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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1553454, member: 289"] - I was preparing at halftime to write a mournful assessment of why this will be a very long season for Syracuse. Well, it will be a very long season and we have some serious deficiencies on this team. The second half showed they could be overcome- against teams like Lehigh and St. Bonaventure. But we will be playing a lot of teams better than these- some of them a lot better. - The most absurd thing was that we were out-rebounded 33-43 by a team shorter than us at virtually every position. At one point it was 7-18. The big problem was the offensive boards where the Boonies rebounded 24 of their 42 misses. They were quicker than we were hustled more, especially in the first half but especially knew how to get positon for the rebounds. Several times a single St. Bonaventure player, surrounded by Syracuse players, would come up with the ball. They “"got thar fustest with the mostest."” to quote General Forrest. If you do that, it doesn’t matter how tall the other guy is. - Tyler Lydon is out best center and it isn’t even close. That’s good for him but it doesn’t say much for DaJuan Coleman and Chinoso Obkokoh. Obobkoh played only one minutes and his only stat was a foul, giving him 6 fouls in 16 minutes of play this year. Coleman managed to avoid foul trouble by not being anywhere near the ball. JB spent most of the first time-out just chewing DaJuan out. The big guy gave it a stronger effort in the second half, opening the scoring with an aggressive lay-up what looked like a good defensive play, halting a baseline drive by putting his body in the way with his arms straight up but got called for the foul. But it wasn’t long before Lydon was back in the game, (he played 31 minutes to 15 for Coleman and Obokoh). In the late going, after Roberson fouled out, Coleman played in tandem with Lydon and grabbed a couple of missed free throws, only to be surrounded by the other team, which stripped the ball from him. DaJuan is basically still a freshman in his development because his injury interrupted him on-court education. We need him to be the senior he actually is but he just can be that right now. - If we do have to go with Lydon at center, is he going to be able to hold up against the big boys of the ACC? He was brought into the program to play forward because that’s what he really is. He’s doing a great job playing out of positon against smaller teams- so great that it’s easy to forget he is out of positon. - Coleman and Obokoh were placed at a disadvantaged by the early failure of our backcourt to prevent penetration into the paint. The game turned around when JB decided to stick with his two fifth year seniors in the backcourt. Kaleb Joseph and Franklin Howards played only 13 minutes between them largely because they failed to stop that penetration. Malachi Richardson was also better on the wing than out front. It’s just one of those things that young players have to learn to do-move their feet and stay in front of people. It’s nice to be long but you’d better not be stationary. - We are trying to become a perimeter team that uses the three pointer to score and opens up drives to the basket. St. Bonaventure already is that kind of team and they just did it better, especially in the first half. They wound up with 11 threes , two more than we got, including a couple of heaves at the shot clock buzzer after inbounds plays. They also scored a driving lay-up at the buzzer, also after a late inbounds play. Defensively, they guarded us as if it was the last possession and we needed a trey to tie or win the game. At least four defenders were at the arc at any one time and we had trouble getting shots off. - We tried a couple of NBA threes but found we had to drive to the basket. Then problem with that is that it takes time to get there and the defense has time to react and collapse on the driver. But we had no reliable inside player to pass to. In the second half we did a better job of setting picks to free the drivers. But in the first half, our drivers looked like Custer at the Little Big Horn. [IMG]http://metalsofhonor.estoreadvanced.biz/images/catalog/category126.jpg[/IMG] - We really don’t have a true point guard on this team: a guy who takes charge when things are going poorly, control the tempo and breakdown the defense with penetration to set up passes to open players. Gbinije did some of that in the second half and wound up with 6 assists. But he’s still a small forward playing the point. Nobody was in charge in the first half. - We’re just pecking away at the eggshell right now. We’re going to have to be patient. But fans aren’t good at that. [/QUOTE]

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