My 2017-18 SU Basketball Preview - Part 1

[SWC75]

Just arrived from the Department of Too Much Information, here is my annual SU basketball preview, in four parts. This is what I send to friends and relatives who are not in this area, (and some who are but are not on this board). I also post it to this board for those with the patience to read it. At the end of the season I'll quote form it and make some comparisons to what actually transpired.

THE SITUATION

The once and future Boeheim

I appeared that this was going to be Jim Boeheim’s last year as head Syracuse basketball coach after 42 years here. Supposedly it was something down to assuage the NCAA in the wake of their findings in 2015 that some members of the athletic department had helped Fab Melo, a recruit from Brazil, complete an academic assignment. There were also issues of consistent adjudication of SU’s drug policy and the proper completion of work study courses by athletes. Long-time assistant Mike Hopkins was supposedly all set to take over for his mentor.

Then, suddenly, Mike took an offer from the University of Washington to be their new head coach. He was born and raised on the West Coach was up for the USC job a few years ago but it was still a big surprise as Mike had the chance to take over an established program in SU. Apparently he didn’t want to wait. Jim announced he would stay on but didn’t give a new projected retirement date. (He now says that he’s going to coach here “forever”. There was speculation that Boeheim just decided he didn’t want to retire and so Mike bugged out but all official comments insist Mike made his decision first. Still, Jim seemed happy and re-energized by the changed situation. When Jim’s son Buddy Boeheim announced he was going to Syracuse, there was further speculation that Jim had decided to stay on because he wanted to coach his son. Whatever happened, the Boeheim Era continues and that’s a good thing.

I did a study some years back, (2008), when disgruntled fans wanted Jim to retire, to see what the success rate of coaches replacing a “legend” is. I looked at the 25 winningest major college basketball coaches and the 25 winningest major college football coaches. My conclusions:

“Of the 50 top winning coaches in the two sports I found 37 situations that seemed relevant to Jim Boeheim’s potential retirement: a long and successful run at one big-time school that is now over so we can examine the success- or lack thereof- of his replacement. That’s a pretty good database.

In 26 of those 37 cases the school picked a current assistant, a former assistant or a former player- “one of our guys”. In those cases, the legend they replaced had a cumulative winning percentage of .721 and “our guy” went .609, a drop off of 112 points. 17 of “our guys” wound up getting fired, (which includes being pressured to resign), while 5 are still coaching, (which means they could get fired). Two retired. One went back to the pros and one became the athletic director.

The 11 new coaches who had had no prior connection with the program replaced legends who went .704: the new guy went .565, 139 points worse. Five of these guys got fired. Three more moved on, just as they’d moved on to your school. In one case the school gave up the sport. The other two are still coaching. Staying within the family isn’t necessarily a bad idea. Those guys not only have a better record but they are less likely to move on to a better deal.

Of the 26 new coaches who had prior associations with the university, 15 were internal promotions of current assistants. They replaced guys who went .729 and went .581 themselves, a drop of 148 points. An astonishing 12 of them wound up getting fired. Two retired and one is still coaching. Internal promotions have a way of producing external demotions.

The 11 guys who left home and came back replaced coaches who were .711 and went .648 themselves, a drop of only 63 points. Five have been fired. Four are still at it. One left for the pros and one became athletic director. So there’s something to be said for gaining experience elsewhere before taking on your dream job.

Fifteen new coaches had previous major college head coaching experience. These 15 guys replaced coaches who went .714 and went .665 themselves, a drop off of only 49 points, so being a head man at the college level before you take over seems to help. But 6 of these guys have been fired. Three moved on. The four others are still coaching at their schools.

Of the 22 new coaches with no prior college head coaching experience, fully 16 have been fired. Two retired, one jumped to the pros and the other are still at it. They replaced legends with a .710 percentage and went .573 themselves, a drop of 137 points. Not a good record.

Does it help to come from the pros? Six new coaches did. They replaced guys who had gone .688 and went .612, a drop of only 76 points. Four of them are still at it. One returned to the pros and another got fired. That’s better than most categories but not better than having had previous college head coaching experience.

But perhaps the key stat is that, in every category, the success rate of the program went down. 32 of the 37 replacements have had a worse record- that’s 86%

So what’s it all mean? Firstly, great coaches are not that common. A great program might have more than one of them in its history, but they are unlikely to be consecutive. The idea that a great coach has gotten away with mistakes for a long time due to his reputation and that his replacement will make the right adjustments while retaining his predecessor’s strengths and thus go on to even greater success is not borne out by the historical record. The new man will have strengths and weaknesses of his own.

A new coach will have the advantage of an established program- in most cases. But he has the disadvantage of not having the prior coach’s teflon reputation, built upon a history of success and the fact that most fans of the school won’t be able to remember when he wasn’t the coach. The new coach may find that the underpinnings of the program’s success which allowed the old coach to become a legend have eroded and his going will be much harder. Or it may be that the program actually declined under the old coach and will now have to be built up by the new guy…. But the more likely scenario is that the reputation of the old coach masked the program’s decline and the new man inherited a reputation and a program that could no longer live up to it.

Maybe the most dismal stat is that of the 37 replacements, 22 were fired. Seven are still coaching and their fate awaits them. We need to wish Mike Hopkins luck, because he’s going to need it.”


Yes, he’s going to need it- at Washington. The question of who will actually replace Jim Boeheim, like the question of when, is up in the air. Perhaps Mike will be one of those guys who come back after coaching elsewhere, to replace his mentor after all. Maybe there will be a new heir apparent, although it’s not apparent who. Maybe we’ll bring in one of those “hot” young coaches who had a good run in the tournament. Maybe we’ll get a veteran coach who’s always wanted to coach before 30,000 people in the Dome. Whatever the future brings, the Boeheim Era continues for now and we are likely better off for it.

 

[SWC75]

A Tough Row to Hoe

In my football preview, I was pessimistic that we’d ever be able to contend for the conference title because I didn’t think we could contend for the division title in a division with multiple national championship contenders. As it turned out, we are actually competing rather well this year, largely because we seem to better at the all-important QB positon than most of the teams we have played. Last year we were down to using back-ups against some the top QB’s in the country. That’s football: certain positons are so important that an advantage there can really elevate your team. It can partially make up for the fact that you have to fill out a roster of 100+ players and some schools are clearly going to be better at that than others on a year-in-year out basis. I don’t think we are likely to be as good at that as the southern schools we are competing with. Many of them are state schools and the balance of power in recruiting has shifted to the south over the last generation.

In basketball, the balance of power has historically been in the North because it is an indoor sport played in the winter and in the big cities. That advantage has somewhat balanced out over the years but I think it is still there. And the rosters, and thus the recruiting requirements, are far smaller. 2-3 guys can make a very good recruiting class if they can play. We also have the biggest arena and biggest crowds along with a long history of winning, (a national best 47 consecutive winning seasons: UCLA’s record is 54). This is what’s allowed us to continue to be national power in basketball while the football program has slipped so badly.

For much of those 47 years we were in the Big East, which challenged the ACC each year as the best basketball conference in the nation, (sorry Big 10, Big 12, ACC and Pac 12). Now several Big East teams have broken away to join the new ACC super conference and I think the result is the best basketball conference there has ever been. The top teams have been excellent: Duke and North Carolina won national championships and the Tar Heels also played for one. But the real strength of the conference is its top to bottom strength. There is no Rutgers, DePaul or South Florida, teams you figure to beat even when not playing well. Last year we opened the ACC season by losing to the worst team in the conference, Boston College, 81-96. It was a down year for us, but we were later able to beat Duke. You have to play well to win in this conference and the other team gets to play well, too. You have to be very, very good to win consistently in the new ACC and we haven’t been very, very good since we joined it.

The traditional means Syracuse fans have used to evaluate their teams, aside from post season success, (and even despite it, depending on what point you are trying to make) is the number of losses. In Jim Boeheim’s first 37 seasons, we had single digits in losses 24 times in 37 years. In our first ACC season we went 28-6 but that included a 25-0 start, followed by a 3-6 finish. The next year we went 18-13, (and had no post-season action due to a self-imposed ban: without it there likely would have been a couple more losses). The next year we went to the Final Four but we did it with a 23-14 team. Last season we stumbled to a 19-15 record. We have never won an ACC tournament game. After starting 11-0 in the conference in 2014, we are 30-33 since. It sparked the same sort of “the game has passed him by, let’s ease him into retirement” talk I heard a decade ago, (thus prompting the study noted above). The fact is, in this conference, only our best teams are going to emerge with single digit overall losses and a .500 record in conference play isn’t all that bad: those teams might have won several more games in another conference. We just have to adjust to the fact that the going is harder in this conference than it has traditionally been and only our best teams will have exception records. That doesn’t mean there won’t be glory at the end: our 2016 team made the Final Four after a 19-12 regular season and one and done in the ACC tournament. If we can just get in the big dance, we’ll have a chance to make some noise. After all, we’ve been playing teams that good all year.

That said, I long for the days when there were no super conferences and schedules had greater balance and a good team would have a good record. Your schedule should have some ranked teams in it but it doesn’t have to be a tour of the Top 25. Bill Parcells said “You are what your record says you are.” That’s true in the NFL. It’s far from true in the ACC.

 

[SWC75]

Who are these guys, anyway?

Jim Boeheim has been handicapped by a ridiculous 10 year investigation from the NCAA that caused SU to self-impose limitations in an effort to avoid further punishment by the National Comedy Athletic Association, the same group that decided to take no action on two decades of fake courses offered by North Carolina because non-athletes took those courses, too. So I guess the secret is to give illicit benefits to some non-athletes and you can get away with anything. One of the things that we got penalized for was a work study program through SU Child and Family Service program. It involved working with kids at the YMCA. The employee of the Y who kept track of their activities failed to make sure they completed the requirements, gave them car rides and employed them in setting up charitable events. Were SU basketball players the only ones enrolled in that program? If not, we should ask the NCAA to review the penalties applied to us in view of their decision in the UNC case.

The NCAA wanted more than their pound of flesh and imposed scholarship limitations, limits on when our coaches can contact players and then, ridiculously negated over 100 wins. We are finally starting to get over the scholarship limits. At the start we could only have 10 scholarship players: the minimum you need to practice 5 on 5 with recruited players and to have sufficient depth and competition for positons. They moved it up to 11 and now to 12. Most teams can have 13 scholarship players. Actually, Boeheim usually doesn’t want that many because you wind up too many disgruntled players who aren’t playing. He prefers 10-11 guys. He thought he’d have 10 this year but unfortunately, he has only 9, which will limit practices, (somebody has to be guarded by a walk on) and leave little margin for error in case of injuries. We lost 3 guys last year. If that happens again, we’ll be down to 6 guys. We were there once before: 10 years ago when Scoop Jardine didn’t tell the coaches he had what turned out to be a hairline fracture of his left shin. He played (badly) with it because we couldn’t afford to lose any more people. If we again have bad luck with injuries we could have young players playing hurt again. Scoop overcame that but somebody else might not.

Then there’s quality of the recruits we are getting. Two measures fans tend to look at with recruits are star ratings and Top 100 ratings. Some other things not enough fans look at: How much did our coaches want them and who else wanted the? The former can usually be determined by when they committed and did we try to get anybody else after they did so? If they committed early and we didn’t try to recruit over them, it means those players we either the coach’s #1 targets or that they were on the top plateau, where they didn’t care which guy they got as long he was one of a short list of similar candidates. Obviously, if quality programs were also after a player they must have seen something in him the recruiting gurus missed.

Then there’s what I call the “snapshot” factor. When a player is rated by the ‘experts’’, even if they rate him correctly, that rating is just a snapshot of how good the player is at that moment. We are talking about teenagers here and not even older teenagers. These players are in their mid-teens. They may already have “peaked in high school”. Others may have a greater upside which will only be revealed later. Some players may decide based on what they’ve read about themselves that they are superstars and prove uncoachable as a result. Some may not have the work ethic to maximize their skills. Other might have academic or disciplinary or even legal problems. Some will prove injury prone.

In a way, it’s almost better not have the most highly rated recruits because in the current system, they won’t be here long. We had Chris McCullough for 16 games before he got hurt and then declared for the draft anyway. Carmelo Anthony won us a national title but how often will that happen? With four year players, you can build a team – unless those four year players don’t stay for four years. That’s been our problem in recent years: Donte Greene left after one year. Jonny Flynn left after 2 years. Wes Johnson played only one year here. Dion Waiters was here for 2. Jerami Grant was just starting to develop after two years here. Chris McCullough had 8 good games against bad competition, then 8 bad games and then was gone. Malachi Richardson was here for one year and Tyler Lydon for 2. These guys were not All-Americans. They are not NBA all-stars, (although Dion may be getting something going). They did not have the ability to carry the team to a national championship as Carmelo did. But they were good enough to attract some interest from the NBA and wanted to make money more than they wanted to study while playing for free. So they left here before they’d fully developed their skills or accomplished as much as they might have for SU. I’ve given up fretting over it – it’s the way things are. Jim Boeheim hasn’t given up fretting over it. Anytime anybody brings up any suggestion that the NBA might be interested in one of his underclassmen, he crushes that talk. But he can’t end it. It’s left us with more what might have beens than most other schools. Kentucky and Duke get one-and-dones who could lead them to a title. Most schools don’t get one-and-dones, (or even two-and-dones) at all. We get tweeners who won’t get top level money but want it anyway. It means the team has to be rebuilt every year.

There are multiple ways to acquire talent these days. You can recruit it from high schools or prep schools. You can get junior college transfers or transfers from other Division 1 schools, (but those guys have to sit out a year). Now you can get “graduate transfers”, players who are in grad school but had a year of eligibility left. These are guys who red-shirted or transferred, (we were the third stop for the three we’ve gotten), and got their bachelor’s degrees before they had played for four years. The cover story is that they are seeking a course of instruction not offered by their old schools so they had to go elsewhere and shouldn’t be penalized for that. In fact, it’s basically free agency. We could lose players under that rule as well as gain them.

Last year we gained. Andrew White came from Nebraska to be one of the best shooters we’ve ever had here. He led the team in scoring with 18.5 points a game and scored 40 in one game. He hit 40% of 278 three pointers. John Gillon, from Colorado State, was as inconsistent as White was consistent. He had two legendary games that won’t be forgotten any time soon: He averaged 10.5 points and 5.4 assists. He was the hottest player I have ever seen against NC State in Raleigh, scoring 43 points on a ridiculous 9 of 10 three pointers and 14 for 14 from the foul line. We needed every point in a 100-93 overtime win. White and Gillon had the first 40 point games for SU players since Gerry McNamara beat BYU with 43 points in the first round of the 2004 NCAA tournament. Then Gillon beat Duke in the Dome with a 26 point, 6 assist performance that included the 40 footer that won it at the buzzer. Other games he never showed up, in spirit anyway. Neither played much defense, which was a big problem all year. Boeheim said at the end of the season that teaching his complicated zone to freshmen may actually easier than to teach it to transfers as freshmen don’t have to unlearn other defenses. He will get a chance to prove that this year.

We will have just three players who played in any games for SU last year: Paschal Chukwu, a 7-2 string bean center who could block shots but do little else. He played 7 games, then got hit in the eye with an errant ball, necessitating an operation for a torn retina and ending his season; Frank Howard, a 6-5 point guard with limited scoring ability who played with “core muscle-related injuries”. Like Scoop Jardine a decade ago, he didn’t tell anybody until after the season and underwent surgery in May to repair the damage; and Tyus Battle, a highly recruited 6-6 guard who had a fine freshman season but was the 4th option behind White, Lydon and Gillon but will now be right in the defense’s sites.

DaJuan Coleman finally graduated after an injury-plagued career that robbed him of his tremendous potential. Tyler Roberson also graduated after a disappointing career where he never fully developed his skills beyond hitting the offensive boards, which he did inconsistently. White and Gillon have ended their eligibility. Lydon jumped to the NBA. Taurean Thompson, an outstanding offensive center-forward who played no defense, waited all summer to inform the staff that he wasn’t coming back due to an unspecified illness in the family. He’s transferring to Seton Hall. Because of the timing, it was too late to get a replacement of any quality. Mathew Moyer, a 6-8 freshman forward is still with the team. It was decided to reshirt him after he sustained a foot injury in pre-season.

Jim had to bring in a lot of new talent. His first recruits for the new class were Bourama Sidibe a 6-11 220 pound center, who was born in Mali but who played is basketball at St. Benedict’s Prep in New Jersey and Oshae Brissett, a 6-6 190 small forward from Toronto. The problem was, neither was then listed in anyone’s top 100 players. You would have thought the sky was falling from all of the internet comments. We were scrapping the bottom of the barrel! How do we compete with Duke, North Carolina and Louisville with guys like this! The thing is, that’s the early signing period. These guys hadn’t played their senior year yet. If they were so bad, why would the coaching staff be “settling” for them rather than pursuing higher rated players? The only answer was that the SU coaches had seen these guys play and gotten to know them and decided that they were the guys they wanted.

Sidibie was recruited by Seton Hall, Virginia Commonwealth, Maryland, SMU, Kansas State, Arizona State and others. I’ve seen him slip into the top 100 at #88 in one listing. Brissett received offers from Maryland, Oregon, Mississippi State, Arizona State, USC, Memphis and others before deciding on Syracuse. He became a classic case of a player who ‘blew up’ after his “snapshot”. He grew three inches, (to 6-9) and added a few pounds (to 200). He became Canada’s player of the year. Comparisons were made to Canadian Andrew Wiggins, who was the #1 overall recruit in 2013 and the #1 NBA draft choice a year later. They didn’t say Brissett was Wiggins but they said he could become Wiggins. He’s now rated #48 from one service I saw and is ranked a 4 star recruit at the present time. Of course we’ll find out how good he really is when he puts on an SU uniform and actually plays for us. But the complaints about our ‘settling for him’ have ceased. These guys hardly represent the “decline” of the program.

Howard Washington was definitely not our #1 target. He was a point guard from Buffalo who went north to play with Brissett’s team. He wasn’t our #1 guy but we were his #1 school. He was disappointed when we went after Quade Green, from Scoop Jardine’s old high school, Neuman-Goretti in Philadelphia. The word was we wanted Green so much we told him we wouldn’t recruit anybody else. Washington committed to Butler. The Green followed John Calipari’s siren call to Kentucky and we were left without a point guard recruit. Washington de-committed from Butler and accepted an offer from the ‘Cuse. So he was our second choice but second choice players can turn out to be good players. The problems come if you are just collecting warm bodies at the end of the recruiting cycle. Washington wasn’t top 100, either. The best rating I’ve found for him is #122 and 3 stars. But Butler wanted him. They have a strong program so I’d say he has a future here, too.

Boeheim then went to the international market and brought in Marek Dolezai from Slovakia. He’s 19 years old and had played in the pro leagues in Slovakia, (which you can apparently do and still play college ball here). So his game should be advanced, even if his body isn’t. He’s listed at 6-9 180. Because he was a foreign player the recruiting services didn’t have a rating for him until one recently decided he was the 71st best player in the country.

Matthew Moyer will be a freshman this year, although a redshirt freshman. That makes his a sort of unofficial part of this recruiting class. I’ve seen him rated as high as the 40th best player in that class. So that gives us 5 freshmen, four of whom were top 100. I guess the sky isn’t falling.

Jim also brought in another grad transfer, Geno Thorpe from South Florida, who used to be a Big East rival, and he looks he could be major contributor. He’s a 6-3 guard from Pittsburgh, (where they play basketball like it was football). He originally played for Penn State in the Big Ten, so he’s used to power 5 competition. Geno is a 6-3 combo guard who played the point for the Bulls. He has a reputation as a defensive whiz who makes lots of steals but turned into a scorer last year, averaging 15.1ppg to go with 4.6 assists.

We might also hear from 6-4 Brandon Bayer, who walked on after transferring in from Grinnell College, which is known for race-horse basketball. Brandon played one year there and averaged 10.5ppg but shot 51% from three point range.

Jim also accepted an undergraduate transfer, 6-6 guard Elijah Hughes from East Carolina, where he averaged 7.8 ppg as a freshman. He’ll have a year to contemplate why JUCO and grad transfers can play immediately while undergrad transfers have to sit out a year. SI recently had a column wondering the same thing:
We should welcome some NCAA transfer chaos

He’ll have three years left beginning with the 2018-19 season. For that season he’s already gotten commitments from 6-9 forward Darius Bazley, rated the 20th best recruit, 6-4 Jalen Carey, #54 and his own 6-5 sharp-shooting son, Buddy, who is only rated #195. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t be a good player, too.

So I guess the sky isn’t falling.

 

[cuseinseattle]

Thanks for posting. I look forward to it every season.

 

[cuseinseattle]

The one thing I would say about Howard Washington is that he decommitted quite a while before we offered. So it wasn't necessarily a case of him decommitting just because of Syracuse. The information on replacing legends was interesting.

 

[721Comstock]

DBaze is now rated #9 by ESPN. #12 by Skowt.

He climbed 23 spots from his previous position as ESPN's No. 32 recruit.
Bazley made a similar jump in Scout's recruiting rankings released last week, climbing from No. 26 to No. 12.

Jalen Carey #34 per ESPN.

 

[newmexicuse]

Great, great insightful post.

My only quibble is that it would be unfair to expect Jimmy's successor to match his winning percentage. Many of Jimmy's .800+ seasons came in the old ECAC days. Even in the BE, there would generally only be one or two programs in any given season that could slug it out toe to toe with the Cuse. The landscape has changed, much more overall balance, less consistency (due to one & dones leaving), and much tougher in conference competition. The bogey for Jimmy's successor should not be the career stats, but the post ACC stats.

 

[bballbeadle]

What a great post lunch read! So many people don’t appreciate that we have a LEGEND here in Boeheim. Every years he coaches, we should feel good. We should feel great! We will never see his like again. Epic poems and songs shall be composed for him! (Wait, they already have been. ) MORE will be composed!

When I went to the scrimmage, Oshae and Sidibe stood out to me, and I really liked the walk on Bayer. He may be the 3 point threat we need. People don’t believe he will get playing time, but I wonder.

Are you going to make any predictions about our season in your next installment? I really liked how you re-defined and upgraded the qualifications of Sidibe and Oshae.

 

[AlaskaSU]

it is understanable to rationalize a 50% ACC winning percentage but how do you explain all our recent losses to UCon, StJohns and Georgetown?

 

[SWC75]

it is understanable to rationalize a 50% ACC winning percentage but how do you explain all our recent losses to UCon, StJohns and Georgetown?

They scored more points.

 

[two3zone]

Is the bar really set at a .738 winning percentage (JBs current one) from the entire body of work of his carrier or is it at .674, his winning percentage since joining the ACC?

 

[SWC75]

Is the bar really set at a .738 winning percentage (JBs current one) from the entire body of work of his carrier or is it at .674, his winning percentage since joining the ACC?

Both will be tough for a successor to top.