Post Brooklyn Beatdown | Page 9 | Syracusefan.com

Post Brooklyn Beatdown

NIL sucks for the game. But, now we are just on the other side of things. We used to have a recruiting advantage with the Dome. Now we’re at a disadvantage. As Michael Scott would say, “Circle of life.”
We're at a recruiting disadvantage because we've declined into a mid-table at best team in a conference we have had no relevance in since the first year we joined.

Everyone else has to deal with NIL and the transfer portal, I'm really sick of them as being trotted out as excuses. If it was all about money the Top 25 in all sports would just be the top half of the SEC and Big 10 jockeying for position and nobody else.

(Rant not directed at you btw, Zelda)
 
People need to stop the Red can’t coach stuff. He’s searching for players who can step up and play. I’d play Petar over Freeman every day of the week. The only thing Freeman does is defensive rebound. He’s terrible on defense, can’t shoot, can’t pass and walks all over the court. You never see him battling on the offensive boards. He’s as soft as charmin. Anyone who thinks he should be a lottery pick won’t have a job long. He brings very little to the game. I thought he would bring a lot more to the table, but he’s been very disappointing. I don’t trust his shot selection or effort. He and Lampkin just can’t defend anyone. The best thing about these two games is we battled and were in both games. Last year at Maui we were totally outclassed. We also proved we can make free throws, so that’s encouraging. After five games it’s still not clear who should be staring. If Chance has his old skills, we will finally have someone who can attack off the dribble and make plays for his teammates. He could also defend. You can’t give up on anyone at this point until someone proves they are better than someone else. People talk about our defense, but our offense is going to be our biggest problem. Who scores on a consistent basis? Despite the two losses, there’s a lot to take from these two games. More positives than negatives.
I really like Moore and I got beat up yesterday saying Freeman didnt deserve to play insecond half thursday cause he didnt try on defense and is generally lazy on the court. Bell is the exact same. Petar, Lampkin and Davis make the best froncourt so far. Freeman made so many errors last night and he just kept playing. Reallysoft so far.
 
For positives

JJ showing he is a talented scorer and can get by most guard matchups 1v1 even against tougher competition. I thought his defense looked better too, especially against Texas tech.

Donnie with 13 boards! Good board numbers in general even against tougher comp.

Moore and Petar also showing they can get you something against tougher comp.

Maybe the biggest is that the defense gave up fewer points to Texas and Texas tech than they did an injured Lemoyne team in the dome. I know that sounds wild as a positive, but my view of the team was in the toilet after the first three games due to the defense. We are not a total lost cause on that end. In both games we had stretches of high quality defense. Can we get it to 40 mins?

This tourney has done enough to convince me out ceiling is higher. We need to keep improving and keep optimizing the lineups.
 
We're at a recruiting disadvantage because we've declined into a mid-table at best team in a conference we have had no relevance in since the first year we joined.

Everyone else has to deal with NIL and the transfer portal, I'm really sick of them as being trotted out as excuses. If it was all about money the Top 25 in all sports would just be the top half of the SEC and Big 10 jockeying for position and nobody else.

(Rant not directed at you btw, Zelda)

Nine of the top 12 teams jockeying in the college football playoffs are exactly that.
 
The improvement in defensive intensity, positioning, and execution of M2M concepts was impressive relative to what we saw the first 3 games. Positive sign of coaching taking effect. Ironically, compared to how I thought the season might unfold, I’m now much more concerned about the offense.
 
I saw nothing from Cuffe that makes me believe that.

He played more than 300 minutes last year - about 11 minutes a game in 29 out of 32 games, and only had 16 turnovers - about a turnover every 20 minutes of game time. That's very solid for a guard. He shot 34% from three, and he generated a fair number of steals for a deep bench guy.

Weak points: He was not good from the line, did not get to the line much, and didn't create very many assists.

Carlos is playing almost 30 minutes a game and is shooting 23% from the floor and 12% from three. There is no question that Cuffe needs to be given 10-15 minutes a game, and Carlos should see his time cut in half..
 
Okay, but we aren't talking about getting into the Football Playoff, we're talking about just making the NCAA tournament in hoops and being relevant again.

Agreed on that. Our NIL isn't where it needs to be. The program makes a lot of pitches and we have work to do. At least some help is on the way.
 
To keep things clear since you caught me mid edit in the last post:

My point is the money helps of course, but it isn't a direct correlation. We're not so poor that we can't compete and the landscape of college sports proves that. It's just a weak excuse.
 
To keep things clear since you caught me mid edit in the last post:

My point is the money helps of course, but it isn't a direct correlation. We're not so poor that we can't compete and the landscape of college sports proves that. It's just a weak excuse.

If you don't recognize that it's a liability then agree to disagree. A couple of hundred thousand bucks would paper over a huge issue.
 
Agreed on that. Our NIL isn't where it needs to be. The program makes a lot of pitches and we have work to do. At least some help is on the way.
That’s really disappointing to hear. It seems unfathomable that a hoops school like ours can’t generate enough NIL money. What are we even doing?
 
If we just can't compete with rich football blue bloods like Tulane, Army, and Boise State, maybe we should just shutter the athletics department.
 
Oh that all time great recruiting class that SU had a couple years ago? lol

I was unenthused about the Autry hire and remain so but the state of the program was pretty damn low when he took over.

Either Red did absolutely nothing while he was coach in waiting or he was part of the problem.
If JB was mailing it in, which it certainly looked like, who was evaluating the recruits for the past several years?
 
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Either Red did absolutely nothing while he was coach in waiting or he was part of the problem.
If JB was mailing it in, which it certainly looked like, who was evaluating the recruits for the several years?
Fair point.
 
I couldn’t help but think about the 2012 St. John’s game when we had 14,000 Syracuse fans in a sold out MSG but could only muster about 4000 Thursday. We had more fans in Vegas. I thought that was sad.
Vegas is closer to MSG and easier to get to than Barclays.
 
Okay, but we aren't talking about getting into the Football Playoff, we're talking about just making the NCAA tournament in hoops and being relevant again.

Can we pin this to the top of the board? We're not talking about competing with Duke.

We're talking about being a BUBBLE TEAM. If you want to believe we don't have NIL money to build a bubble team, knock yourself out. It's not true.
 
Can we pin this to the top of the board? We're not talking about competing with Duke.

We're talking about being a BUBBLE TEAM. If you want to believe we don't have NIL money to build a bubble team, knock yourself out. It's not true.

There is a big difference between having no NIL money and spending that NIL money on the wrong players because we have no clue how to build a winning team and recognize what winning players are.
 
Can we pin this to the top of the board? We're not talking about competing with Duke.

We're talking about being a BUBBLE TEAM. If you want to believe we don't have NIL money to build a bubble team, knock yourself out. It's not true.
If we are going to cry poverty we were better off hiring someone like Langel who can at least X and O’s a flawed squad to good wins. Right now we aren’t getting that.
 
If we are going to cry poverty we were better off hiring someone like Langel who can at least X and O’s a flawed squad to good wins. Right now we aren’t getting that.
I fear we missed the boat on Langel. He'll be at Villanova (or another P4) next year, and Wildhack may come to really regret losing the chance to get him.
 

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