Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="newmexicuse, post: 59523, member: 57"] SUMMARY: The key to the whole season is the development of the big men. If Melo and Keita aren’t much better than last year and Christmas isn’t ready to make a major contribution, this is going to be a very disappointing season. But, again Boeheim doesn’t seem to be worried about that so I would expect to see a much improved Melo and Keita and a productive Christmas. A second favorable development would be for one or more of the players from the other three positions to rise above the level of a position player and become a genuine star- someone who could carry the team during a shooting slump, have an explosive five minutes that gives us a good lead or makes the big shot at the end of the game. I think the best candidates are CJ Fair and Dion Waiters. Fair needs to show a reliable jumper and Waiters needs to get back his above-the-rim mojo. I think we’ve seen what we are going to see from Joseph, Jardine and Triche. They could be more consistent but they aren’t going to sprout wings. The window of opportunity may have closed for Southerland and Jones. It hasn’t opened yet for Carter-Williams and Cooney. An average Syracuse team wins about 25 games. In a bad year we win about 20 games. In a good year, we win about 30 games. We got to the Final Four about once a decade and each time we’ve done that in the Boeheim Era we’ve wound up playing for the national championship. We won it once, should have won it another time and played a great team close the other time. If the big men come through and Fair and/or Waiters explode we’ll have one of those 30 win teams and this could be another Final Four team or even a national champion, (consider that the 9th place team in this conference won it last year). If nobody explodes but the big men get the job done, we’ll win at least 25. If the big men don’t come through it could also be a 20 win team, which would be a good year for most skills but not here. Now it’s time to play the games.[/quote] There is really no question that Keita & Melo will be improved. Keita, if for no other reason, than that he will be playing with two hands. The question is only the extent to which they will be improved. Will one of them make a quantum leap or will it just be an average year over year developmental improvement ?? The big wild card amongst the bigs is XMAS. Huge amounts of talent & upside. However, from what little I saw of him in HS games, I wasn't impressed. I hope I am wrong, but I see him as very raw & probably a two year developmental project who, hopefully, breaks out at some point in his second or third season. This year, I think CJ easily beats him out as starting PF, and XMAS will probably be a border line rotation player who per Jimmy's usual will get a few shots, but will also get a few DNPs. [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?