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I was expecting a 10-15 point Syracuse win. I figured Syracuse would score in the low 70's, which they did despite Battle's bad back, and despite poor shooting. If anything, Syracuse impressed offensively by showing they can get to 72 points against Maryland even with a lot going against them. I also figured that Maryland would have a tough time breaking 60 against us, mostly because they are not particularly well suited to attack our zone, and they only had a day to prepare for us. They got to 70, but in fairness to Syracuse's zone, Maryland probably wouldn't have gotten anywhere near 70 had Kevin Huerter not had an all time great shooting night. Not only was he 7-9 from three, but he was 3-3 from closer to half court than the three point line. I can only remember two players doing that in college. Steph Curry against Georgetown and GMac against Kansas in the championship. Huerter is a good shooter, but he probably won't have another game like that in his entire career.
Still, there are reasons to be disappointed with Syracuse's D. Maryland shot 28% from three, not counting Huerter's total, which I think is too high considering they don't have a reliable shooter other than him. I also thought Maryland scored too easily against us down low when the 2-3 was stretched out to defend Hurter, forcing our centers to cover two guys. Chukwu and Sidibe were not great in this situation, as you might expect given their lack of experience (Chukwu was the worse of the two). This is one important area of improvement we will have to make moving forward, both our centers are long and athletic enough to handle those situations.
If P5 games are basketball's ultimate truth serum, then the narrative which has followed SU thus far - that the D is ahead of the O - was proven false. The offense certainly looked ahead of the defense in this game.
Basketball is a simple game, put the ball in the hole more often than the other team and you win, and the increasing skill of basketball players is making it an even simpler game. The better you shoot the less that skills like rebounding, shot blocking, ball handling etc. matter, because when guys like Huerter do what he did, nothing can stop it. In this game Syracuse shot 18% from three and Maryland shot 48% from three. As you watch basketball this year, check the box scores. See if you can find a match up between two P5 teams with that big of a disparity in three point percentage where the team with the lower percentage actually won. You won't see it happen often, you might not see it again all year.
So how did Syracuse overcome that huge disparity in shooting (the most important aspect of basketball)? Outrebounding Maryland and forcing 18 turnovers didn't hurt, but the biggest reason we won is that Maryland played pressure man to man D, and found out that Syracuse was athletically superior at every position, 1-4. Howard, Battle, Brissett, and Dolezaj scored 15, 18, 15, and 10 respectively, each driving past his man for lay ups at least twice. And Syracuse did this without the help of ball screens. Maryland attacked ball screens aggressively, choosing to have both the man guarding the ball handler and the man guarding the screener to rush the ball handler in a double team, and they executed this strategy very effectively. This would have killed last year's team because nobody was athletic enough to beat his man off the dribble without a screen (except Gillon who was too small to finish). This year's team had no such trouble. They were able to spread Maryland out and pretty much pick who they wanted to beat his man and score. No screen needed.
Looking forward, there will be few if any teams who can stop all four of our players from getting to the basket and scoring. This is a huge advantage over last year's team who shot better, but was pretty much useless when the shots stopped falling. Surprisingly enough, we might just have a stronger offensive team this year than we did last year.
The one caveat is that a good shot blocker can put a stop to a lot of those points. Even though Maryland had two big centers, neither of them looked like a particularly good shot blocker.
On the other side of the court, Maryland started off putting Huerter at the free throw line. I have no idea why they chose to do this, because it took away their biggest three point threat and Huerter looked extremely uncomfortable trying to make quick decisions in the middle of our D. Huerter turned the ball over twice in about the first minute (both steals by Howard) and this might be the only time I ever say this, but those two steals which lead to four points might have been the worst thing that happened to us all game. It forced Maryland to rethink their strategy and play Morsell at the free throw line, and move Huerter behind the three point line. Once they made that change their O looked a heck of a lot better.
Some individual thoughts:
Howard - 15 points, 10 assists, and 7 steals. The only thing stopping him from having a perfect game was the 1-7 he shot from three, but he had two shots in the second half that looked perfect and went half way down before popping out. If those two fell Howard would have had pretty much a perfect game. The most underrated aspect of his performance: Maryland thought they could pressure Howard full court with their smaller quicker point guard, and Howard torched them every time they tried until they gave up. Very good news for us. The second most underrated aspect of his performance: everyone remembers Howard finding Battle for the 3 that would ultimately give us the lead for good. But not too many people remember (or are talking about) the next two trips down the court where Howard saved the game by forcing two Maryland turnovers when it seemed like they were not going to miss any three they took.
Battle - He was clearly nowhere near healthy, but he still managed to score 18 points. Had he been healthy he would have been the leading scorer in that game (despite Huerter's shooting performance) because Maryland didn't have anybody who was capable of staying in front of him. I loved that he played his best, and scored half his points, in the last few minutes of the game when we needed him most. He had to have been fighting through a lot of pain at that point. The guy is just really really good.
Brissett - He is so athletic that he's making guys who try to guard him look silly. You get the feeling that a time will come (maybe this year maybe next year) where he figures out that he can score anytime he wants and nobody can stop him. That athleticism has already translated to some of the best rebounding performances we have ever seen, with this game against Maryland topping the list. They are a good rebounding team and Brissett just outjumped them for 13 hugely important rebounds. His athleticism hasn't translated to blocked shots yet. Sooner or later its going to. Just another thing to look forward to with Brissett.
Moyer - He did what the 8th man in the rotation is suppose to do. Play for 9 or 10 minutes, play hard, and play good defense. I thought Dolezaj would struggle to rebound against some of Maryland's big guys, and the fact that he didn't is bad news for Moyer's PT, but as I have mentioned before I will wait until after the Kansas game to judge.
Chukwu - Scored all three times he was in position to score and had a very important blocked shot going down the stretch after Sidibe had fouled out. Overall not a bad performance, but I thought he should have affected more shots down low than he did. One thing I want to mention, I saw some people complaining that our centers did not grab enough rebounds. This was by design. Boeheim had the center moving up to contest the man at the free throw line and relied on our wings to come in and rebound, which they did. We outrebounded the #3 rebounding team in the country by 7. There was nothing wrong with any aspect of our rebounding in this game.
Thorpe - I have a feeling he sat so much because Howard played so well, and because Battle couldn't sit long without tightening up. Lets hope he plays more going forward. He's got a lot of potential both defensively and offensively, and we are going to need him.
Dolezaj - I'm pretty much only happy with him when he is shooting and scoring, because I think he has the ability to score, and I think we will need those points moving forward. That said, he did everything you would have wanted in this game. Scoring twice driving to the basket, making a jump shot, and shooting 4-5 from the field overall. I've been saying that he is going to have a tough time rebounding, but he held his own against Maryland and got 7 boards so hopefully I'm wrong about this. Its really hard to find much fault in his game. If we can get something like the performance he gave in this game going forward we are going to be good.
Sidibe - I was really looking forward to seeing a Sidibe/Fernando showdown. Two freshmen centers who I think could be all american quality players in the future. Unfortunately, they were only in the game for about one minute together. On one end, Sidibe drove past Fernando and missed the lay up but earned a foul and scored from the line. On the other end Fernando ripped a rebound from Sidibe's hands and put it back in for two. So I guess that battle was a draw. The rest of the time Sidibe was matched up against Checkovsky and got the better of him, and Fernando was matched up against Chukwu and got the better of him. Both continue to look like fantastic prospects, and its too bad fouls/substitution patterns/etc. kept them from being in the game at the same time more often.
Looking ahead to Kansas:
There are two questions I like to try answering during the early season tournaments. Who is the best team in the country, and which team will be best against our zone? Usually those two questions yield different answers. This time I think there might be one answer to both questions, and that answer might be Kansas. They are probably the best shooting team in the country, they might be the best passing team in the country, and they might have the biggest strongest center in the country. They gave the worst performance imaginable against Kentucky and still won. If we get that kind of a game from Kansas we will most likely beat them, but I wouldn't count on that. I expect them to play very well against us and put up something close to 80 points. To win we will need our threes to fall, we will need Battle to be the best player on the court, and we will need Brissett to dominate the mismatch that he's going to have. I expect a loss, but I also expect a great learning opportunity for our young guys, who seem eager to learn and get better.
Still, there are reasons to be disappointed with Syracuse's D. Maryland shot 28% from three, not counting Huerter's total, which I think is too high considering they don't have a reliable shooter other than him. I also thought Maryland scored too easily against us down low when the 2-3 was stretched out to defend Hurter, forcing our centers to cover two guys. Chukwu and Sidibe were not great in this situation, as you might expect given their lack of experience (Chukwu was the worse of the two). This is one important area of improvement we will have to make moving forward, both our centers are long and athletic enough to handle those situations.
If P5 games are basketball's ultimate truth serum, then the narrative which has followed SU thus far - that the D is ahead of the O - was proven false. The offense certainly looked ahead of the defense in this game.
Basketball is a simple game, put the ball in the hole more often than the other team and you win, and the increasing skill of basketball players is making it an even simpler game. The better you shoot the less that skills like rebounding, shot blocking, ball handling etc. matter, because when guys like Huerter do what he did, nothing can stop it. In this game Syracuse shot 18% from three and Maryland shot 48% from three. As you watch basketball this year, check the box scores. See if you can find a match up between two P5 teams with that big of a disparity in three point percentage where the team with the lower percentage actually won. You won't see it happen often, you might not see it again all year.
So how did Syracuse overcome that huge disparity in shooting (the most important aspect of basketball)? Outrebounding Maryland and forcing 18 turnovers didn't hurt, but the biggest reason we won is that Maryland played pressure man to man D, and found out that Syracuse was athletically superior at every position, 1-4. Howard, Battle, Brissett, and Dolezaj scored 15, 18, 15, and 10 respectively, each driving past his man for lay ups at least twice. And Syracuse did this without the help of ball screens. Maryland attacked ball screens aggressively, choosing to have both the man guarding the ball handler and the man guarding the screener to rush the ball handler in a double team, and they executed this strategy very effectively. This would have killed last year's team because nobody was athletic enough to beat his man off the dribble without a screen (except Gillon who was too small to finish). This year's team had no such trouble. They were able to spread Maryland out and pretty much pick who they wanted to beat his man and score. No screen needed.
Looking forward, there will be few if any teams who can stop all four of our players from getting to the basket and scoring. This is a huge advantage over last year's team who shot better, but was pretty much useless when the shots stopped falling. Surprisingly enough, we might just have a stronger offensive team this year than we did last year.
The one caveat is that a good shot blocker can put a stop to a lot of those points. Even though Maryland had two big centers, neither of them looked like a particularly good shot blocker.
On the other side of the court, Maryland started off putting Huerter at the free throw line. I have no idea why they chose to do this, because it took away their biggest three point threat and Huerter looked extremely uncomfortable trying to make quick decisions in the middle of our D. Huerter turned the ball over twice in about the first minute (both steals by Howard) and this might be the only time I ever say this, but those two steals which lead to four points might have been the worst thing that happened to us all game. It forced Maryland to rethink their strategy and play Morsell at the free throw line, and move Huerter behind the three point line. Once they made that change their O looked a heck of a lot better.
Some individual thoughts:
Howard - 15 points, 10 assists, and 7 steals. The only thing stopping him from having a perfect game was the 1-7 he shot from three, but he had two shots in the second half that looked perfect and went half way down before popping out. If those two fell Howard would have had pretty much a perfect game. The most underrated aspect of his performance: Maryland thought they could pressure Howard full court with their smaller quicker point guard, and Howard torched them every time they tried until they gave up. Very good news for us. The second most underrated aspect of his performance: everyone remembers Howard finding Battle for the 3 that would ultimately give us the lead for good. But not too many people remember (or are talking about) the next two trips down the court where Howard saved the game by forcing two Maryland turnovers when it seemed like they were not going to miss any three they took.
Battle - He was clearly nowhere near healthy, but he still managed to score 18 points. Had he been healthy he would have been the leading scorer in that game (despite Huerter's shooting performance) because Maryland didn't have anybody who was capable of staying in front of him. I loved that he played his best, and scored half his points, in the last few minutes of the game when we needed him most. He had to have been fighting through a lot of pain at that point. The guy is just really really good.
Brissett - He is so athletic that he's making guys who try to guard him look silly. You get the feeling that a time will come (maybe this year maybe next year) where he figures out that he can score anytime he wants and nobody can stop him. That athleticism has already translated to some of the best rebounding performances we have ever seen, with this game against Maryland topping the list. They are a good rebounding team and Brissett just outjumped them for 13 hugely important rebounds. His athleticism hasn't translated to blocked shots yet. Sooner or later its going to. Just another thing to look forward to with Brissett.
Moyer - He did what the 8th man in the rotation is suppose to do. Play for 9 or 10 minutes, play hard, and play good defense. I thought Dolezaj would struggle to rebound against some of Maryland's big guys, and the fact that he didn't is bad news for Moyer's PT, but as I have mentioned before I will wait until after the Kansas game to judge.
Chukwu - Scored all three times he was in position to score and had a very important blocked shot going down the stretch after Sidibe had fouled out. Overall not a bad performance, but I thought he should have affected more shots down low than he did. One thing I want to mention, I saw some people complaining that our centers did not grab enough rebounds. This was by design. Boeheim had the center moving up to contest the man at the free throw line and relied on our wings to come in and rebound, which they did. We outrebounded the #3 rebounding team in the country by 7. There was nothing wrong with any aspect of our rebounding in this game.
Thorpe - I have a feeling he sat so much because Howard played so well, and because Battle couldn't sit long without tightening up. Lets hope he plays more going forward. He's got a lot of potential both defensively and offensively, and we are going to need him.
Dolezaj - I'm pretty much only happy with him when he is shooting and scoring, because I think he has the ability to score, and I think we will need those points moving forward. That said, he did everything you would have wanted in this game. Scoring twice driving to the basket, making a jump shot, and shooting 4-5 from the field overall. I've been saying that he is going to have a tough time rebounding, but he held his own against Maryland and got 7 boards so hopefully I'm wrong about this. Its really hard to find much fault in his game. If we can get something like the performance he gave in this game going forward we are going to be good.
Sidibe - I was really looking forward to seeing a Sidibe/Fernando showdown. Two freshmen centers who I think could be all american quality players in the future. Unfortunately, they were only in the game for about one minute together. On one end, Sidibe drove past Fernando and missed the lay up but earned a foul and scored from the line. On the other end Fernando ripped a rebound from Sidibe's hands and put it back in for two. So I guess that battle was a draw. The rest of the time Sidibe was matched up against Checkovsky and got the better of him, and Fernando was matched up against Chukwu and got the better of him. Both continue to look like fantastic prospects, and its too bad fouls/substitution patterns/etc. kept them from being in the game at the same time more often.
Looking ahead to Kansas:
There are two questions I like to try answering during the early season tournaments. Who is the best team in the country, and which team will be best against our zone? Usually those two questions yield different answers. This time I think there might be one answer to both questions, and that answer might be Kansas. They are probably the best shooting team in the country, they might be the best passing team in the country, and they might have the biggest strongest center in the country. They gave the worst performance imaginable against Kentucky and still won. If we get that kind of a game from Kansas we will most likely beat them, but I wouldn't count on that. I expect them to play very well against us and put up something close to 80 points. To win we will need our threes to fall, we will need Battle to be the best player on the court, and we will need Brissett to dominate the mismatch that he's going to have. I expect a loss, but I also expect a great learning opportunity for our young guys, who seem eager to learn and get better.
