SWC75
Bored Historian
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The good news is that we have- or maybe had- possibly the best recruiting class in the nation coming in. The jewel of the class was to be Thomas Bryant, a 6-10 230 center with enormous hands. I saw him playing in some all-star games and he could easily palm the ball the way Wilt Chamberlain used to. Bryant could catch the ball in the air instead of just blocking a shot and all he had to do to make a pass is to flick the ball with a quick motion. I salivated at Bryant dominating the middle of SU’s zone defense. Next to him would be 6-9 240 Moustapha Diagne, (pronounced, for some reason “Chang”), a naïve of Senegal who showed some excellent inside scoring moves. The other forward coming in was Tyler Lydon, a 6-9 200 string bean mostly noted for his outside shooting. I thought he’d be a project but then came a flood of reports from the University that current and former players had played pick-up games with him or practiced with him and they felt he was the most impressive recruit, the one most ready to contribute and even the one most likely to play in the NBA someday. They said he could shoot the lights out but also drive to the basket, rebound and even block shots. At shooting guard was Malachi Richardson, a 6-6- shooter and also a good all-around player. The least heralded player was 6-5 Franklin Howard, (they are calling him Frank Howard, but Frank Howard to me will always be “The Washington Monument”, the most awesome power hitter in baseball in the late 60’s and early 70’s, who was a very good basketball player for Ohio State in the 50’s- I also don’t want to tell the Clemson folks that “Frank Howard” is playing for us). I actually liked Howard’s film the best of any of them. He seemed to have a polished all-around game and an instinct for what was going on in the court. What’s more, a line-up that went 6-5, 6-6, 6-9, 6-9, 6-10 would make an awesome zone.
Then Thomas Bryant announced he was going to Indiana. The assumption that he was going to Syracuse was based on the fact that he was from Rochester, the next city over and his mother had said he was going to SU. But he was an independent young man who wanted to go his own way so he was off to Bloomington. In August he was arrested for underage possession of alcohol, another sign of his independence. He’s their problem now.
Then the NCAA came back into the picture and decided to investigate the academic background of Diagne. His record at the high school he attended in the US was fine. They were questioning a course he took in his native Senegal in 2012. They were again dragging their feet on this amazing issue and it created a problem for Diagne: he had to be enrolled in a college in the US by August 20th or his Visa would expire. So he signed up for a junior college, meaning he couldn’t play for us for another two years. He later announced that he is re-opening his recruiting and both Pittsburgh and Cincinnati have expressed interest.
That leaves us with Lydon, Richardson and Howard, three potentially good players but not the class we’d hoped to have. It also leaves us with even fewer scholarship players on the roster than the NCAA was allowing us: 9, which means that we can’t even practice with five scholarship players playing five scholarship players: somebody will be practicing against a walk-on. (Which brings us this point: the NCAAS sanctions also prevent us from giving a scholarship to a deserving walk-on, as JB has frequently done throughout his career.)
So that leaves us with this:
CENTERS
It’s been a long road for DAJUAN COLEMAN. When he was in high school at Jamesville-DeWitt, he was one of two big stories in local basketball. The other was Breanna Stewart at Cicero-North Syracuse. Both were McDonald’s All-Americans and people wondered who would go on to have the greater college career. Breanna went to UCONN and became the latest superstar in their women’s basketball dynasty, winning three national championships and being national player of the year twice- so far. DaIuan, like a lot of high school big men, struggled to adjust to the college game, where suddenly he’s not that much bigger than everybody else and the moves he used in high school weren’t working. A particular problem was that he tended to hold the ball low so the opposition could get at it. There’s no point in being 6-9 if you are going to hold the ball at 5-9. But he was a big strong guy, (280 pounds) and rebounded well. He had some passing skills and could score facing the basket.
Then the injuries piled up on him. He ripped up his left knee twice in two seasons and wound up going through something called OATS surgery. SB Nation: That procedure addresses cartilage damage by scooping out an area of healthy bone and cartilage from a non-weight bearing part of the former McDonald All-American's leg and inserted it into a small hole of cartilage damage in his knee.” (I didn’t know “scooped up“ is a medical term.) Coleman went on a “juice” diet to reduce his weight from 282 to 258 pounds and take the pressure off his knee, then built himself back up. So he’s spent most of the least two years in rehab, which takes a particular sort of determination. He’s worked hard in practice and reports from there and pick-up games have been promising. But it’s hard to learn how to play at this level without playing actual games. In his development, he’s more of a freshman or early sophomore. But we need him to come on like his fellow Mickey Dee, Rakeem Christmas, did last year.
For that his knee has to hold up for 30+ games and his skill development has to accelerate. In the first exhibition against LeMoyne, (a team with the sort of size he faced in high school), the game looked like it was going too fast for him in the first half. He picked it up in the second half and wound up with 15 points and 7 rebounds on 7 for 9 shooting. In that second half he held the ball high and made some good moves to the basket. In the first half he was still holding it low. The big concern is that he looked lost on defense the whole game. He’s not a shot-blocker, so he has to learn to use his body to prevent drives to the basket, the way Arinze Onuaku learned to do. He seemed to have no clue how to do this. We will see plenty of good big men in the ACC and we aren’t going to be able to cover them unless things improve rapidly.
CHINOSO OBOKOH is another NCAA victim. Like Moustapha DIange and Baye Moussa Keita, he’s part of our “African pipeline” of big men. He’s from Nigeria and went to high school in Rochester, (a teammate of Thomas Bryant). From an article on Syracuse.com: “After occupying his Rochester summers with classes to supplement his Bishop Kearney education, after sitting at the kitchen table for hours at a time trying to make sense of schoolwork in his secondary language, after securing the grades and the standardized test score to qualify him to play basketball as a college freshman, Obokoh learned the NCAA required him to sit out his first season at Syracuse. The organization that oversees college sports considered his Nigerian school transcripts and ruled that Obokoh had spent an additional year at Bishop Kearney, thus providing him with a competitive advantage. NCAA spokeswoman Emily James described on-time graduation and subsequent enrollment in college as an "important NCAA safeguard." "Students who spend additional years in high school or delay enrollment in college are typically older," she wrote in an email, "and have additional time to develop their athletic skills relative to their peer group."
So the NCAA denied Chinoso a year of eligibility so he wouldn’t have an advantage over his peers in college. And yet his whole problem is that he hasn’t played the game as much as the American players who grew up with it. He’s thus in his junior season, even though he is just learning the game. He’s listed at 6-9 215 but looks thicker and stronger than that. He’s got an impressive v-shaped upper torso with muscular arms. He didn’t play all that poorly in limited action against lesser opposition last year. In 89 minutes, (a little over two full games) he had 10 points and 21 rebounds. Unfortunately he also committed 19 fouls, meaning that he was unable to play very long in games even if we wanted to.
In the LeMoyne game, he looked as lost on defense as Coleman did. He played 11minutes and never scored or grabbed a rebound. We are a “donut” team but on defense, rather than offense. It’s likely to be a problem all season.
FORWARDS
Here come the Tylers. TYLER ROBERSON is a wiry but strong 6-8 226. His form is good, physically and terms of how he plays. His whole problem has been that he seems rather mechanical and has tended to be hesitant to shoot. The other team lets him free at any spot outside the paint but his lack of confidence in his shot produced miss after miss. His whole game has been about going after the ball and making follow-shots. He’s done very well at that. Ask Duke. He had 19 points and 10 rebounds in the Dome and 16 and 9 in Cameron. Ask NC State against whom he had 16/12 in our final game. If he could ever learn to relax and use his good form to make that 12 footer they are always giving him, he could be quite a player. Even if he doesn’t he’ll be a key player on the team.
TYLER LYDON was supposed to be a skinny outside shooter. Then he was supposed to be a do-it-all NBA prospect. In the LeMoyne game he looked like a good college player. Shooting was his biggest problem: He was 1 for 5, 0 for 4 from three. But he did score 6 points and pull down six rebounds in 22 minutes. Unlike Coleman and Okoboh, he is a shot blocker, getting 3 of them vs. the smaller Dolphins. He’s our third strong center by default. What impressed me the most was simply that he looked like he knew what was going on out there- where the ball was, what people were doing. He had 3 assists. He didn’t look skinny to me. He looked more like 220 than 200. He’ll be a good player for us this year. Whether he’ll be a star player this year, I don’t know. We may not need him to be one. “Good” will do for now.
Here is Tyler’s You-Tube video:
Coach Mike Hopkins on Tyler Lydon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go7fUXjhqKQ
GUARDS
I’m going to list the rest of the players under “guard” because, although several of them are basically “swing men” most of them will see at least sometime in the backcourt. I suspect our plan will be a Villanova-type three guard offense, or even four in some situations.
MICHAEL GBINIJE first impressed me when he transferred here after a year at Duke and I had a look at his high school highlights:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBNV9ixxPyU
It’s taken a while but he finally has an SU highlight tape to go with it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPQDZkHTBkk
He had 27 points, 6 rebounds, 4 assists a block and a steal in that game vs. his former team, (the eventual national champions) in a competitive 72-80 loss.
Mike’s 6-7 200 and a natural small forward in college. But when he came to Syracuse, Jim Boeheim geared him to be a point guard because he needed depth at that positon. It may have been because he was in an unfamiliar positon. It may have been because he was with a new team with some veterans on it and he was deferring to them. But he didn’t have much of a sophomore season. He shot only 38% from the field. He could fill a stat sheet. Per 40 minutes he averaged 9 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists 2 steals and a block. But the great skills he showed in that high school video just didn’t seem to be present. His best game was the loss to Dayton in the NCAA tournament, when he hit 4 of 5 shots and scored 8 points in 22 minutes.
He started last year in a similar mode, scoring only 55 points in the first 8 games and going 3 for 21 beyond the arc. Then he started to assert himself with 18 points, 8 rebounds and 5 assists vs. highly ranked Villanova. The early struggles of Roberson and the absence of McCullough forced him into the small forward role for which he is best suited at this level. It also forced him into a leadership role, which meant he had to produce. He had 24 points, 6 rebounds and 8 assists vs. Long Beach State. But he really got going in the ACC schedule, when the going got tougher. He averaged 15 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists in conference play. He had 14 points and 10 rebounds vs. Georgia Tech, 17 points, 11 rebs and 7 assists vs. Wake Forest and 17/8/4 vs. Boston College. But his best stretch was against North Carolina, Virginia Tech, Pittsburgh, Boston College, that first Duke game and then Louisville. In those six games, with the completion as good as it gets, he scored 123 points, grabbed 28 rebounds, passed for 29 assists, stole 15 balls and had 3 blocks. He shot 59% from the field and 51% from the arc. He was playing like an All-American and JB actually called him the best player in the conference at one point.
After that, he faded a bit, probably because he was playing above himself and because he was playing 40 minutes a game due to our lack of depth. Now he comes into this year as the closest thing to a star player we’ve got. It seems strange to me that he’s now switching back to point guard. We have a returning point guard, in Kaleb Joseph. Franklin Howard can surely play the point. Even Trevor Cooney could give us some minutes there. Gbinije probably wants to play as a guard because that’s what he’ll be on the next level. But the small forward positon puts him in the best positon to do all the various things he can do for the team: score inside and out, rebound, play defense, handle the ball and pass the ball.
Maybe we’ll just be a team where what positon you formally play doesn’t matter: you are expected to do at least some of everything.
TREVOR COONEY began his career with a reputation as an unreal outside shooter. Dion Waiters was on the team at that time and said “He never misses”. And Dion never talks about anything except Dion. But Cooney has missed, and often, 538 times in his first three years. He’s hit 37% of his shots overall and 33% from the arc, disappointing numbers for a “shooting” guard. He shoots but often, he doesn’t score. He’s had his moments, like that 33 point game against Notre Dame two year ago, 28 against North Carolina last year, (on 10 for 26 shooting), but he’s also had too many single digit games, 9 last year, including a shut out vs. Pitt and a 2 point game against St. John’s and a 3 point game against Louisville.
He can shoot but isn’t a great shooter. We’ve certainly had better. But his big problem is that he hasn’t had much help from outside. Opposing coaches can just point to him and say “make sure you cover that guy” and he gets taken out of the game. Either he can’t get shots off or they are so hurried they become very low percentage plays. In the LeMoyne game, we had plenty of shooters: his teammates made 12 threes. But he made none in three attempts.
The thing is, he can be more than just a gunner. He can handle the ball. He can drive to the basket to score, (he was 3 for 3 inside the arc against the Dolphins). He gives us good height in the backcourt at 6-4 and is an underrated defender with good hands and anticipation. (He’s got 148 steals in his career.) What he is is a good all-around guard cast in the role of an outside gunner. He and the team will be better off if he just plays the game and takes advantage of the opportunities that come to him. He will certainly have the chance to do that with the players around him.
KALEB JOSEPH was a victim of Tyler Ennis, as well as Michael Carter-Williams, Scoop Jardine, Brandon Triche and Johnny Flynn. We’d had a run of good point guards, one after the other, including two who were great as freshman, (Flynn and Ennis). Joseph looked like he could be another one when we looked at his You-Tube highlights:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3-VYtMpdhc
But those fancy dribbles, fancy passes, fancy shots and fancy dunks were few and far between last year. Joseph shot 38% from the field and only 7 for 35 from the arc. He averaged 5.6 assists and 3.4 turnovers per 40 minutes, not an ideal ratio, (you want at least 2-1). They don’t keep track of this but he must have set a blocked shot record- a record for the number of his shots that were blocked. He had the same problem as DaJuan Coleman, even if he wasn’t a big guy: the moves that were working in high school weren’t working at this level. Also he wasn’t a big enough guy: 6-3 165. Despite his athleticism, JB said more than once that he had to get stronger to deal with the guys he had to go against, on offense and defense. And his defense probably hurt us more than his offense. We were not stopping the ball at the top of the key the way we need to to get the zone really working well and most of the penetration was coming from Joseph’s man.
This year, he’s up to 180 and a year under JB’s and has a Gerry McNamara’s tutelage. I think he will benefit even more if he realizes what Trevor Cooney must also realize: that he doesn’t have to do it alone. He’ll be surrounded by players who can handle the ball, pass it and shoot it. He doesn’t have to force everything. He doesn’t need the ball all the time. He can just look for opportunities to do the things he knows he can do. He’ll be a better player for it.
When Thomas Bryant decided not to do what Mommy wanted, MALACHI RICHARDSON became our highest-rated recruit. He’s a 6-6 205 swing man with a reputation as a shooter but who also has all-around skills. I saw him in some all-star games and was not impressed. But I rarely am impressed with SU recruits in such games. Our guys tend to be team players who are not into the flashy stuff that dominates such games. They often tend to fade into the background in the dunk contests these games become but equally often turn out to be good players for SU. That said, Richardson didn’t shoot the ball well in those games. He didn’t look much different in the brief “Midnight Madness” scrimmage. But he did have a productive game against LeMoyne: 13 points on 5 for 12 shooting, (3 for 8 from the arc), 7 rebounds, (all on the defensive end) and assist and a steal. He handled the ball a lot and looked as if he could also share the point guard duties. He helped us to run as much as we did in that game. He’s another one who will benefit from the fact that he doesn’t have to be the one to do everything: WE are going to do it, not I am going to do it. That’s the key.
Malachi’s You-Tube highlights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edSv1PY5kE0
Mike Hopkins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPa842ebvjs
FRANKLIN HOWARD was the most unheralded of our recruits but it was his highlight tape I liked best. He just seemed to have an instinct for the game, knowing where people were and what the openings were. Like all our guards, he has all-around skills but he looked the best at penetrating and breaking down a defense. I didn’t see him in the all-star games but at Midnight Madness and against LeMoyne I saw exactly what I saw in the You-Tube films. This guy is going to be a real good one.
He’s another big guard: listed at 6-4 190 on the SU athletic site but I’ve seen him listed as 6-5. The two great assets of our backcourt and of our team are the versatility of our guards and their size. We can surround the zone with guys ranking from 6-3 to 6-7, all waving their arms, (we can also start a 6-9, 6-9, 6-8 front line to go with it. This could be almost impenetrable- if we also use our feet and prevent penetration. That can be a problem with young players and it could be a problem here. But college basketball is all about the backcourt and we seem really blessed with size, talent and depth in that area.
Franklin’s highlight film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc7580Pc2Z4
Adrian Autry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzL3HhpvFMU
What I think we have is a three guard look, with some very big guards. Everything will be done by committee. Any of the guys can bring it up, call out the offense, probe the defense, get the ball moving or make a move or a shot themselves. We will challenge the other team to cover them all. People have compared it to the Jay Wright Villanova teams and that’s a good comparison but I also think we’ll be a throwback to the SU teams in the early days of the Carrier Dome when this community really fell in love with SU basketball: the teams that lacked a strong inside presence but had plenty of shooters and ball-handlers, pressed, (at least in the half court), and got out and ran and ran, scoring a bunch of points and thrilling the fans, even if they usually- but not always came up short against the teams with the “aircraft carriers” underneath. We put up 70 shots and scored 97 points against Lemoyne and JB said the pace of the game “was not tremendously fast”. We used to get free fries if we scored 100. These days we get free tacos if we score 75. Put those fries in the broiler!
Then Thomas Bryant announced he was going to Indiana. The assumption that he was going to Syracuse was based on the fact that he was from Rochester, the next city over and his mother had said he was going to SU. But he was an independent young man who wanted to go his own way so he was off to Bloomington. In August he was arrested for underage possession of alcohol, another sign of his independence. He’s their problem now.
Then the NCAA came back into the picture and decided to investigate the academic background of Diagne. His record at the high school he attended in the US was fine. They were questioning a course he took in his native Senegal in 2012. They were again dragging their feet on this amazing issue and it created a problem for Diagne: he had to be enrolled in a college in the US by August 20th or his Visa would expire. So he signed up for a junior college, meaning he couldn’t play for us for another two years. He later announced that he is re-opening his recruiting and both Pittsburgh and Cincinnati have expressed interest.
That leaves us with Lydon, Richardson and Howard, three potentially good players but not the class we’d hoped to have. It also leaves us with even fewer scholarship players on the roster than the NCAA was allowing us: 9, which means that we can’t even practice with five scholarship players playing five scholarship players: somebody will be practicing against a walk-on. (Which brings us this point: the NCAAS sanctions also prevent us from giving a scholarship to a deserving walk-on, as JB has frequently done throughout his career.)
So that leaves us with this:
CENTERS
It’s been a long road for DAJUAN COLEMAN. When he was in high school at Jamesville-DeWitt, he was one of two big stories in local basketball. The other was Breanna Stewart at Cicero-North Syracuse. Both were McDonald’s All-Americans and people wondered who would go on to have the greater college career. Breanna went to UCONN and became the latest superstar in their women’s basketball dynasty, winning three national championships and being national player of the year twice- so far. DaIuan, like a lot of high school big men, struggled to adjust to the college game, where suddenly he’s not that much bigger than everybody else and the moves he used in high school weren’t working. A particular problem was that he tended to hold the ball low so the opposition could get at it. There’s no point in being 6-9 if you are going to hold the ball at 5-9. But he was a big strong guy, (280 pounds) and rebounded well. He had some passing skills and could score facing the basket.
Then the injuries piled up on him. He ripped up his left knee twice in two seasons and wound up going through something called OATS surgery. SB Nation: That procedure addresses cartilage damage by scooping out an area of healthy bone and cartilage from a non-weight bearing part of the former McDonald All-American's leg and inserted it into a small hole of cartilage damage in his knee.” (I didn’t know “scooped up“ is a medical term.) Coleman went on a “juice” diet to reduce his weight from 282 to 258 pounds and take the pressure off his knee, then built himself back up. So he’s spent most of the least two years in rehab, which takes a particular sort of determination. He’s worked hard in practice and reports from there and pick-up games have been promising. But it’s hard to learn how to play at this level without playing actual games. In his development, he’s more of a freshman or early sophomore. But we need him to come on like his fellow Mickey Dee, Rakeem Christmas, did last year.
For that his knee has to hold up for 30+ games and his skill development has to accelerate. In the first exhibition against LeMoyne, (a team with the sort of size he faced in high school), the game looked like it was going too fast for him in the first half. He picked it up in the second half and wound up with 15 points and 7 rebounds on 7 for 9 shooting. In that second half he held the ball high and made some good moves to the basket. In the first half he was still holding it low. The big concern is that he looked lost on defense the whole game. He’s not a shot-blocker, so he has to learn to use his body to prevent drives to the basket, the way Arinze Onuaku learned to do. He seemed to have no clue how to do this. We will see plenty of good big men in the ACC and we aren’t going to be able to cover them unless things improve rapidly.
CHINOSO OBOKOH is another NCAA victim. Like Moustapha DIange and Baye Moussa Keita, he’s part of our “African pipeline” of big men. He’s from Nigeria and went to high school in Rochester, (a teammate of Thomas Bryant). From an article on Syracuse.com: “After occupying his Rochester summers with classes to supplement his Bishop Kearney education, after sitting at the kitchen table for hours at a time trying to make sense of schoolwork in his secondary language, after securing the grades and the standardized test score to qualify him to play basketball as a college freshman, Obokoh learned the NCAA required him to sit out his first season at Syracuse. The organization that oversees college sports considered his Nigerian school transcripts and ruled that Obokoh had spent an additional year at Bishop Kearney, thus providing him with a competitive advantage. NCAA spokeswoman Emily James described on-time graduation and subsequent enrollment in college as an "important NCAA safeguard." "Students who spend additional years in high school or delay enrollment in college are typically older," she wrote in an email, "and have additional time to develop their athletic skills relative to their peer group."
So the NCAA denied Chinoso a year of eligibility so he wouldn’t have an advantage over his peers in college. And yet his whole problem is that he hasn’t played the game as much as the American players who grew up with it. He’s thus in his junior season, even though he is just learning the game. He’s listed at 6-9 215 but looks thicker and stronger than that. He’s got an impressive v-shaped upper torso with muscular arms. He didn’t play all that poorly in limited action against lesser opposition last year. In 89 minutes, (a little over two full games) he had 10 points and 21 rebounds. Unfortunately he also committed 19 fouls, meaning that he was unable to play very long in games even if we wanted to.
In the LeMoyne game, he looked as lost on defense as Coleman did. He played 11minutes and never scored or grabbed a rebound. We are a “donut” team but on defense, rather than offense. It’s likely to be a problem all season.
FORWARDS
Here come the Tylers. TYLER ROBERSON is a wiry but strong 6-8 226. His form is good, physically and terms of how he plays. His whole problem has been that he seems rather mechanical and has tended to be hesitant to shoot. The other team lets him free at any spot outside the paint but his lack of confidence in his shot produced miss after miss. His whole game has been about going after the ball and making follow-shots. He’s done very well at that. Ask Duke. He had 19 points and 10 rebounds in the Dome and 16 and 9 in Cameron. Ask NC State against whom he had 16/12 in our final game. If he could ever learn to relax and use his good form to make that 12 footer they are always giving him, he could be quite a player. Even if he doesn’t he’ll be a key player on the team.
TYLER LYDON was supposed to be a skinny outside shooter. Then he was supposed to be a do-it-all NBA prospect. In the LeMoyne game he looked like a good college player. Shooting was his biggest problem: He was 1 for 5, 0 for 4 from three. But he did score 6 points and pull down six rebounds in 22 minutes. Unlike Coleman and Okoboh, he is a shot blocker, getting 3 of them vs. the smaller Dolphins. He’s our third strong center by default. What impressed me the most was simply that he looked like he knew what was going on out there- where the ball was, what people were doing. He had 3 assists. He didn’t look skinny to me. He looked more like 220 than 200. He’ll be a good player for us this year. Whether he’ll be a star player this year, I don’t know. We may not need him to be one. “Good” will do for now.
Here is Tyler’s You-Tube video:
Coach Mike Hopkins on Tyler Lydon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go7fUXjhqKQ
GUARDS
I’m going to list the rest of the players under “guard” because, although several of them are basically “swing men” most of them will see at least sometime in the backcourt. I suspect our plan will be a Villanova-type three guard offense, or even four in some situations.
MICHAEL GBINIJE first impressed me when he transferred here after a year at Duke and I had a look at his high school highlights:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBNV9ixxPyU
It’s taken a while but he finally has an SU highlight tape to go with it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPQDZkHTBkk
He had 27 points, 6 rebounds, 4 assists a block and a steal in that game vs. his former team, (the eventual national champions) in a competitive 72-80 loss.
Mike’s 6-7 200 and a natural small forward in college. But when he came to Syracuse, Jim Boeheim geared him to be a point guard because he needed depth at that positon. It may have been because he was in an unfamiliar positon. It may have been because he was with a new team with some veterans on it and he was deferring to them. But he didn’t have much of a sophomore season. He shot only 38% from the field. He could fill a stat sheet. Per 40 minutes he averaged 9 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists 2 steals and a block. But the great skills he showed in that high school video just didn’t seem to be present. His best game was the loss to Dayton in the NCAA tournament, when he hit 4 of 5 shots and scored 8 points in 22 minutes.
He started last year in a similar mode, scoring only 55 points in the first 8 games and going 3 for 21 beyond the arc. Then he started to assert himself with 18 points, 8 rebounds and 5 assists vs. highly ranked Villanova. The early struggles of Roberson and the absence of McCullough forced him into the small forward role for which he is best suited at this level. It also forced him into a leadership role, which meant he had to produce. He had 24 points, 6 rebounds and 8 assists vs. Long Beach State. But he really got going in the ACC schedule, when the going got tougher. He averaged 15 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists in conference play. He had 14 points and 10 rebounds vs. Georgia Tech, 17 points, 11 rebs and 7 assists vs. Wake Forest and 17/8/4 vs. Boston College. But his best stretch was against North Carolina, Virginia Tech, Pittsburgh, Boston College, that first Duke game and then Louisville. In those six games, with the completion as good as it gets, he scored 123 points, grabbed 28 rebounds, passed for 29 assists, stole 15 balls and had 3 blocks. He shot 59% from the field and 51% from the arc. He was playing like an All-American and JB actually called him the best player in the conference at one point.
After that, he faded a bit, probably because he was playing above himself and because he was playing 40 minutes a game due to our lack of depth. Now he comes into this year as the closest thing to a star player we’ve got. It seems strange to me that he’s now switching back to point guard. We have a returning point guard, in Kaleb Joseph. Franklin Howard can surely play the point. Even Trevor Cooney could give us some minutes there. Gbinije probably wants to play as a guard because that’s what he’ll be on the next level. But the small forward positon puts him in the best positon to do all the various things he can do for the team: score inside and out, rebound, play defense, handle the ball and pass the ball.
Maybe we’ll just be a team where what positon you formally play doesn’t matter: you are expected to do at least some of everything.
TREVOR COONEY began his career with a reputation as an unreal outside shooter. Dion Waiters was on the team at that time and said “He never misses”. And Dion never talks about anything except Dion. But Cooney has missed, and often, 538 times in his first three years. He’s hit 37% of his shots overall and 33% from the arc, disappointing numbers for a “shooting” guard. He shoots but often, he doesn’t score. He’s had his moments, like that 33 point game against Notre Dame two year ago, 28 against North Carolina last year, (on 10 for 26 shooting), but he’s also had too many single digit games, 9 last year, including a shut out vs. Pitt and a 2 point game against St. John’s and a 3 point game against Louisville.
He can shoot but isn’t a great shooter. We’ve certainly had better. But his big problem is that he hasn’t had much help from outside. Opposing coaches can just point to him and say “make sure you cover that guy” and he gets taken out of the game. Either he can’t get shots off or they are so hurried they become very low percentage plays. In the LeMoyne game, we had plenty of shooters: his teammates made 12 threes. But he made none in three attempts.
The thing is, he can be more than just a gunner. He can handle the ball. He can drive to the basket to score, (he was 3 for 3 inside the arc against the Dolphins). He gives us good height in the backcourt at 6-4 and is an underrated defender with good hands and anticipation. (He’s got 148 steals in his career.) What he is is a good all-around guard cast in the role of an outside gunner. He and the team will be better off if he just plays the game and takes advantage of the opportunities that come to him. He will certainly have the chance to do that with the players around him.
KALEB JOSEPH was a victim of Tyler Ennis, as well as Michael Carter-Williams, Scoop Jardine, Brandon Triche and Johnny Flynn. We’d had a run of good point guards, one after the other, including two who were great as freshman, (Flynn and Ennis). Joseph looked like he could be another one when we looked at his You-Tube highlights:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3-VYtMpdhc
But those fancy dribbles, fancy passes, fancy shots and fancy dunks were few and far between last year. Joseph shot 38% from the field and only 7 for 35 from the arc. He averaged 5.6 assists and 3.4 turnovers per 40 minutes, not an ideal ratio, (you want at least 2-1). They don’t keep track of this but he must have set a blocked shot record- a record for the number of his shots that were blocked. He had the same problem as DaJuan Coleman, even if he wasn’t a big guy: the moves that were working in high school weren’t working at this level. Also he wasn’t a big enough guy: 6-3 165. Despite his athleticism, JB said more than once that he had to get stronger to deal with the guys he had to go against, on offense and defense. And his defense probably hurt us more than his offense. We were not stopping the ball at the top of the key the way we need to to get the zone really working well and most of the penetration was coming from Joseph’s man.
This year, he’s up to 180 and a year under JB’s and has a Gerry McNamara’s tutelage. I think he will benefit even more if he realizes what Trevor Cooney must also realize: that he doesn’t have to do it alone. He’ll be surrounded by players who can handle the ball, pass it and shoot it. He doesn’t have to force everything. He doesn’t need the ball all the time. He can just look for opportunities to do the things he knows he can do. He’ll be a better player for it.
When Thomas Bryant decided not to do what Mommy wanted, MALACHI RICHARDSON became our highest-rated recruit. He’s a 6-6 205 swing man with a reputation as a shooter but who also has all-around skills. I saw him in some all-star games and was not impressed. But I rarely am impressed with SU recruits in such games. Our guys tend to be team players who are not into the flashy stuff that dominates such games. They often tend to fade into the background in the dunk contests these games become but equally often turn out to be good players for SU. That said, Richardson didn’t shoot the ball well in those games. He didn’t look much different in the brief “Midnight Madness” scrimmage. But he did have a productive game against LeMoyne: 13 points on 5 for 12 shooting, (3 for 8 from the arc), 7 rebounds, (all on the defensive end) and assist and a steal. He handled the ball a lot and looked as if he could also share the point guard duties. He helped us to run as much as we did in that game. He’s another one who will benefit from the fact that he doesn’t have to be the one to do everything: WE are going to do it, not I am going to do it. That’s the key.
Malachi’s You-Tube highlights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edSv1PY5kE0
Mike Hopkins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPa842ebvjs
FRANKLIN HOWARD was the most unheralded of our recruits but it was his highlight tape I liked best. He just seemed to have an instinct for the game, knowing where people were and what the openings were. Like all our guards, he has all-around skills but he looked the best at penetrating and breaking down a defense. I didn’t see him in the all-star games but at Midnight Madness and against LeMoyne I saw exactly what I saw in the You-Tube films. This guy is going to be a real good one.
He’s another big guard: listed at 6-4 190 on the SU athletic site but I’ve seen him listed as 6-5. The two great assets of our backcourt and of our team are the versatility of our guards and their size. We can surround the zone with guys ranking from 6-3 to 6-7, all waving their arms, (we can also start a 6-9, 6-9, 6-8 front line to go with it. This could be almost impenetrable- if we also use our feet and prevent penetration. That can be a problem with young players and it could be a problem here. But college basketball is all about the backcourt and we seem really blessed with size, talent and depth in that area.
Franklin’s highlight film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc7580Pc2Z4
Adrian Autry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzL3HhpvFMU
What I think we have is a three guard look, with some very big guards. Everything will be done by committee. Any of the guys can bring it up, call out the offense, probe the defense, get the ball moving or make a move or a shot themselves. We will challenge the other team to cover them all. People have compared it to the Jay Wright Villanova teams and that’s a good comparison but I also think we’ll be a throwback to the SU teams in the early days of the Carrier Dome when this community really fell in love with SU basketball: the teams that lacked a strong inside presence but had plenty of shooters and ball-handlers, pressed, (at least in the half court), and got out and ran and ran, scoring a bunch of points and thrilling the fans, even if they usually- but not always came up short against the teams with the “aircraft carriers” underneath. We put up 70 shots and scored 97 points against Lemoyne and JB said the pace of the game “was not tremendously fast”. We used to get free fries if we scored 100. These days we get free tacos if we score 75. Put those fries in the broiler!
