If I was writing the article for this game, the headline would read like a dream, and the subheadline not so much ...
Cuse Defeats Nations #1 team on the Road by Double Digits!
proving the metric the NCAA uses to evaluate teams is stupid
Ohio St. is short, unathletic, and not great at shooting. They're not terrible at anything, but also not good at anything. A mediocrity in every sense of the word. I expect them to finish right around .500 in conference play. Will that be enough to send them to the NCAA tournament instead of the NIT? Probably, but only because the metric that the NCAA uses to evaluate teams is stupid.
They play tight pressure man to man D, and they switch on EVERY screen. Not only do they switch but they switch crazy early so there's almost no point even running a screen in the first place. Their guards are stocky and muscled and their forwards are guard-like so they are set up pretty well to switch without giving up any mismatches (like a really poor man's Villanova).
Ohio St's tallest player is only 6'9 and he weighs 300 pounds and thus doesn't have much of a vertical. Their power forward is short and plays below the rim. They have no rim protection to speak of.
Unless you force a LOT of turnovers (and Ohio St doesn't) I don't understand the philosophical concept behind playing a pressure man to man when you can't protect the rim. Its like begging teams to attack your weakness. But this is how Ohio St. plays, and it felt like Syracuse could get to the rim and score (or at least get fouled) any time they wanted.
Because Ohio St switched really early on every screen, and because their switches weren't always tight, SU also found plenty of space to shoot the ball. Our shooters are all between 6'6 - 6'10 so they don't need a ton of space to get their shot off (especially Huges who has a lighting quick release), and Ohio St just seemed a step out of position and a half inch too short to bother our shooters.
Even though Ohio St's defense was always around, playing physical and being pesky, they really did a poor job of taking Syracuse out of their comfort zone. We want to drive to the basket (especially Battle), and shoot 3's (especially Hughes) and that's exactly what we did, with great success.
Offensively I thought Ohio St came out as prepared and well schooled to play against Syracuse as any team I have seen. Most team's run pretty vanilla offense against zones, but Ohio St had several tricks and misdirections and it confused us at first. Boeheim, though, is the best coach I have ever seen at in-game adjustments. He took Chukwu, Sidibe, and Hughes out of the game early and yelled at them. I don't think it was because they made bad mistakes, but more likely because he wanted them to play differently to counter what Ohio St was doing and he yells to get the point across.
Once Syracuse adjusted to what Ohio St was doing, they had no counter-punch, and shot in the high 20% from the field for the rest of the game. They would have lost by about 30, if it were not for the officiating ... so lets address that elephant in the room. I hardly ever talk, or even think, about officiating during games. Its not perfect but its light year's ahead of where it was 15 to 20 years ago and slowing improving all the time. This game was different, it felt sketchy. I'm not saying the officials were cheating to make Ohio St win, because I think that's very unlikely. But I did think during the game that somebody must have had big money on the "over" and one of the officials in his pocket. After all, a game between two defensive teams like Syracuse and Ohio St was bound to have a low over-under line, and calling the game in such a way that the two teams shoot 54 combine free throws is a great way to achieve that over number.
I checked the line after the game, and the over-under number was 135.5. The actual total scored was 134, so if the officials were trying to make the "over" happen, they failed ... an indication that this was never the case. So maybe it was simply good old fashioned incompetence ... if so I hope we never run into those officials again.
So what does this win mean for Syracuse? Its nice to beat the team that's ranked #16 in the AP and #1 in the NET, for sure. But Ohio St is probably actually around the 70th best team in the country. Still, the Syracuse team that played at MSG could not have beaten the 70th best team in the country, so there have been some large and obvious improvements. We are much better defensively than we were, and while shooting comes and goes by nature, I believe Syracuse will have more good shooting games like this one than bad shooting games like the two at MSG moving forward. They are going to be able to pick their spots because they are good at shooting and getting to the rim. Unless you have a dominant rim protector (and not many teams do) its hard to stop both, you can either play up and give up the drive, or sag back and give up the jumper.
Syracuse should be able to beat Georgetown at the level they are playing now ... I think they will have to play even better than this to beat Buffalo. A break in the injury procession, and some time to practice together and gel is what its going to take to make the next jump up in play.
Here are some thoughts on each player ...
Howard - The impulse will be to say that Howard makes all the difference because Cuse sucked when he was out and played well with him. The truth is a bit more complex. Howard is a shell of himself right now, and we played better when Carey was in the game. Its really just having everybody at their correct position and playing the way we were designed to play that makes the difference. Howard is only part of that. He rarely ventured inside the 3 point line on offense, and when he did he looked uncomfortable. As Howard improves he will give us another shooter, and another player who can drive to the basket and score, and that will help take this team to another level.
Battle - When we had a lead and needed to kill the game off, the ball went to Battle every time, and he produced. This is exactly what we want from him.
Hughes - Made a couple defensive mistakes early, but then played well. This tells me he's coachable which is a good sign. I still think there will be games where his defense and rebounding is a liability. On offense he showed that he's hard to stop when his shot is falling because of his range and his quick release. Also, he played all 40 minutes and still seemed to have a full tank of gas at the end, which is worth noting.
Brissett - He got 3 quick early fouls (none of which were actually fouls) and thus sat the bench for most of the first half. In the second half he showed what a force of nature he can be. There were two important stretches in this game. The first was right after half time where Syracuse went from down 2 to up 10. Brissett was everywhere during this stretch, posting up for two, hitting a 3, driving to the basket getting fouled and making both free throws, and getting a block on defense.
Chukwu - He was a game time decision and spent most of the game on the bench until the 8 minute mark when he was the only center left on the roster. Ohio St's center, Wesson, shot 14 free throws in the first 32 minutes of the game, of which he only played 18, that's an average of almost 1 free throw every minute of PT. He "earned" these free throws by essentially throwing his body into Syracuse players so that both guys fell, then watching the officials inexplicably calling the free throw on the Syracuse player who just got knocked down. In the last 8 minutes (of which he played 6) Wesson shot zero free throws. This is not because he stopped throwing his body into Syracuse players. Its because Chukwu stood up to the physical play. He grabbed a couple tough rebounds in traffic too. Not bad for a guy with a groin injury.
Carey - I'm sold on Carey being the real deal, but its going to take some time to come together. You have to remember that he's a freshman who had very little time to practice with the team due to injury and they are still trying to figure out how to integrate his skills into what they want to do. At MSG Carey had the ball way too much, and way too much of our offense ran through him. He put up decent numbers, but didn't get the best out of his teammates. In this game Carey was not such a focal point when he played, and that's better for the team, but he was actually too much of a peripheral figure, and his talent went to waste. The perfect balance will take time. Give him until January or February and I believe he will become a force of nature. Still, he was in the game for one of SU's two big runs. They had lost a 10 point lead by missing 6 or 7 shots in a row, then Carey came in the game and Syracuse proceeded to score 12 straight points, essentially icing the game. Carey wasn't exactly leading the way during the run (although he made a couple nice plays, one of them has a thread about it here) but I also don't think it was a coincidence that Syracuse looked better with Carey in the game and Howard on the bench.
Dolezaj - He "only" scored 8 points, but those 8 points were incredibly important. Ohio St had an early lead and Syracuse needed to fight to keep the game within striking distance. It was during this stretch that Dolezaj scored 8 of our 21 points. We needed every one of them. Most people will talk about his 3 pointers, but I'm more excited about his drive to the basket and finish. When he played for his national team he did that a lot. I don't see any reason why he can't do it for us too. In college, championships are won on the backs of players who can both hit 3's and drive to the basket and score. Battle can do that, so can Brissett, and Howard (when healthy), Dolejaz can become one of these players too. Also of note, 3 of his 5 fouls came from being knocked to the ground by a guy who weighs at least 100 pounds more than he does, crazy. Take away the terrible fouls and I still think Syracuse looks too shaky on the boards when they have Dolezaj at center.
Sidibe - I'll grant you that he was invisible on offense, but I thought he looked quite good on D. He fought hard when the play got physical and he really bothered Ohio St's bigs. According to the coaches he's playing at 80%, but that's just 80% of full health. It doesn't count the fact that Sidibe wasn't playing basketball all summer long, or even working on his body because of surgery. Its going to take a while before we see the "real" Sidibe. My guess is not until February or March. The "real" Sidibe would have dominated this game. What we got from him was not domination but a good solid performance and a step in the right direction.
