Count me as someone who doesn't see this as a program changing win. For a good while now Syracuse has been really quite a good offensive team (who saw that coming early in the year?) who struggles defensively, and rebounding the ball.
Those same patterns held true in this game. The D still wasn't good. The rebounding wasn't good. What changed is the offense went from good to GREAT. Unfortunately shooting 60+% from the field and almost 50% from three is not sustainable. If we didn't have that dry spell against Clemson in the first half we would have put up similar numbers against them and almost definitely would have won. But that's the thing, dry spells happen. Sometimes the ball is spinning up on the rim and looks like it's going to drop, but doesn't (happened about 10 times in a row against Clemson). You need good D to get you through those dry spells.
Why isn't the D any good? Well, I would argue the most important part of a defense is the ability to stop the opposition from converting easy opportunities down low, and we lost our 3 best shot blockers in McLeod, Williams, and Hima (who we really lost half way through last year and is now a shell of himself). You might not think any one of those 3 guys is a difference maker alone, but I'd argue that 99% of defenses would struggle if you took away their 3 top shot blockers.
We aren't going to be a good defensive team this year, but we can and should be better than we currently are. Seems pretty obvious the coaches are emphasizing it, and the players are showing emotion when they make a good defensive play. Watching how the D performs is the thing I'm most excited about for the rest of the season.
A great win like this is a nice time for fans to take stock of what is going right with the team, and there are plenty of those things.
1) Red's ability to change strategy mid-season. Red wanted this to be a running team. He has athletes. He practiced and planned for this to be a running team. They just aren't good at it. First game against UNC we tried to run with them and lost by 30. This time Red made significant changes. He was extremely vocal telling the kids when to push and when to slow down, and it made a massive difference. Changing the preseason plan when things aren't working is something the coaching profession in general isn't very good at. We should not take this change for granted.
2) Red's ability to coach up his guys. Starling looked both physically and mentally broken at the start of the year. Shooting slumps happen, but he was afraid to shoot even when the other team stopped guarding him, and that is a tailspin which is much harder to pull out of. Now Starling is averaging something like 20 a game over the last 10. Copeland, Brown, and Bell have also shown major improvements over last season. I'll even give a bold prediction that we start seeing Taylor score more in the upcoming games.
3) The offense. I've seen a lot of people posting on this board that Red isn't running any offense. I'm convinced people just say that when the ball doesn't go in or when we lose. Our offense is predicated on Mintz, Starling, and Copeland getting into the lane. It should be. We don't have any post threats and we don't have any guys who can hit shots coming off screens (Boeheim liked to recruit that kind of player, but belive me, even though we have seen McNamara, Rautins, Cooney, Boeheim, and Girard all do it. Its actually a rare skill to have). There is nothing wrong with an offense that starts with guard penetration, and Red has managed to build a pretty good one out of practically nothing (which is the offense we started the year with).