sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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- Aug 15, 2011
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If this game was a fight, Syracuse would have won about a minute in. They started on offense with a flourish; 3 3 pointers, all shot very early in the shot clock; all swishes. It was 9-2 in the blink of an eye.
Niagara opened in man to man defense. I opined in my take on that game that had Paulus known SU was going to be without Buddy, he probably would have opened up in a zone. Well, the Rider coach did just that. Pretty sound strategy...in theory, Syracuse is a much worse outside shooting team without Buddy and the zone should help keep an undersized and undertalented team out of foul trouble.
Syracuse’s reaction to the zone was to push the ball down the court very aggressively and launch a 3 before Rider had a chance to set up their zone properly. They got a lot of open looks and they hit most of them.
The first half was one of the most fast paced, hyper kinetic halves I have seen Syracuse play in years. SU pushed the ball up court as fast as possible just about every possession. I would guess the did not let the shot clock get below 10 the entire half. In the past 5 or more years (a little less last year), there have been many SU possessions where we did not get a shot off until there was less than 5 seconds on the shot clock. I would say we failed to get a shot off period once or twice a game; sometimes more.
Huge difference in the pace of the offense. Part of that is JGIII, who likes to play at a fast pace. We did play faster last year but so far this year, we are taking it to a different level. I think Kadary is part of that. He was thought by some to prefer a slow pace, and he played PG for Brewster like that a lot last year, but he clearly thrives in transition and so far at least, it looks like he is going to press the pace as well. Besides getting blocks and steals that lead to transition, he also has a habit of making excellent entry passes to the low post early in possessions (again, before the defense is fully set). He is, IMHO, our best player at getting the ball inside in half court situations in a long time.
One more contributing factor to the faster pace is Alan Griffin. He loves to release and run hard when we get a defensive rebound. This hasn’t lead to a lot of fast break baskets though. He prefers to run to the wing in these situations and take the open 3. Which he is doing really well so far. Love the impact Kadary and Alan have had on pace of play.
I will say when we have a major advantage in size and talent, I prefer to see us take advantage and get the ball inside a lot. Get the smaller team in foul trouble and destroy them when the subs have to come in. That is what happened against Niagara. It really didn’t happen last night but on a night when we made 15 3 pointers, and were scoring so quickly and easily, I can’t complain much about this.
It was great to see JGIII have a good shooting night. He needed it. So did the team. Saw some subtle changes in his game last night. He still was the primary guy bringing the ball up and running the offense, but on the rare possessions where we worked the ball around a bit, he started migrating to the wing and even the end line to try and find a seam in the zone. He was able to find better quality shots from those spaces, which I think played a big role in him shooting so much better. We have enough good scorers that we do not need him to take contested 3s. For him at this point in his career, that is a low percentage shot we need to avoid. The other thing he changed is that he essentially stopped trying his iso moves inside the 3 point circle where he usually ends up forcing a contested off balance shot with little time left on the shot clock. Again, these rarely work and if he can avoid trying them, it is better for the team. How much of this was by design I don’t know but I like not seeing us struggling to find someone open, struggling to get a quality shot late in the shot clock, possession after possession.
One thing that is striking about the team so far is that they are unselfish. Last night we had all 5 starters get at least 3 assists. I was particularly pleased to see Alan get 5. Elijah got doubled a lot and got to be really good at taking advantage when this happened, finding the open guy and getting him a quality shot. As time goes on, Alan might get the same treatment. Great to see him make good passes and be a team player.
Usually when we play against a zone defense, we go to Marek in the high post and run the offense through him but I think because of the unusual fast pace of the game, that didn’t happen much last night. Which is okay; it is good to know we have this in our tool kit when it is needed.
As with the other games so far this year, you can’t make definitive statements about things watching Syracuse play against clearly inferior teams. Some observations though:
Kadary was not as controlled and composed last night. Made a couple of unforced turnovers, a couple of poor passes. They seem to come when he has been on the court for a long time and is getting gassed. His form on his jumper is really nice.
Woody continues to impress. Nice to have a true frosh who knows how to play defense right away. Smart kid; has picked up the zone and his responsibilities very quickly. I kind of expected that based on his reputation as an outstanding defensive player. Did not expect him to be so comfortable batting down low for rebounds. He led the team in rebounds with 8 only played 22 minutes. And his outside shooting (another frosh with text book form) has been great so far. Let’s see if he can do more than just launch 3s in future games. Buddy being out has really been a blessing in disguise for Kadary and Woody. So glad they are taking advantage of this opportunity.
The other place where opportunity is knocking is at center, where Bourama is going to be out until about the end of the month. ‘The youngsters all got some playing time last night.
JBA hit a baseline jumper, showing some of that great shooting touch we have seen in videos in the past. He plays physical and is not afraid to body up players. He has actually become a filled out strong center. Does not look super athletic. Very different player than the bigs we have typically taken. Could be a big asset in games against big, physical teams, especially when we get in foul trouble.
Thought Edwards again looked tentative. From what I have seen, he might be the most skilled of our bigs but he rarely shows it when he is in a game. Needs an injection of confidence. It would be great if we could try and get the ball to him down low a couple of times, get him a couple of baskets and get him rolling while we are still playing OOC games. Hope it happens. He has to get stronger. Does not look like he added a lot of strength during the off season. Getting stuck in The Netherlands because of the pandemic probably hurt his development.
That brings us to Frank Anselem. First off, he looks like he belongs. Already has a pretty good build and he has the frame to add a lot more muscle. Second, he is aggressive and plays pretty tough. No question in my mind he is the best athlete of the young bigs. He has the highest ceiling. That said, it doesn’t look like he fully knows what he is doing. Especially on defense, where I bet he has rarely played zone in the past. I really like that he drew 3 fouls in 9 minutes of play and got 5 FTs in such limited time. He has some Rony Seikaly in him. Great athlete. Aggressive. A lot of potential.
Overall, was really pleased with the performance of the team. Glad there were no serious injuries (what was up with that guy with the white headband giving Marek a vicious elbow to the ribs? Why wasn’t he ejected for that? Maybe the announcers discussed this...I did not find them worth listening to most of the game.
Another question. When exactly is Buddy going to be allowed back with the team? My understanding is that ability to play, at least as far as COVID is concerned, is determined based on the rules at the game venue. So Stanford played extra games in NC and will in Las Vegas to get around super stringent rules in California. Is there any chance that the RU game being placed in NJ might make it possible for Buddy to play? My guess is that the rules in NJ are the same as NY. The interaction between the states (and CT) is so great that having significantly different COVID rules doesn’t make a lot of sense. But I am hoping.
Niagara opened in man to man defense. I opined in my take on that game that had Paulus known SU was going to be without Buddy, he probably would have opened up in a zone. Well, the Rider coach did just that. Pretty sound strategy...in theory, Syracuse is a much worse outside shooting team without Buddy and the zone should help keep an undersized and undertalented team out of foul trouble.
Syracuse’s reaction to the zone was to push the ball down the court very aggressively and launch a 3 before Rider had a chance to set up their zone properly. They got a lot of open looks and they hit most of them.
The first half was one of the most fast paced, hyper kinetic halves I have seen Syracuse play in years. SU pushed the ball up court as fast as possible just about every possession. I would guess the did not let the shot clock get below 10 the entire half. In the past 5 or more years (a little less last year), there have been many SU possessions where we did not get a shot off until there was less than 5 seconds on the shot clock. I would say we failed to get a shot off period once or twice a game; sometimes more.
Huge difference in the pace of the offense. Part of that is JGIII, who likes to play at a fast pace. We did play faster last year but so far this year, we are taking it to a different level. I think Kadary is part of that. He was thought by some to prefer a slow pace, and he played PG for Brewster like that a lot last year, but he clearly thrives in transition and so far at least, it looks like he is going to press the pace as well. Besides getting blocks and steals that lead to transition, he also has a habit of making excellent entry passes to the low post early in possessions (again, before the defense is fully set). He is, IMHO, our best player at getting the ball inside in half court situations in a long time.
One more contributing factor to the faster pace is Alan Griffin. He loves to release and run hard when we get a defensive rebound. This hasn’t lead to a lot of fast break baskets though. He prefers to run to the wing in these situations and take the open 3. Which he is doing really well so far. Love the impact Kadary and Alan have had on pace of play.
I will say when we have a major advantage in size and talent, I prefer to see us take advantage and get the ball inside a lot. Get the smaller team in foul trouble and destroy them when the subs have to come in. That is what happened against Niagara. It really didn’t happen last night but on a night when we made 15 3 pointers, and were scoring so quickly and easily, I can’t complain much about this.
It was great to see JGIII have a good shooting night. He needed it. So did the team. Saw some subtle changes in his game last night. He still was the primary guy bringing the ball up and running the offense, but on the rare possessions where we worked the ball around a bit, he started migrating to the wing and even the end line to try and find a seam in the zone. He was able to find better quality shots from those spaces, which I think played a big role in him shooting so much better. We have enough good scorers that we do not need him to take contested 3s. For him at this point in his career, that is a low percentage shot we need to avoid. The other thing he changed is that he essentially stopped trying his iso moves inside the 3 point circle where he usually ends up forcing a contested off balance shot with little time left on the shot clock. Again, these rarely work and if he can avoid trying them, it is better for the team. How much of this was by design I don’t know but I like not seeing us struggling to find someone open, struggling to get a quality shot late in the shot clock, possession after possession.
One thing that is striking about the team so far is that they are unselfish. Last night we had all 5 starters get at least 3 assists. I was particularly pleased to see Alan get 5. Elijah got doubled a lot and got to be really good at taking advantage when this happened, finding the open guy and getting him a quality shot. As time goes on, Alan might get the same treatment. Great to see him make good passes and be a team player.
Usually when we play against a zone defense, we go to Marek in the high post and run the offense through him but I think because of the unusual fast pace of the game, that didn’t happen much last night. Which is okay; it is good to know we have this in our tool kit when it is needed.
As with the other games so far this year, you can’t make definitive statements about things watching Syracuse play against clearly inferior teams. Some observations though:
Kadary was not as controlled and composed last night. Made a couple of unforced turnovers, a couple of poor passes. They seem to come when he has been on the court for a long time and is getting gassed. His form on his jumper is really nice.
Woody continues to impress. Nice to have a true frosh who knows how to play defense right away. Smart kid; has picked up the zone and his responsibilities very quickly. I kind of expected that based on his reputation as an outstanding defensive player. Did not expect him to be so comfortable batting down low for rebounds. He led the team in rebounds with 8 only played 22 minutes. And his outside shooting (another frosh with text book form) has been great so far. Let’s see if he can do more than just launch 3s in future games. Buddy being out has really been a blessing in disguise for Kadary and Woody. So glad they are taking advantage of this opportunity.
The other place where opportunity is knocking is at center, where Bourama is going to be out until about the end of the month. ‘The youngsters all got some playing time last night.
JBA hit a baseline jumper, showing some of that great shooting touch we have seen in videos in the past. He plays physical and is not afraid to body up players. He has actually become a filled out strong center. Does not look super athletic. Very different player than the bigs we have typically taken. Could be a big asset in games against big, physical teams, especially when we get in foul trouble.
Thought Edwards again looked tentative. From what I have seen, he might be the most skilled of our bigs but he rarely shows it when he is in a game. Needs an injection of confidence. It would be great if we could try and get the ball to him down low a couple of times, get him a couple of baskets and get him rolling while we are still playing OOC games. Hope it happens. He has to get stronger. Does not look like he added a lot of strength during the off season. Getting stuck in The Netherlands because of the pandemic probably hurt his development.
That brings us to Frank Anselem. First off, he looks like he belongs. Already has a pretty good build and he has the frame to add a lot more muscle. Second, he is aggressive and plays pretty tough. No question in my mind he is the best athlete of the young bigs. He has the highest ceiling. That said, it doesn’t look like he fully knows what he is doing. Especially on defense, where I bet he has rarely played zone in the past. I really like that he drew 3 fouls in 9 minutes of play and got 5 FTs in such limited time. He has some Rony Seikaly in him. Great athlete. Aggressive. A lot of potential.
Overall, was really pleased with the performance of the team. Glad there were no serious injuries (what was up with that guy with the white headband giving Marek a vicious elbow to the ribs? Why wasn’t he ejected for that? Maybe the announcers discussed this...I did not find them worth listening to most of the game.
Another question. When exactly is Buddy going to be allowed back with the team? My understanding is that ability to play, at least as far as COVID is concerned, is determined based on the rules at the game venue. So Stanford played extra games in NC and will in Las Vegas to get around super stringent rules in California. Is there any chance that the RU game being placed in NJ might make it possible for Buddy to play? My guess is that the rules in NJ are the same as NY. The interaction between the states (and CT) is so great that having significantly different COVID rules doesn’t make a lot of sense. But I am hoping.
