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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 3758611, member: 289"] I wondered about the same thing in my SU basketball preview last November: This year we have a full complement of 13 recruited players. That gives us something approaching football-like overall depth. Football had 22 starts plus three specialists, (placekicker, punter, long snapper) but allows 85 scholarships. That’s a ratio of 3.4 scholarships for every starter. 13 recruited players for 5 positions is 2.6. There may be a drop-off but football doesn’t run out of guys and neither will Jim Boeheim this year. But the extra players can also create extra problems. Jim likes to boil it down to 7-8 guys for continuity reasons: players who play a lot with each other will work together better, knowing each other’s moves. Also, he’d rather have his best guys in there while the opposing coach shuffles players in and out to give them all playing time and to wear us down. Because college ball is a 40 minute game, of which we play 30 something a year and they are full of TV time outs, Jim doesn’t believe fatigue is a big factor and he prefers quantity to quality. But now he’s got both and deciding how to take advantage of the talents of these plays – and how to retain them when they can leave without penalty can provide some headaches. For example, let’s look at the question of how Alan Griffin, a transfer from Illinois, (no relation to Jim’s former point guard and current assistant Allen Griffin), might be used this year. He’s ahigh scoring swing-man who played back-up guard for the Illini, behind a guard who was a better defensive player. People see Griffin as a replacement for Hughes, who was a small forward. Besides Hughes, our 12 scholarship players divide neatly into four groups: 4 centers, 4 forwards and 4 guards. How Griffin in used will impact every one of those players. If Griffin never came, our starting forwards would be Marek Dolezaj and Quincy Guerrier. Marek will be our best all-around player, a 6-10 guy who can score a little but is the team’s best passer and biggest hustler and who can also rebound and block shots. Casey Stengel was once asked the secret of his success and cryptically replied that “I never play a game without my man”. The questioner didn’t know who that was but realized that Stengel always had Yogi Berra in the game in some capacity, even when he wasn’t catching. Marek will be Jim’s “man” this year because the offense runs so much more smoothly when he’s in there and he can help the team in so many other ways. Guerrier is the team’s strongest player, (and one of our few players noted for that), and showed late last season that he can drive to the basket to score and rebound well enough to collect double-doubles. Behind them are Robert Braswell, an athletic 6-7 player who put up some amazing numbers in a limited role and is still waiting his chance to show what he can do. Rumor has it that he considered leaving last year but decided to stay. The acquisition of Griffin was probably not good news to him. Then there’s Woody Newton, a 6-8 freshman who proclaimed himself “the nation’s #1 lock down defender” in high school last year. I don’t know if he is or not but I’d like to find out, since we are looking to improve our defense. If Griffin plays small forward, Guerrier will be relegated to a 6th man type role when we hoped he would find his shot and develop into a star. Braswell will play little and may decide, finally, to leave. Newton might be redshirted. Boeheim may, as he has done in this first three years here, play Marek at center against teams that don’t have big, muscular centers. And that would impact the four centers. Bourama Sidibe seems primed for a big senior year and jessie Edwards, John Bol Ajak and Frank Anselem all what to show what they can do and prove that they would be the best replacement for Bourama next year. How do they do that if Dolezaj is playing center to get him on the court? If Griffin plays guard for us, as he did for Illinois, the biggest impact will be on the coach’s son, Buddy Boeheim, our shooting guard, who averaged 15.3 points a game last year. Can Griffin do more for us than Buddy at that position? Would he share time and the coach would go with the hot hand? The returning point guard is Joe Girard who averaged 12.4. Joe scored 50 points a game in high school and, like the player he’s most compared to, Gerry McNamara, proved he could also be an acceptable point guard at this level. But here comes Kadary Richmond, 4 inches taller than Joe who has wowed people in practice with his point guard skills on both offense and defense. Neither Joe nor Buddy was considered a good defensive player and Kadary could really improve us in that spot. I had thought that we’d sometimes see Kadari and Joe in there together and sometimes with Buddy in a three-man rotation. But if Griffin plays there, he’ll split time with Buddy and Joe and Kadari will split time with each other. The other guard is legacy recruit Chaz Owens., who is not the player his father Billy was but had decent all-around skill and could help us at some point. But with Griffin in the backcourt, he won’t be needed. What it all comes to is that Alan Griffin is the first domino in a row no matter where you put him. Each decision Jim Boeheim makes about him will impact everyone else. Such is college basketball, circa 2020 [/QUOTE]

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