Lack of penetration

[Col. Bleep]

when we had Lydon we NEVER used him in that spot when he could pick and pop.

One of the all-time great Syracuse basketball mysteries.
Lydon could get to the rim and shoot if he had to.

 

[Orangezoo]

Lack of penetration by wrinkle... Sounds like it was made for 130 on Cinemax.

Back to the basketball side of the thread as already noted your points are spot on. As a team we should be setting a hard screen every single half court possession and forcing our way into the paint. Once teams have to respect the drive, the roll or pop man will be open.

It starts with setting some real screens first. Force teams to respect and have to play through the picks. When you effectively screen and run your offense off of the pick and roll and dribble and kick , you can frustrate and tire a defense pretty quickly.

Like was noted - we didn't do much here with Oshae which was criminal. Now you have Quincy who is a physical specimen perfectly built to run some pick and roll. We don't need 20 passes to be a good half court offense. Just a couple with good fundamental screening action. Overload shooters to give the driver options and let the roll man create option B.

Watching Oregon /Memphis last night, both teams have some shooters but also just a bunch of athletes. Both teams did a nice job using basic PNR offense and good screening to generate offense in the half court. It was basic stuff.

 

[NineOneSeven]

I've been saying this- openly- on this board for 6 years now.

 

[BurrowsSMG]

I wrote about some of this briefly today in my preview for Colgate. The screens SU sets, in general, are just bad. In recent years, teams have just blitzed the ball-handler because screeners like Sidibe/Chukwu aren't threats offensively. Teams love trapping actions with the Syracuse 5 because you don't worry about the screener doing literally anything. I don't have the number of screens he set against the Cavs, but I know Sidibe only set one screen that resulted in a shot attempt last week.

One of my suggestions is using small-small screens more often with either guards screening for guards or getting Hughes/Quincy/Dolezaj more involved. We saw some nice actions against UVa when Dolezaj screened then rolled into the paint for a pass. There's no reason that Quincy/Dolezaj can't screen, take a pass on a roll then either attack the rim or pass out.

 

[NineOneSeven]

We set screens with Keita, Chukwu, and Sidibe. The odds of getting called for an offensive foul are about 100 times higher than them being any threat once they set the screen.

Think about that.

 

[Alsacs]

I've been saying this- openly- on this board for 6 years now.

There have been a group of us who have been saying this but the more the merrier IMO.

 

[OttoMets]

The reason this is so disturbing is what possible basketball reason could there be for completely ignoring the screener? It utterly hamstrings the offense and the ability of the guards to accomplish the most basic of tasks.

The only thing I've come up with is possibly an ultra-conservative philosophy by Boeheim, where by forbidding guards to sling the ball around in pick and roll, you don't get the turnovers that sometimes accompany such action, especially from the converted 2s we like to roll out at PG. But does that make any sense? When it utterly devastates the flow of offense? Just so we can maybe grind it out with a good performance by the zone and a couple defensive breakdowns by the opponent?

We're somehow still competitive in most games, and rarely winning less than 20. And that is truly a testament to the power of our zone.

I think you've identified it. Boeheim trusts himself more than he does his converted off guards. For years he tolerated the turnovers, but then he revisited the cost-benefit analysis and decided it'd be worth it to eliminate the risk.

My hypothesis is that he saw how close he could get to a championship with a reckless point guard in 2013 and went conservative after that. Slog > turnovers (especially turnovers without a guard to rotate back and defend).

 

[OttoMets]

Yup. This is part of the problem. They don't wait long enough to make contact. More often than not, there is no pick (no physical contact), there is no roll (can't really roll without the screen), and no pop. The guard gets doubled and picks up his dribble, playing into what the D is trying to do.

they could run slip screens, have the guard draw the double team and move it higher away from the lane, pass to the guy who set the slip "screen" and have him pass to the opposite wing, as hoops upstate suggested. We have the shooters to run that play. Marek could be used as the trigger. Maybe that's what they are trying to do.

Can anyone imagine the result of asking this type of basketball question on his call-in show?

My guess is it'd be some form of the insecure "we spend X number of hours in practice each week but people think we don't know what we're doing" rant without addressing the substance of the question or any rationale.

Good post, BTW.

 

[hoopsupstate]

Our bigs don’t actually screen. They just stand in the box area and our wings and guards just run around them.

 

[miamicuse]

Well, you could do full court presses all game and rely on fast breaks off turnovers, then no need for offense, penetration and screens. Have Girald throw the ball up court with his football arm.

 

[kirbivore]

Great post. I can tell it hit the mark since it's been almost 24 hours and the defenders of the status quo haven't chimed in.

 

[Fly Rodder]

Great post. I can tell it hit the mark since it's been almost 24 hours and the defenders of the status quo haven't chimed in.

How many college basketball games have you won?

 

[rrlbees]

Great post. I can tell it hit the mark since it's been almost 24 hours and the defenders of the status quo haven't chimed in.

what is the status quo?

 

[orangemass]

That's what she said