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[QUOTE="General20, post: 886344, member: 724"]
I don't know that I agree with you on the team working harder defensively . . . not so much because I disagree with you, but because I think most of the team's defensive improvements are the result of recruiting.  I do, however, think that almost every time Boeheim benches a player it is because of a defensive mistake which if I remember correctly is a relatively new phenomenon, that does seem to yield results.

I don't necessarily believe that making mistakes means you are not working hard though.  Paul Harris comes to mind.  He made more defensive errors than anybody I can remember but his errors were all errors of commission rather than errors of omission.  He was trying really hard, he just had terrible basketball instincts.

One of Boeheim's biggest strengths in my view is as a talent evaluator.  When Syracuse wasn't such a hot commodity on the recruiting trail this strength could not manifest itself, but now that he has his pick of the litter so to speak, he is really doing an amazing job of bringing in players that fit his system.

By way of example, Devendorf had the reputation of not working very hard defensively while Flynn had the reputation of working extremely hard, yet Devendorf was a much better defender than Flynn was because he fit the system better.

James Theus, Allan Griffin, Josh Pace stand out to me as being very hard working defenders who got scored on a lot because they were too small (in Josh Pace's case, only when he played forward which was most of the time).

I think Syracuse has always been a team that works pretty hard defensively, I'm not sure they have always had the talent to be a good defensive team.
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