Observations after three games | Syracusefan.com

Observations after three games

Cuse_MN

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- Team is a lot of fun to watch. Big, athletic, unselfish and can score the ball. So many combinations.
- Defense looks solid. Press has gotten burned a few times too easily, but half court man or zone look active. Still expect mostly zone, but wouldn't be surprised to see a few trips in man this year. Seems like JB has added a couple new trap spots to the zone. We will block a lot of shots this year.
- Kids and JB seem to really be buying into the long bench concept. This appears to be a team that JB will actually go past the 7-8 norm. Doesn't have much choice with how kids are playing. Everyone saying the right things about sharing time. Redshirting probably tough pill for Trevor but think about the fact that he's not even on the first or second team at practice.
- Biggest surprises - Fab, J-South and Dion. The game has slowed down for James. Dion and Fab are better physically as stated many times, but they look so much better in the mental aspect of the game as well.
- Big CJ fan and he is still quietly doing his thing, but seems like he is struggling a bit finding his niche offensively getting shots in sets. Maybe my expectations were too high, but just another threat once he gets a bit more assertive.
- Decent game tonight, but Scoop off to slow start.
- MCW may have the longest leash for a freshman bench player that I can recall in many years. Gonna be a stud, but not really shooting ball well and apparently has the green light from many steps behind the arc. Despite Scoop's poor start I still see him handling most pressure situations.
- If we truly have a ten man rotation, to me Xmas is the 10th man despite starting if James keeps playing this way. How wild of a statement is that? The Fab or Baye and two of KJ, CJ, JS lineup will play a lot, especially when we struggle to score (the three fwd's are 1,2 and 3 in mpg through 3 games). JB seems set on platooning the guards so MCW will get more minutes than Rak I think. I'd note that officially in minutes played, Baye is the 10th man so far.
- Our two best 3-pt shooters are 6'7 and 6'8 forwards.
- FT shooting could hurt us.
- Anyone know why KJ is wearing the blue shoes? Haven't heard is discussed on game. Must say he is an incredibly articulate and well spoken individual.
- Watched a decent amount of college hoops so far. Nobody should scare us.
 
...announcers said that 1) may help his knees and legs way shaped; and they may be Melo's, the real Melo's shoes...
 
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- FT shooting could hurt us.
-

Nice recap. One correction: the above should read "Free throw shooting will hurt us." Abysmal, as was to be expected. Pretty unfortunate - Albany can recruit and/or coach good free throw shooters yet Syracuse cannot.
 
Nice recap. One correction: the above should read "Free throw shooting will hurt us." Abysmal, as was to be expected. Pretty unfortunate - Albany can recruit and/or coach good free throw shooters yet Syracuse cannot.
I can not understand how a fifth year GUARD goes to the line and goes 0-2 so often
 
Seriously my JV high school basketball team used to shoot 70-80%
 
I can not understand how a fifth year GUARD goes to the line and goes 0-2 so often

I don't understand how any of them does it, I really don't. Everyone, from JV teams to 60-year-old men in rec leagues, can hit 80% from the line while unguarded with the clock stopped. Syracuse cannot.
 
Its a Syracuse edition. Who started it; Herman Harried?
 
Nice recap. One correction: the above should read "Free throw shooting will hurt us." Abysmal, as was to be expected. Pretty unfortunate - Albany can recruit and/or coach good free throw shooters yet Syracuse cannot.
The odd thing is that when I look at our bigs I see better strokes than from our guards from the line.
 
I see good strokes on most of them; trouble is, there isn't too much sense of valuing the opportunity to get two free points. Too little focus; the bar is set low.
 
I'm convinced that SU just doesn't work on free throw shooting enough and/or JB doesn't demand better performance at it. How else can you explain why SU ranks near the bottom of D1 almost every year?
 
I'm convinced that SU just doesn't work on free throw shooting enough and/or JB doesn't demand better performance at it. How else can you explain why SU ranks near the bottom of D1 almost every year?

Well there is the oft-repeated story (by Boeheim, not just by those of us who have heard it) that Syracuse usually attempts more free throws than its opponents, practice time is very valuable and free throw shooting would take time away from more important things, so Boeheim is content to shoot a lower percentage than opponents, trusting that in the end we'll make the same number of free throws as our opponents (you know, if we go 15/30 and they go 15/17) so it'll all be a wash in a game situation.

This, of course, ignores the fact that we could value our free throw shooting, not give away those free 15 points in a 15/30 situation, and win some games we currently lose. But that's the coach's theory.
 
The one big observation is how disruptive we are on defense. I don't know if they chart passes deflected, but this is the longest and most active team that I have seen. Amazing how losing weight has made a huge difference for Fab and Dion, but the length of Baye, Xmas, CJ, MCW, JS, KJ and BT is unbelievable. Our program must have the tallest guards in the country or close to it and same with the front court. The only negative was all of the fouls called on us. Very rare that a visiting team gets way more FT's than we do. That cannot happen in the BE otherwise we will be allowing too many average teams to be in games,
 

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