I've spent way too many years pining for Scoop Jardine | Page 4 | Syracusefan.com

I've spent way too many years pining for Scoop Jardine

You don't go from #1 to looking like a bubble team in a span of 1 month without the plane hitting severe turbulence. At least that's how it might look on paper.

Many saw the turbulence coming. It felt like a huge stock bubble just waiting to pop.
I think most of us saw that coming. I kept telling my non Syracuse friends that it was like the games were fixed on our way to 25-0. Things just kept going our way. The game returned to the mean. We lost close games at the end to average teams. At the end of the day, our record ended up being what we were.
 
Fabs pick and roll for the lob dunk was my favorite play. We just had killers on that team. Ugh...dumb paper

Scoop, as frustrating as some passes were, was amazing at lobs. How many of those do we have recently? That team was loaded, top to bottom. Go look at the stats from that season. And even the guys who played the least- Rakeem, MCW, Keita- all ended up being fine contributors, two of them NBA draft picks. An insane season all around. If you were trying to build a team, you wouldn't deviate far, if at all, from that roster.
 
I was convinced--CONVINCED--after observing this team in preseason practice that they were poised to have a 2012 type of season. Never did I envision our guard play being so poor.

Crazy.

At this point I think we need to play like we did with Rak and run the offense through TL. That's our best chance at winning games.
 
Scoop signed a couple weeks ago with a team in the Canadian Basketball League.

And Ennis was a great PG.

Scoop making a comeback?

Weird at this stage, having been out of basketball for several years. Good for him.
 
No book. We won a number of games we could have lost along the way of that 25-0. Close games. We lost some games at the end by a couple of pts each game. They were games we could have won. B.C., N.C state, Dayton. All could have gone our way. Hell, early in the season we were lucky to beat St Francis. This past year, we won those games in the tournament.

Well there was a book and I agree about those earlier games. I was actually sugar coating in my post. I was one of those posters during that streak who was mocked when showing concern with performances against the Clemsons/GTech/BCs. We needed a last second basket to beat somebody like that...maybe VA Tech then it was all downhill from there which led to a one-sided NC St ACC Tourney one and done then the Dayton mess.
 
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Scoop, as frustrating as some passes were, was amazing at lobs. How many of those do we have recently? That team was loaded, top to bottom. Go look at the stats from that season. And even the guys who played the least- Rakeem, MCW, Keita- all ended up being fine contributors, two of them NBA draft picks. An insane season all around. If you were trying to build a team, you wouldn't deviate far, if at all, from that roster.

That's a two way street. I don't think we have anyone on the roster right now that would consistently finish on a lob, even if it were well thrown.
 
This is a weird team. We manhandled teams early and took Monmouth to the shed. Then lost all our mojo against USC
It's starting to look like Monmouth just had a bad game against SU. Before SU, they took a full-strength SC team to OT and after the SU loss, they've reeled off 8-straight including a win at Memphis. I don't want to be not-optimistic, but right now I think they give UNC a better game than SU does.
 
Scoop making a comeback?

Weird at this stage, having been out of basketball for several years. Good for him.
Not by his choice. Broken bone, then needed a second surgery, and then was off to play overseas when his brother was murdered. It has always been his dream to play somewhere and finish out his career on the court. He just had bad luck. Super good guy. Very loyal to the Cuse, and that was part of what made him great, and we could use his enthusiasm on the court. We need a SCOOOOOP. We have no one, no one this year that the crowd loves, even in a love hate kind of way.
 
I don't get to see enough of the games to take a definitive position, but a few things seems apparent to me. Yes, Jardine hung around to play for 4 years, and got better every year, which I appreciate. His play was noticeably better, but a lot of that was due to his entry level was not good. Even near the end, he put the ball in jeopardy less, but he still did it. Case in point, the Marquette game. GD it, a 4th year PG should know you don't get cute with your footwork near the 10 second line, but he did anyway, and at the worst possible moment. And in the back of your mind, you kept waiting for something like that to happen again.

For a lot of his time at SU, Scoop had Rick Jackson to look for inside, who was a very good low post player. We don't seem to have that option today. The ball seems to be in the hands of 5th year seniors who are concerned about where they'll be next year. It's possible that Coleman could be a low post presence (although not likely quite as strong as RJ), but in the 3 games I've seen this year, the perimeter players don't seem to understand the importance of getting the ball inside, or they just can't get that done. I don't know what's happened to Frank Howard, he seems to have gone Kaleb (another good kid I felt bad that we lost). Maybe he's just not assertive enough to fight for his spot? It's confusing, for he played well and was getting better during the second half of last year.

I thought Ennis needed more time at SU. He had one way to play, which was to dribble around the perimeter until there were 5 seconds left on the shot clock, and then it became "Oh !" time. Drove me nuts. Also, staying for a longer stint might have helped him learn to find his own shot, which I don't think he really did have. A PG needs to have that threat (notice I didn't say "shoot first"), for if when you penetrate they sit in the passing lanes, you have to be able to score when it's necessary. And that helps in so many ways, because once the defense figures out it doesn't have to honor the PG as a scoring threat, they just shut everything else off, and the guy with the ball in his hands most of the time can't score. That's what killed us later on in 2014.

Again, this is just IMHO, and if I'm wrong, feel free to correct me.
 
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Since scoop we have had MCW and Ennis. Both guys better than Scoop.

But only played a total of 3 seasons as a tandem. Good for them but it left the program without any experience nor patience for a Scoop like player to develop.
 
RF2044 said:
Thanks, bees--not sure how I missed that.

Figured you must have missed it.
 
Scoop was a really solid guard for us, never understood why he was a permanent resident of the fan bases doghouse outside of the trouble he got in early in his career.

I think Scoop may be the most underrated SU player of all time. We are seeing this year how important point guards are, and Scoop wasn't the point guard for two 1 seeds in his three years as a regular contributor by accident. He had an uncanny ability to know when to feed the hot hand and when to shoot himself. He could be counted on to make all the right decisions to keep SU's offense going, and he was a great defender for his size. I always thought he'd make a good coach.
 
Well there was a book and I agree about those earlier games. I was actually sugar coating in my post. I was one of those posters during that streak who was mocked when showing concern with performances against the Clemsons/GTech/BCs. We needed a last second basket to beat somebody like that...maybe VA Tech then it was all downhill from there which led to a one-sided NC St ACC Tourney one and done then the Dayton mess.
one sided loss to NC State in the ACC tourney? I think it was a 3 pt game. But I could be wrong.
 
one sided loss to NC State in the ACC tourney? I think it was a 3 pt game. But I could be wrong.

Maybe you are right. It felt lopsided though and I think maybe there was a different time when a TJ Warren and/or Cat Barber team crushed us. Maybe it was the Rak senior team.
 
Maybe you are right. It felt lopsided though and I think maybe there was a different time when a TJ Warren and/or Cat Barber team crushed us. Maybe it was the Rak senior team.
They did crush us. I was on the road listening to that game and I actually shut it off hoping if I wasn't listening, maybe they would go on a run. I turned it back on minutes later and it was worse. So much for that.
 
They did crush us. I was on the road listening to that game and I actually shut it off hoping if I wasn't listening, maybe they would go on a run. I turned it back on minutes later and it was worse. So much for that.

We lost 66-63 in the ACC tournament. We were crushed on the day the sanctions were announced. JB didn't show up to the presser and the board went crazy.
 
Could not agree more. I know that we go for a profile of athletes for the zone, but if there is one position you need to sacrifice athleticism for hoops IQ / skill, it is point guard. Point guard is so important in college basketball--this point can't be overstated.

Money post right here.
 

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