Some Lemoyne Thoughts

[IthacaMatt]

agree with all of this.

Davis reminded me of a better, more in control paul harris.

Paul had better hops / was more explosive, but I just posted a similar thought.

 

[IthacaMatt]

We took advantage of our size and missed 100 shots in the lane

Yeah, after reading some comments, I re-watched and counted, and it was literally 2-13 on layups until Davis came in toward the end of the first half.

 

[IthacaMatt]

I agree with all your points...

Freeman seemed to be confused out there, especially on defense. A few times he was tentative on offense, as well.

What potential he has! He got a double double in a game where he seemed to be confused a lot of the time. It's going to be awesome when he really finds his feet and gets comfortable with the scheme, the speed of the game, and his new teammates.

At this point, he's completely unprepared to play center defensively. His help defense was really slow. But he had that one really nice block (invalidated by a Starling foul) where everything clicked. Hopefully we'll see more and more of that.

I think part of the difference was his effort was better this game. The game is still moving a little fast for him, but he realizes he has work to do.

 

[IthacaMatt]

I agree on Red. This team wasn't ready for the intensity and execution LeMoyne brought to the floor. Rooting for Red and it's one game (and two exhibitions) in Year 2 ... so I'm not flipping out. But it wasn't a good look.

LeMoyne, for their part, was completely unafraid from the jump and executed extremely well offensively. Analytics nerds would love that offense -- attack the rim or shoot the three. I only remember one mid-range jumper off-hand. I'm sure there were more, but not a ton. Defensively, thought they made it a point to play physically even if the foul trouble eventually did them in. The gamble worked ... we didn't finish real well around the basket and missed a ton of free throws. That's the reason it was a game, even more than a bunch of missed threes, IMO. Also liked that they threw two different zones and an aggressive m2m at us.

Bottom line -- LeMoyne knew exactly what it wanted to do.

Syracuse ... thought they were just going to win by 30+. In the first five minutes we fouled two 3-point shooters (6 points), coughed up four live-ball turnovers, and missed three free throws of our own. Brutal.

LeMoyne got away with moving screens a bunch during that time but got dinged twice late at crucial moments, which hurt.

On the positive side -- totally different Davis tonight, absolutely living in the paint. Bell showed off a well-rounded offensive game. Carlos ran the point well and defended well. I saw some folks saying he got torched all night defensively ... dude fought around about 900 screens. That's why you need a defensive system, not 5 dudes on 5 islands. Lampkin makes the offense click when he's out there. Freeman had some nice moments. JJ was OK. He'll have better ones I think, but had some key moments late. Nice energy from Majstorovic, nice defense from Taylor.

On the negative side -- Lampkin defensively works decently hard but really struggles. Our defensive philosophy means this team rarely imposes it's will on opponents. It's far, far, far too simplistic. If you had five plus defenders on the floor, fine. We don't. Gotta finish at the rim, at least against a LeMoyne. Freeman was lost for long stretches as well. Our 'depth' at this point is just players. Davis was excellent, Majstorovic and Taylor can do some things. That was it. Shooting (FT and 3-pt) was ugly, offensive execution was wobbly until we went to that double-high post look late. Seven steals against a DII team is really, really poor.

It's one game, but lots o' work to do.

Nice post!

 

[IthacaMatt]

When we play good guards we’re toast. Our perimeter defense is awful. How will we stop guards like the two we’ll face in our first ACC game at ND? Those two guys will score at will. Lampkin has to play off on the perimeter. Force bigs to shoot. He can’t defend players off the dribble. I want Red to explain our defensive philosophy. JJ is one of the poorest defenders I’ve seen with all the athletic ability he has. His footwork is worse than any high school player I ever coached. I’m not sure what his issue is. It’s unexplainable how bad he is in his defensive stance. He doesn’t slide his feet. He runs next to the player. He can’t stop anyone going right and he can’t go left. He made some big drives late and when he gets a step going right he blows by defenses. How can a kid with his size, strength, and explosiveness be that bad on defense? I can only surmise he’s not being held accountable in practice. Get the bricks out and do defensive slides all day. He seems like a great kid, but Red seems to coddle him. Taylor is very good defensively, but what the heck is that jumper? He should be throwing the shot put on the track team. All I can say is OUCH! I hope Chance comes back healthy because we really need his defense. I was shocked how LeMoyne‘s guards went around Carlos in the second half last night. They just took him in the lane and torched him. Theres no sugar coating this teams defensive play. There’s not a starter on this team that can consistently guard ACC players. They couldn’t guard LeMoyne. This team may have to play zone. That’s even scary. What‘s difficult to figure out is that we’re athletic enough, but just can’t defend. Coaching has to be questioned about their ability to coach defense. This is year two and it’s worse than last year. Bring Tony Bennett in as a consultant for one week and there would be a huge improvement. The wrong team won last night. LeMoyne deserved to win. They outplayed us most of the night. Our bigs just wore them down. Kudos to their coaching staff for the fight they put up. Kudos to SU for finding a way to grind out a game they could have easily lost. That might be the biggest thing to take away from SU is that they grinded out a win when they couldn’t shoot the entire night. That is encouraging. Red has a great teaching tool for this team on defense. Just watch the film. This makes the Colgate game even more interesting!

This is on point. That's why Jake and others think we'll see some zone, and probably within the next few games, IMO. Red used it last year. He needs to install the base defense first, but I think he'll use it again this year.

 

[Cuse181]

.

Most games we aren't going to miss 18 of 22 threes, but we needed to adjust the offense sooner.

we said that last year

 

[IthacaMatt]

Lot of good stuff in here, I love these type of threads. We really do have fans who understand the game. Few quick thoughts.
This is a bad defensive team and I don’t see that changing. So what do we about it. Will there be better communication off ball. I don’t think so. I hate to say it but a little zone might not be the worst idea.
Offensively they looked off and could have scored 90 easily. Freeman need to learn to use his new muscle. That kid doesn’t have a clue of how good he will be yet. Defensively he is a little lost but his offensive game at his size and age is VERY advanced. He moved well along the baseline and made good plays at the high post. There is no reason we can’t score 85-90.
Chris Bell is a really good offensive player. He looks stronger driving and handling the ball.
Chance need to play and provide defense and passing. I think we will see him against Colgate. Fingers crossed.

It's early. Our defense will get better. It was flat out embarrassing early last year, and it got better. Let him coach these guys for another few weeks. I believe we will see improvement.

 

[Niastri]

we said that last year

And we were right... 4/22 is about 18%

We only shot worse than .200 in 4 games last season.

We aren't going to be a great shooting team, but we'll be better than the .336 we shot last year.

 

[STEVEHOLT]

Paul had better hops / was more explosive, but I just posted a similar thought.

I don’t know what he looked like in high school, but the thing that immediately struck me about Harris after joining SU was how unexplosive he looked. He got stuffed by the rim more often than anyone I can remember.

 

[Capt. Tuttle]

I think we need to go grab film from NC state and see how they used DJ on the perimeter similar to how we have to use Eddie. There was nice possession that resulted in a travel where Eddie got under the screen and beat the guy to the spot forcing the turnover late in the game. It was a big play at the time. we have to learn how to get over screens or switch from guard to guard, defense starts with an attitude and mindset. it's not a choice!

Chance Westry = Sid Finch
Chance Westry = Unicorn
Chance Westry = a Griffin

 

[Capt. Tuttle]

Is there a specific reason Kyle Cuffe Jr. can't crack the lineup? You need defense and some scoring he shot about 37 percent from 3 last year, I feel he can fill the void.

He is not good

 

[sugrad68]

I agree with everyone on this team's defense. When Freeman and Bell were on the court at the same time it was very often a disaster waiting to happen. Both have so much talent that they should not be a disaster when on the court together. I've seen Bell be effective on defense when he wants to be. When we went to the high-low with Davis and Lampkin the offense finally woke up and we took the lead. Not sure about Carlos yet -- too small a sample size but he was not very effective against LeMoyne. This team has a lot of improvement to make if we want to be competitive against teams like Texas and Tennessee in the near future.

 

[Jasoncuse]

Lemoyne getting handle at home by CS Northridge. No real surprise there, they aren’t good. And neither are we.

The obvious flaws apparent all off season (shooting, defense, PG/playmaking, talent) are going to be there all year. I don’t think we have the coaching to get these guys to elevate their games but we’ll see. I have a feeling this is going to be a really long season. Hope I’m missing something.

 

[hoopsupstate]

If you don’t demand effort on every play and make players accountable, their defense won’t improve. Too many times a player will get beat off the dribble on three consecutive trips and they stay on the floor. It can’t happen. You get what you expect.

 

[IthacaMatt]

I don’t know what he looked like in high school, but the thing that immediately struck me about Harris after joining SU was how unexplosive he looked. He got stuffed by the rim more often than anyone I can remember.

Do you also remember Jonny Flynn bouncing fast break passes off the glass for Harris to dunk? I sure do. Boeheim hated when they did that.

But you're right, Paul got stuffed by the rim a lot. Personally, I think he would get too low and defenders would muscle him under the rim to take away his angle. He would have done better if he had worked the baseline more.