Agree with the comment about making decisions based on stats in a vacuum. People who have played sports and understand them know that you can't just look at stats and understand how good or bad a player is. Particularly in basketball, where there aren't many players and so much depends on so many factors.
Anyway, I watch the highlight film for Lucas. There are some things you can always safely take away from film. What does his shooting form look like? How quick is his release? Does he move well? Can he shoot off the dribble?
I like his form. He holds the ball up high. Shoots with the same form consistently. It actually looks very much like the way Kiyan Anthony shoots. To me, he looks like a good athlete and yes, he looks comfortable shooting off the dribble as well.
I think his release is very quick. Given his height, his high release and how quickly he gets his shot off, I think he will not have problems getting outside shots off in conference play.
In the film, he takes a lot of what I will call long range (i.e. 24-25 foot) jumpers. On the surface, that is disturbing. We probably don't want that. But we know he was the leading scorer on Georgia State. We know Georgia State was not a good team. They had a losing record in conference play and a losing record overall. I bet he was often put in the position of 'making something happen' when the shot clock got down to under 5 and a lot of his long range shots were driven by that. Only way to tell for sure is to watch whole games, which I am not going to do.
His FG percentage isn't great either and I suspect him forcing shots late in the shot clock played a role here as well. He took 415 shots playing 953 minutes last season, which means he was taking a lot of shots every game. He won't have that role for us. That hopefully should mean a lot of bad shots he took last year won't be taken this coming season.
I know there are people who like Kyle Cuffe a lot and I understand it. He seems like a really good person and a great teammate. It makes him easy to like and root for and I am hoping he ends up having a really good career for Syracuse.
But he looked really raw in his limited time last year. Forced some shots, struggled to get open, struggled to shoot, struggled on defense sometimes. It was a tough year and I get it, he hasn't played much for a while. It is tough when you are an undersized shooting guard and your shot isn't falling.
I think the coaching staff felt that they had to add insurance at shooting guard in case Cuffe continues to struggle to score and in case Moore, a true frosh, struggles to play well his first year of college ball. Most freshman struggle some making the big adjustment to college ball. We have had a lot of good shooters come through the program but not many have bene able to produce at a high level immediately. GMac did but not many others.
So I like this move. Coach Autry is building up a roster with a bunch of options. If a player struggles or gets hurt, there is going to be another player ready to step in. Last year, we didn't have quality depth and when we had a couple players not performed as expected/get hurt, it really hurt the performance of the team.
I think the overall depth of the team is much improved. And if we can add a C/PF type as well, I am feeling pretty good about things. I think this roster will be our best roster in a number of years. I am not sure it will be good enough to make the NCAA tournament but I will be disappointed if we are not at least very much in the mix for an NCAA bid come early March.
