My Take | Page 4 | Syracusefan.com

My Take

In my head, I started to write this post early in the second half. I was going to talk about how disappointed I was with the team in general. About how I wouldn’t be that upset if I didn’t know they were capable of so much more than they have accomplished this season. That it was a season of inconsistencies and lost opportunities.

And even after that remarkable comeback...one of the best Syracuse comebacks in the last couple of decades, I feel compelled to point out the lack of consistency with this team. They can be a surprisingly good defensive team (apparently only only 10-20 minute blocks) and are capable of putting up a startling number of points in a short period of time.

How the hell did Syracuse win this game? Completely lost on offense, the 2-3 zone was ripped to shreds...how the hell did this happen?

Part of it was the press. It did cause a few turnovers...ND kept inbounding the ball into the corners, which made it easy for Syracuse to double team the ball. Mapp isn’t a great ball handler and there really wasn’t another ball handler on the team. While the turnovers helped, I think the press helped Syracuse more by getting the team running, getting them some transition baskets, which often turned out to be transition 3s. When Buddy gets hot, he can go white hot and this was one of those games where he took things over for a while. Marek had another game where he was huge in the second half, getting big baskets, making great passes, hitting his FTs and playing good defense. Senior things you hope and pray you get from your senior.

Kadary again struggled some. Only scored 6 points, no blocks, only 1 rebound and 1 assist. He has been looking for his shot a lot more in the last few games and while we have been struggling to score and the points have helped, I think we might be better if he played more like the point guard like he was doing earlier in the season. His defense was maybe the worst he played all season in the first half (he was repeatedly out of position, which gave ND a few easy transition baskets) and his zone covererage was shaky as well. He was much better defensively in the second half.

The whole team was much better defensively in the second half. ND ended up with only 21 points in the second half. A key was JB’s decision to bend his Alan, who was horrific on defense in the first half (and not great on offense). Braswell was not very good offensively but he rebounded his position capably and played excellent defense. He was a big reason why all those wide open 3s ND had in the first half went away. Lastly, Q went crazy on the boards and seemed to get almost every miss ND had (there were a lot of missed ND shots in that second half).

Durham got in some foul trouble (mostly Q and Marek) and Brey replaced him with Wertz. Wertz is a good shooter but he is not a good defensive player. Made it a lot easier to SU to score. Props to Marek for being Uber aggressive with the ball in the second half. He went hard to the basket almost every time he touched it, and good things happened when he elected to drive.

JGIII only ended up playing 21 minutes and probably deserves more PT. But against a good outside shooting team, he is a liability on defense and if we were to win, it was going to be through our defense.

Q had another bad game on offense. Durham really bothered him. He is having problems finishing shot shots down low and has been for a few games now. He did draw some big fouls and he was absolutely huge rebounding, which was really important with Marek playing almost the whole game at center and Alan out or in a funk most of the way.

Alan has been up and down all season. I think his base instinct is to play on the perimeter and just launch 3s and JB does not want him to play that way. I was hoping Alan was buying into his role in the offense but it didn’t really look like it today. That said, his offense wasn’t that bad. Even his rebounding wasn’t bad. But his defense was a mess. Out of position all the time. He let a ball off him go run out of bounds and just didn’t seem to be in the game mentally. Hope he does better next game.

We have won every game we have out rebounded the other team and lost all by one of the games we were out rebounded. It is such a big key for this team. Thank God Q was a monster down low today and props to Marek and Braswell for fighting hard to get rebounds as well.

Duke is next. This will be a war. Some might same it is an elimination game for the NCAA tournament. I hope the team is ready. It will be another big one for this team.
Really good post on this thread. Just to add on a couple things...

Griffin is a really good player, and I actually like that he doesn't let other teams punk him and he talks a little trash, but for now, he can't do that and still play well at this point. Devo, one of my favorite players is someone who talked the talk and walked the walk. He backed up his talk with his game, pretty consistently and would usually shut the other player or team up with his play. I think while Griff has all the physical tools to be a great player, his new role here does require a few things. First, someone said maturity in another post and I agree. This team needs leadership from him, in several areas that I don't think UI asked or expected from him. Learning how to elevate his game, understanding the moment in a game, having a feel for how he's playing in a game and self adjusting. The biggest thing, is him determining a consistent level of play so that he doesn't have these peaks and valleys. I think he's so talented that maybe he has never had to push himself beyond what he can do physically. I think he can do it, and it's the key to him playing at the next level. Elijah had a redshirt year to address a lot of the same issues, watch leadership with Battle and I think you can see with Griff the difference of not having that RS year. With his family lineage, I think he's one player that JB can push the way he does without worrying about breaking his confidence. He needs another year to become a BOSS type player (physically and mentally).

Quincy... He raised the bar so much for himself since the season started and played pretty consistently other then a few games. I have to remind myself that he's just a soph and he's still running up against things he hasn't seen or figured out yet. Clearly his role last year, what he's done this year and our expectations from him moving forward are all different. He usually figures it out. His biggest issue is going to be time, he needs another year to become a great player but would that hurt him draft wise?

Buddy... Played a great game, not to rehash what's been said regarding his offense. I was more impressed with his defense in the second half. At 6'5 he doesn't have to be quick or fast if he's active and big. He played off of Kadary's defense up top and was active, reacted well and BIG at the 2. This was really a problem for ND because even when Kadary popped out on a guard, Buddy dropped, hands up and the entry pass wasn't there but he recovered in position when the ball came back to his side. Very nice, really helped the overall movement of the zone.

Joe... Didn't play bad, but it's just a big difference with the O and D when he in. If you look at most of the games we start off in a hole, it's because of the entry pass over Joe. Not all his fault, it's just a matter of size. Normally I would want to see him at the 2 for a few minutes, but Buddy was hot and we had to roll with that.

Well coached game. Really good team win!
 
I think Q needs to stop going away from contact around the basket.. do a bit more with the fakes.. Faking is great but if you dont do anything with it you just end up throwing off balance shots why bother.. A bit quicker smaller on the fakes and go into the contact and try to draw more fouls. Needs to really figure out how to use the backboard a bit more since he cant elevate over most of the bigs and ends up throwing it hard too often.
yeah would be nice...but a lot of refs call the slightest impression of a charge an offesnive foul and a lot of coaches coach their players to draw charges (not my favorite development in recent NCAABB)...makes it hard for him to be aggressive on drives. Duke is a prime example of that style of play.
 
but once he finishes the dribble they rarely call anything on the offense. so set and figure that out.
 

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