1)
The team improved significantly once we kicked Benny off the team
Did it really? They played 9 games (6-3) after Benny was persona non grata. In their 4 games against teams in the top-half of the ACC, they went 1-3 winning a home game against UNC. Big game and big win, but it by itself doesn't make a season. They also got pasted by Clemson twice and lost to GaTech on the road. Beat Lousiville twice and a surging Notre Dame team. After removing Benny, they scored 80.4 points per game and gave up 79 ppg. Before that, in conference play, they went 6-3 over nine games scoring 71.5 ppg and giving up 77.5 ppg. Nearly all of that offensive increase is a result of Bell and JJ shooting the 3 unlike they had all season (with Benny 6.2/20.4 at 30% and without Benny they shot 6.9/18 from 3, a 38% clip).
I don't think Benny has anything to do with them making threes considering he didn't play much before he was booted.
2) New players
a) Freeman is a legit top-20 player and could have a huge impact, but he's still a freshman. All he needs to be is an upgrade over Justin Taylor, which ... that should be doable. But even the very best rookie PFs Syracuse had since Melo have been underwhelming. So, big expectations. The most points scored by a frosh in the last ten seasons is by Oshae Brissett at 553 (15ppg).
b) Westry has barely played in two years and has had knee issues dating back to being a HS player.
c) Moore is an outside the a top-100 freshman. People can't rely on that kind of player to be an immediate upgrade. I've lived through the last decade of Syracuse recruiting. Since Ennis, there have been 12 frosh guards play more than 300 minutes (Basically Kyle Cuffe minutes). Of those, three were really deployed as 3s (Malachi, Buddy and Taylor). Buddy was the median for points (217). Everyone with more points than Buddy were starters. So, realistically, expecting more than Buddy's frosh season 6-7 ppg would be expecting a lot out of Moore as an unranked freshman.
d) McLeod is not a great offensive basketball player, doesn't react quickly, looks like he runs in concrete and on defense he gets a lot of blocks.
On top of all of that, the main thing is that you're going to need to see the differnce between what a player gets you this season versus how much more a player next season gets you. For example, if we lose 750 points scored from 3 players who played this season and get 800 points next season from their replacements, how much better are we really?
Seems like the idea as of now is to come back with Chance, JJ, and Bell as the offense and losing Judah's 581 points. That's a big hole to fill.
Yes players can get better, but that's such a trope that you would think all a team needs is a handful of upper classmen and they would be winners. Two seasons ago, we had a sub-500 season with four seniors (two were grad transfers) and two juniors. I don't think a year of conditioning and practice is going to make JJ and Bell into average defenders let alone top defenders.
This team needs talent at both ends of the floor and thinking that they have enough after a season where they were kept well out of the NCAA tourney, again, is troubling.
