everybody didn't already see. I think he'll be one of the best players in college basketball this year.

Brissett - Did you notice that they used him a few times to bring the ball up against the press? This is a great sign. Syracuse is a better team when one of their forwards can take some of the ballhandling pressure off the guards. Brissett is a better shooter than I thought he would be but needs to improve going to the basket, specifically he needs to pick and choose his spots better, and needs to get better using both hands.

Moyer - His primary function on this team is to rebound, and get garbage baskets. Iona is a small, poor rebounding team who plays zone. We were able to dominate the boards without Moyer, and his skills don't translate well to playing against a zone D. Bottom line, this was not the game to judge Moyer on, he shouldn't have played as many minutes as he did. Judge him when we play a big strong team who wants to score inside against us. Maybe Kansas.

Chukwu - The Chukwu we've seen so far this year is the guy I was expecting to see last year. Not a finished product by any means, but a guy who can affect the game. Iona's big guy was a big strong veteran who played physical. He was only 6'7, but I think you got a glimpse of how Chukwu can cope with big strong centers. I concede that Chukwu may struggle against REALLY big strong guys with post moves, but how many of those are we going to see this year?

Thorpe - He played terrible, but as others have mentioned, he looked pretty comfortable in the zone. He clearly has not been practicing with the team, and doesn't really know what he's doing out there yet. But he averaged 15ppg last year, so we know he can score. Assuming he is healthy, I think he is the big X factor for our team. Imagine this team with another 15ppg scorer on it! I wouldn't be at all surprised if he ended up being our second leading scorer this season. I, for one, am really glad we ended up with him instead of Green.

Dolezaj - Is it me or is this guy one of the most intriguing basketball players we've ever had? Its hard to make out exactly how good he will be, but I'm going to give it a shot. I watched four of his games overseas when he first signed with us and my opinion was that he could average 10ppg for us this year but he would really struggle rebounding. I'm going to stick with that assessment, with the caveat that he's a better defensive player than I imagined. You might be thinking that he doesn't really look like a 10ppg player right now. This is mostly because he is deferring to his teammates. But have you noticed that every time he drives to the basket good things tend to happen? And have you noticed that he's becoming just slightly more aggressive each game? Right now he is figuring out how things work on this side of the Atlantic. The two biggest changes seem to be that they call fouls here on things that were not fouls there, and they call travels here that were not travels there. I think he figures that out and gets more aggressive as the year goes on. So long as he can hit his free throws at a decent clip (say high 60's) I think we will be counting on him for 10 ppg or so every game.

Sidibe - This was his worst game, and the only game so far he was not as good as Chukwu, but that is going to happen with a freshman big. I really like Sidibe's game, and I think he can be the best freshman center SU has had in my life (full disclosure that's a pretty low bar, Otis Hill is the best freshman center I can remember, and he was mediocre at best).

Washington - Didn't play in this game, won't play in most games that matter, but I think he'll be a really good solid point guard for us down the line. He's got good size, he can shoot, and he makes good decisions. He could be ever bit as good as Tyler Ennis was for us, but it will take him until is junior or senior year. SU has a pretty good history with point guards named Washington.

Awesome breakdown as always!! I think it is important to call out what Iona did to make this a hard fought game. So far our two wins won't win us a bid but will be solid by year end as top 100 or 150 wins at worst. Much better than packing on the sub 200 lbs.

Also great stuff on Dolezaj. You can see he is learning every game and applying that knowledge the next game. This team looks like an SU team and overall a basketball team that knows what it's doing despite the bumps due to youth.

 

[Orangezoo]

I'm not sure Iona is all that good. They lost to Albany in their first game.

Albany may be better than expected themselves. They beat up Boston U on the road. Also similar to their game vs Iona they really attacked and won the game at the free throw line.

The thing about Iona is that when they do go cold from 3, they lose to teams they shouldn't. Always have seemed to be a team that has a lot of volatility.

 

[721Comstock]

Haven’t seen anybody hit baseline J’s since Moten?

General, call for you - CJ Fair is on the orange courtesy phone, Line 1.

Otherwise, your usual overall excellent recap.

Oshae was an aggressive and relentless driver in HS - hope we’ll see him do more of that now. And soon.
He’s shooting the 3 well, but don’t want him to fall in love with that, and become the next Donte.

As you said - Iona is a solid, experienced, well coached team, who had a great game plan and executed it very well.
Not at all your standard OOC cupcake.

It was a solid test for our team.
Which thankfully, we passed.

 

[SoBristol]

Great write-up, of course.

Thorpe -- not the best game to judge his game. He played only 8 minutes, as Howard never came out and Battle played 35. For some of Thorpe's minutes, JB tried 3 guards. That combination has yet to prove effective. We will have to see how the guard rotation evolves -- and whether Howard can show he deserves the preponderance of the minutes over Thorpe. More bluntly, Thorpe needs to play better or his role will be in short relief for the starters.

Dolezaj vs Moyer -- these two have been dividing time and bring very different skill sets. Moyer, with a thicker build, gets defensive rebounds, and that may be about it at this stage of his development. Common line might be 6 boards, 4 points. Dolezaj had 6 total rebounds, 4 on the offensive end (2 on the same play, rebounding his own miss, and got one in the last minutes that helped SU run out the clock ). Dolezaj competes for defensive rebounds, but he gets pushed around on occasions. He is more active than Moyer defensively -- gets out on shooters quicker and his height helps. He has been active in the press in prior games. Dolezaj has some small forward skills; he sees the court and makes quick passes.

Will he average 10 points consistently, as General says, when he gets more comfortable and defers less? He hasn't reached 10 yet, and hasn't shown great shooting ability, so a consistent 10 is a stretch. He has made a single jumper in each game, and managed a couple of lay-ups against smaller defenders when given an opening or off misses. Boeheim likes him, and Dolezaj will likely earn more minutes. When talking about Dolezaj's thin frame, Boeheim brings up Warrick, Orr, and Damone Brown -- thin forwards who had success. How much Dolezaj can develop will be a big key this season -- might even be the biggest key.

 

[Forza Azzurri]

First, let me say I like this SU team. When people say they like a team they usually mean the team is going to win a lot. I mean that its a long, athletic team, with the skill to play positionless basketball. That is the future of basketball and that is what I want to watch. We have all the tools to play that way - the tools are not finished products yet, but I think its going to be a ton of fun to watch them develop.

The immediate take away from this game was that Boeheim treated Iona as an equal. You can take this two ways . . . maybe it means Syracuse isn't any good, and maybe it means Iona is quite good. Boehiem didn't play Washington, didn't press, and didn't play man D. He would have done all 3 if he thought Iona had no chance of beating us. For the record, I think of this as more a sign that Iona is good than anything, because I remember Boeheim doing the same against decent Iona teams in the past. Perhaps someone with a better memory than me can confirm?

Boeheim playing Iona as an equal gave us a great view of what this Syracuse team is going to look like when it matters. I think we can say with confidence that SU will go 8 deep, for instance.

I will say this, Iona is really well coached. We won't go up against 5 more teams this year as prepared to play us as Iona was last night. Here is what they did ...

They played match up zone. A match up zone is basically man to man, but instead of following your man all over the court, you play man D against whoever is in your zone. Its a notoriously confusing D for young players to go up against when done right (which is was last night). It even seemed to confuse the announcers. Perhaps you remember an SU team a few years back that put up a total stinker of a loss against Temple early in the year because they couldn't figure out their match up zone. This team did a lot better than that one, and that one went to the Final 4 and the Big East tournament final if I remember correctly.

Iona put 3 great shooters behind the arc, one skilled player in the free throw gap area, and had another player just outside of the paint ready to catch an ally oop if the D left him to cover all the shooters. There didn't seem to be a lot of diversity to their offense, but I've always thought diversity is overrated. They had a solid strategy and the skill to pull it off.

They packed their zone in and dared us to shoot 3's, and even beyond that they were willing to leave Chukwu and Dolezaj open if it meant swarming our more reliable scorers.

They used their lack of size to their advantage, getting back into their tricky zone quickly and forcing us to play slow offensively, while at the same time beating us down the court for easy baskets when they had the ball.

Here is how we countered ...

First we threw it down to Chukwu early and often, making the statement that if they left him alone they would pay for it. This changed their D immediately, forcing them to guard all five players on the court. Next we started hitting some outside shots. Our percentage for the game was not great, but it was good enough to open things up for us inside. I mentioned this before the season, we might not have any great shooters, but we have a ton of guys that you need to at least guard, so even though our shooting wont be our strength it will be good enough to stretch the D, and open up spots for our athletes to attack. That is exactly what happened in this game.

Side note: is it just me or has Syracuse had a TON of jump shots go half way down just to pop out again this year? Not just in this game either, in all four games they've played. I don't know exactly what to make of this, but my guess is we are a little bit better shooting team than our percentage has showed so far.

Once we had Iona's zone guarding all five guys and stretched out, you know what happened. Battle took the ball to the hoop over and over again with great efficiency.

We had to play slow, but overall we were patient and able to score efficiently despite not getting many transition baskets. Exactly the thing many people feared we couldn't do. It really was a great gameplan from Iona and an even better counter from us. I thought the game was a joy to watch. We would have won the game by 20 or more had Iona not gotten way too many easy baskets in transition.

If there is one thing you can count on in college basketball its that young players will always let up a few easy transition baskets until they figure out just how fast the game is at this level. Its the kind of thing you can warn a player about, but it won't do any good until they actually see it for themselves. Usually we have to wait until we play a P5 team to learn this lesson. Thanks to Iona we learned the lesson early, which is a very good thing. This will not be a continuing problem, because we've got an athletic team.

Our half court defense was very good again, this time against a team that had the tools to score against us.

Some thoughts on individual players ...

Howard - Did a lot of things well, but made some BAD turnovers. That needs to stop, and the ball needs to be in Battle's hands to run the offense more than his.

Battle - Not sure what there is to say that everybody didn't already see. I think he'll be one of the best players in college basketball this year.

Brissett - Did you notice that they used him a few times to bring the ball up against the press? This is a great sign. Syracuse is a better team when one of their forwards can take some of the ballhandling pressure off the guards. Brissett is a better shooter than I thought he would be but needs to improve going to the basket, specifically he needs to pick and choose his spots better, and needs to get better using both hands.

Moyer - His primary function on this team is to rebound, and get garbage baskets. Iona is a small, poor rebounding team who plays zone. We were able to dominate the boards without Moyer, and his skills don't translate well to playing against a zone D. Bottom line, this was not the game to judge Moyer on, he shouldn't have played as many minutes as he did. Judge him when we play a big strong team who wants to score inside against us. Maybe Kansas.

Chukwu - The Chukwu we've seen so far this year is the guy I was expecting to see last year. Not a finished product by any means, but a guy who can affect the game. Iona's big guy was a big strong veteran who played physical. He was only 6'7, but I think you got a glimpse of how Chukwu can cope with big strong centers. I concede that Chukwu may struggle against REALLY big strong guys with post moves, but how many of those are we going to see this year?

Thorpe - He played terrible, but as others have mentioned, he looked pretty comfortable in the zone. He clearly has not been practicing with the team, and doesn't really know what he's doing out there yet. But he averaged 15ppg last year, so we know he can score. Assuming he is healthy, I think he is the big X factor for our team. Imagine this team with another 15ppg scorer on it! I wouldn't be at all surprised if he ended up being our second leading scorer this season. I, for one, am really glad we ended up with him instead of Green.

Dolezaj - Is it me or is this guy one of the most intriguing basketball players we've ever had? Its hard to make out exactly how good he will be, but I'm going to give it a shot. I watched four of his games overseas when he first signed with us and my opinion was that he could average 10ppg for us this year but he would really struggle rebounding. I'm going to stick with that assessment, with the caveat that he's a better defensive player than I imagined. You might be thinking that he doesn't really look like a 10ppg player right now. This is mostly because he is deferring to his teammates. But have you noticed that every time he drives to the basket good things tend to happen? And have you noticed that he's becoming just slightly more aggressive each game? Right now he is figuring out how things work on this side of the Atlantic. The two biggest changes seem to be that they call fouls here on things that were not fouls there, and they call travels here that were not travels there. I think he figures that out and gets more aggressive as the year goes on. So long as he can hit his free throws at a decent clip (say high 60's) I think we will be counting on him for 10 ppg or so every game.

Sidibe - This was his worst game, and the only game so far he was not as good as Chukwu, but that is going to happen with a freshman big. I really like Sidibe's game, and I think he can be the best freshman center SU has had in my life (full disclosure that's a pretty low bar, Otis Hill is the best freshman center I can remember, and he was mediocre at best).

Washington - Didn't play in this game, won't play in most games that matter, but I think he'll be a really good solid point guard for us down the line. He's got good size, he can shoot, and he makes good decisions. He could be ever bit as good as Tyler Ennis was for us, but it will take him until is junior or senior year. SU has a pretty good history with point guards named Washington.

Complete non-sequitur but I've been waiting for you to make an appearance...

So, I am walking through a park in Garfield, NJ going to watch my son compete in the middle school county cross-country championships and I come across this group of guys playing bocce on two bocce courts.

I am early so I stop to watch them play.

I hear them speaking and can pick up about 1/3rd to 1/2 of what they are saying.

There is a guy sitting there watching them off to he side but clearly part of the group and I say to him, "What dialect are you speaking?".

He gives me one of those sizing-up looks and says, "Italian.".

Knowing he is now with me, I switch over to Italian and say, "No you aren't. I speak Italian and you guys are not speaking Italian. You are speaking some type of dialect. What dialect are you speaking?".

Turns out the entire group comes from the neighborhood with the neighborhood being Palermo and its nearby suburbs. All guys who emigrated in the 50s and 60s...

A little slice of Sicilian bocce in urban/suburban NJ...

How awesome is that?

 

[Fly Rodder]

He is more active than Moyer defensively -- gets out on shooters quicker and his height helps.

Marek has real quick feet; he's always moving.

 

[OttoMets]

...

One negative you didn't mention is that we seem to have no idea how to run a P/R. That's been a B/B play for SU in the past. And we may get there. I'm hopeful, since we have guys actually feeding the post early in the season (a critically endangered part of our offense the last few years).

...

Not that this changes a negative into a positive, but we haven't been able to rely on the pick and roll for over half a decade now because of turnover and underskilled point guards. Carter-Williams never really got there, Ennis couldn't run the play at all, Gbinije same, Kaleb Joseph I can't even remember at this point...

While I like Frank, I've pretty much solidly moved into the camp of people who think he's not a point guard. So maybe this doesn't improve this year, unless Thorpe improves enough to earn minutes and demonstrates that he can distribute as well as score.

 

[TinyManInside]

I really like what I've seen from Marek so far, particularly with his defense and hustle, but I don't see anything that indicates to me that he'll average 10 ppg this year as a frosh. I mean, he hasn't really shown any offensive skill other than putbacks, finishing on the break a couple times, and just being generally active around the basket. He's gonna score, but I don't think this is enough to get him to 10 points per game as an average.

His handle needs a lot of work and he's gonna get bumped off balance by stronger ACC players so I'm not sure how effective he's going to be taking the ball to the basket. His perimeter shot is slow to develop and a little weird mechanically so I don't see him as a consistent 3 point shooter yet.

I think the kid has a pretty high ceiling though, as he gets stronger these other skills will build in. Thinking about the combination of Bazley, Brissett, and Dolezaj gets me really excited. (Not sure how/where Moyer is going to fit into that group next year... Moyer's time might not come until some of the others clear out).

Mason