SWC75
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This is my annual look back at excerpts from my pre-season preview with comments from a post-season perspective. The preview excerpts are in italics.
Then: “The traditional means Syracuse fans have used to evaluate their teams, aside from post season success, (and even despite it, depending on what point you are trying to make) is the number of losses. In Jim Boeheim’s first 37 seasons, we had single digits in losses 24 times in 37 years. In our first ACC season we went 28-6 but that included a 25-0 start, followed by a 3-6 finish. The next year we went 18-13, (and had no post-season action due to a self-imposed ban: without it there likely would have been a couple more losses). The next year we went to the Final Four but we did it with a 23-14 team. Last season we stumbled to a 19-15 record. We have never won an ACC tournament game. After starting 11-0 in the conference in 2014, we are 30-33 since. It sparked the same sort of “the game has passed him by, let’s ease him into retirement” talk I heard a decade ago, (thus prompting the study noted above). The fact is, in this conference, only our best teams are going to emerge with single digit overall losses and a .500 record in conference play isn’t all that bad: those teams might have won several more games in another conference. We just have to adjust to the fact that the going is harder in this conference than it has traditionally been and only our best teams will have exceptional records. That doesn’t mean there won’t be glory at the end: our 2016 team made the Final Four after a 19-12 regular season and one and done in the ACC tournament. If we can just get in the big dance, we’ll have a chance to make some noise. After all, we’ve been playing teams that good all year.”
Now: We followed up the 3-6 finish of 2014, the 18-13 record from the abbreviated 2015, the 24-13 NCAA run of 2016 and the 19-15 NIT year with a 20-13 record going into selection Sunday with only one win over a ranked team. I think most of us expected another NIT year but we got in an went on another run, winning three games against a Pac 12 team, a Big 12 team and a Big 10 team, then gave Duke all they could handle in the Sweet 16. All those ACC wars toughened us up for the NCAA games which were not easy but seemed very winnable. If Marek Dolezaj hadn’t gotten into foul trouble and been out for what became an 0-10 run at the end of the first half, I think we would have beaten Duke. Kansas is good, not great and barely beat Duke in OT. We might have been back in the Final Four. Our challenge each year is to not play our way out of the Big Dance: once we get in after the ACC gauntlet, we have a shot at a great run to end the season.
Then: “Most teams can have 13 scholarship players. Actually, Boeheim usually doesn’t want that many because you wind up too many disgruntled players who aren’t playing. He prefers 10-11 guys. He thought he’d have 10 this year but unfortunately, he has only 9, which will limit practices, (somebody has to be guarded by a walk on) and leave little margin for error in case of injuries. We lost 3 guys last year. If that happens again, we’ll be down to 6 guys. We were there once before: Ten years ago when Scoop Jardine didn’t tell the coaches he had what turned out to be a hairline fracture of his left shin. He played (badly) with it because we couldn’t afford to lose any more people. If we again have bad luck with injuries we could have young players playing hurt again. Scoop overcame that but somebody else might not.”
Now: We were supposed to have 10 guys this year. But Taurean Thompson never showed up. Geno Thorpe left after 6 games. The Howard Washington tore his ACL after 18 games. We were down to 7 players, all of whom had some kind of injury at some point in the season. Frank Howard played the last several games with his hand wrapped. Tyus Battle did a flip early in the year and banged his head on the court. Dolezaj also went down hard in a game. Moyer turned his ankle. Boeheim made some reference to Brissett playing hurt but I never heard what the injury was. Paschal Chukwu bruised his lower back and Bourama Sidibie had tendonitis in his knee all year but toughed it out, postponing an operation they hope will fix the problem. One hopes that playing with these injuries didn’t make them harder to overcome for the future. We had 65 occasions when a player played an entire game. Tyus Battle once placed all 50 minutes of an overtime game. That said, we didn’t seem to lack energy in the season’s final games.
We were looking at potentially 12 recruited players, (I prefer that term to scholarship players as walk-ons are sometimes given available scholarships as Braedon Bayer was this year). Within a week after the Duke game ended our season we’d already lost two of them, (and Bayer as well), due to transfers and Darius Bazley’s shocking decision to go play in the G league. We could also lose Battle and Brissett to the NBA, (Battle seems more likely) and European players like Dolezaj sometimes only play here for a year or two and go home. We won’t know what next year’s team will be like until the season begins and we won’t even know then because you can lose players during the season, too. Shouldn’t the coaches be stuffing our roster with as many recruited players as possible to deal with all the possible defections for various reasons?
The counter-argument is that if we tried to see what we could get this late in the recruiting season and gave out scholarships to recruits that were not highly regarded, we’d have fewer scholarships available for the next class and if we saved them we might be able to get better players. Alan Griffin just said in a radio interview that the coaching staff, (which is not all at the Final Four), has yet to get together and decide what to do. Jim Boeheim said something interesting in an interview with Doug Gottlieb:
The Doug Gottlieb Show: Jim Boeheim | FOX Sports Radio
Go to the 8:30 part: “We have 9 good players now”. I don’t know if he means that Buddy will be competing against 9 good players or that he’s one of 9 good players. If it’s the later, it would mean that Jim expects to lose one more player, probably Battle. I looked in the SU Media Guide, which has all the stats now for teams form 1980-81 onward. I counted, (from memory), how many recruited players were on each team I came up with no less than 11 teams that had only 9 such players: 1991, 1994, 1997, 2003, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017 and this past season. That includes a national champion, another Final Four team and an outright Big East regular season champion. So it can work but you need some luck, too: you can’t have too many things go wrong with individual players or you will find yourself in a very difficult situation.
Then: “Boeheim said at the end of the season that teaching his complicated zone to freshmen may actually easier than to teach it to transfers as freshmen don’t have to unlearn other defenses. He will get a chance to prove that this year.”
Now: I think he proved it. Once Geno Thorpe left, Jim had 8 guys. Three of them had played college basketball before. Two were juniors who had seen limited action and were coming off of injuries. One was a sophomore who had been the fourth option offensively and would not be the prime target of the defense. The other five guys were all freshmen, one a redshirt freshman. And this group played the best defense we’ve played since the 2013 Final Four run. We struggled mightily on offense but we stayed in games. We lost 14 games but 8 of them were by single digits and another was in overtime. We didn’t lose by 20 to anyone, even though we played Virginia, Duke and North Carolina twice and Kansas once. The previous year, we could score but didn’t defend, (at least until late in the year) and we lost 8 games by double figures, one by 33 points and another by 20.
Then: “Jim had to bring in a lot of new talent. His first recruits for the new class were Bourama Sidibe a 6-11 220 pound center, who was born in Mali but who played is basketball at St. Benedict’s Prep in New Jersey and Oshae Brissett, a 6-6 190 small forward from Toronto. The problem was, neither was then listed in anyone’s top 100 players. You would have thought the sky was falling from all of the internet comments. We were scrapping the bottom of the barrel! How do we compete with Duke, North Carolina and Louisville with guys like this! The thing is, that’s the early signing period. These guys hadn’t played their senior year yet. If they were so bad, why would the coaching staff be “settling” for them rather than pursuing higher rated players? The only answer was that the SU coaches had seen these guys play and gotten to know them and decided that they were the guys they wanted.
Sidibie was recruited by Seton Hall, Virginia Commonwealth, Maryland, SMU, Kansas State, Arizona State and others. I’ve seen him slip into the top 100 at #88 in one listing. Brissett received offers from Maryland, Oregon, Mississippi State, Arizona State, USC, Memphis and others before deciding on Syracuse. He became a classic case of a player who ‘blew up’ after his “snapshot”. He grew three inches, (to 6-9) and added a few pounds (to 200). He became Canada’s player of the year. Comparisons were made to Canadian Andrew Wiggins, who was the #1 overall recruit in 2013 and the #1 NBA draft choice a year later. They didn’t say Brissett was Wiggins but they said he could become Wiggins. He’s now rated #48 from one service I saw and is ranked a 4 star recruit at the present time. Of course we’ll find out how good he really is when he puts on an SU uniform and actually plays for us. But the complaints about our ‘settling for him’ have ceased. These guys hardly represent the “decline” of the program.”
Now: No, they don’t. Brissett, now 6-8 210 was one of the best freshmen in the country, averaging 15 points and 9 rebounds a game and recording 13 double-doubles. He should be one of the best players in the country next season. Sidibie showed his talent in scoring 18 points and getting 16 rebounds vs. Pittsburgh. But his knee problem prevented him from playing consistent minutes and developing at the same rate. But I think he’s a bigger talent than Chukwu, despite being 4 inches shorter. Sidibie’s health allowed Chukwu to develop and become a consistent contributor. I think if Bourama had been healthy, he would have taken over the starting positon from Paschal. The way things worked out, assuming Bourama recovers fully from his surgery by next season, we should have two excellent centers next year.
Here were the early comments on Sidibie last year. They give us a glimpse of what we could see next year: “He’s a bit raw but you can see that he oozes potential. I think next year or the year after we can have a post-game again through him that we haven’t had in years…he plays hard at both ends and is easily better than Paschal…. I think Sibide will be a 10 pt 10 reb guy his freshmen year. Kid played the best big men in the country last year and ended up on the positive side of most of them. Needs weight room I agree but has a lot of potential. Sidibe (and Chukwu with back-up minutes) might surprise this year from reports. It's just a scrimmage, but when's the last time a freshman center lead all scorers at MM?”
Then: “That said, Paschal didn’t look much like a basketball player last year. He looked more like a Daddy Long Legs, skinny, a tendency to fold up under physical pressure, lacking in skills or knowledge of his role in the offense or the defense. Blocking some shots doesn’t make up for that. Syracuse.com’s Chris Carlson said that in a recent public scrimmage, Chukwku was outplayed by Sidibie and missed both his free throws, which means that he’s never made one here, after going 0 for 9 last year. (He had been 24 for 40 = 60% at Providence.)
We have a thread on Syracusefan.com describing that scrimmage, (which was not televised: I didn’t see it myself). Comments on Chukwu, (many of the observations supplied by Cusefan0307, the originator of the thread): “Trying to be nice here, but he looked worse than last year. He still struggles catching the ball, brings it down and consistently got stripped. On defense I thought he gave away the paint way too easily and Bourama had his way with him…I think he’s the 9th man on this team….Chukwu was just God awful, poor kid And he had to sit a lot, then come back in…. Chukwu looked like a dumpster fire…. Chukwu won't play much at all, imo.,,, If you saw what I saw Friday there is literally zero reason to play Chukwu. Sidibe looked like the third year player and Chukwu looked like he was touching the basketball for the first time in his life…. I just don't see how Chukwu can play meaningful minutes and even be moderately successful. He's just so weak, slow and still raw. He'll get bullied, even if he's in good position…. The thing about Chukwu is that his footwork is so bad. He's really clumsy out there. He's going to be a foul magnet.”
Now: Paschal turned out to be a far better player than expected and his improvement basically saved our season. He was the key to our internal defense and proved to a good rebounder, as well. Defensive rebounding is a key part of defense: if the other team winds up with the ball, you haven’t finished playing defense. Last year’s opposition shot 51% from two point range. This year it was 45%. Last year we got 32% of our missed shots. Our opponents got 35%. We reversed that to 35%-30% this year. That’s Chukwu. He averaged 10 points and 4 blocked shots per 40 minutes and, of course the blocked shots are a small percentage of those he altered. His problems were on offense. he had trouble catching passes, timing his leap on alley-oops and brought the ball down to his waste when he did catch passes, which allowed shorter defenders to slap the ball out of his hands. (You are as tall as where you’re holding the ball.) he also needs to continue to get stronger. To use a Matt Park term, he could get “rooted out” by stronger big men. He’s never going to be an Adonis but he could easily add another 10-20 pounds on his frame without slowing down. Paschal did find the range at the free throw line after starting the season 1 for 6 but going 54 for 81 afterwards (66.7%), including 6 for 6 against TCU in the NCAAs. He wound up being known as a clutch guy at the line late in games.
I also said this about Chukwu, (and it also applies to Sidibie): “He’s another in our line of foreign born big men who didn’t grow up playing the game. Boeheim always says that it takes big men longer to develop and not having played the game as a kid, (at least not as much or against the sort of opposition he would have had in America), it takes a foreign-born guy all the longer. On the positive side there’s that comment Boeheim made about it being easier to teach his style of basketball with players who don’t have to unlearn another system. Foreign-born big men tend to be pretty much of a blank slate for the master to draw on.” Hopefully Paschal isn’t done improving.
Then: Draft Express on Oshae Brissett: “Capable straight line driver….covers ground defensively….plays pretty hard more often than not….still a very streaky shooter…doesn’t have the skill set of a traditional wing…feel for a the game is a bit limited…” In other words, he’s a talented freshman. He was the star of the recent scrimmage, with 19 points, including 4 three pointers, 6 rebound and 2 assists. Carlson: “Oshae Brissett was excellent in debut appearance. He arrived at Syracuse with a reputation as a fantastic slasher whose shooting drew mixed reviews depending on who you asked. On Friday it looked plenty good. Brissett knocked down four 3 pointers, providing optimism he can provide both offense and floor-spacing at the forward spot.” Boeheim: “He’s a good shooter…a very good shooter…”
Now: He is a ‘straight line driver’ and that’s a bit of a problem as he gets a lot of charging fouls. But does get to the basket a lot and also to the line, where he is a very good shooter. He was also the team’s top three point shooter (at only 33%). His outside shot was unreliable early in the season but became better as the season went along. He was 39% from three in ACC games, including 5 for 7 in the ACCT loss to North Carolina. He’s also a natural rebounder and a good shot blocker. If he comes back to us, (and he’s expected to at this point), I can see him being a 20/10 man and an All-American. He’s got the whole package. He needs to get stronger, (they all do) and continue to refine his schools.
Then: Marek Dolezaj was a mystery man: “He should be farther along in his development than a typical freshman. He’s also the skinniest guy on a skinny team. Jim Boeheim reminded people the players like Louie Orr and Hakeem Warrick were through to be too skinny when they came here. Louie was an eel-like player who could slither through defenses to score points and get rebounds in a pre-weight room era. Hakim was called “Gumby” because his arms seemed never to end. He was also athletic enough to reach over people to score and rebound. I used to call him “You can’t dunk from there” Warrick, because he could. Whether Marek is comparable to those players remains to be seen. In the tapes he looked very quick- not only running the court but quick in making his moves and getting off the ground. I suspect he’s more likely to play “small” forward at 6-9 than to mix it up underneath. At least his shot will be hard to block. It’s interesting that in the highlights, (I assume he’s #7), he’s playing at the top of the zone, where his long arms could be disruptive.
Syracusefan.com based on the scrimmage: ”Looks a year away to me. You can see flashes of potential off the dribble, shooting and on the break but man is he skinny….Moyer bullied him a bit in the scrimmage. I think he needs a year to develop his body…..I hope Marek grows up this year vs. taking a whole year so we at least we have one guy with size off the bench who isn’t a liability”
Boeheim on Media Day: “He’s an American kind of player. He doesn’t play as much like a European as some typical big guys where they just shoot outside. He can put the ball on the floor, drive. An active player. Rebounds it. Jumps well. Pretty good shooter. Not as good as most European big guys, but a pretty good shooter. But he works hard at the game. Understands the game. He doesn’t understand me much, but he understands the game and how to play.’’ I hope either Marek learns English by the end of the season or that Boeheim learns Slovakian.”
Now: Dolezaj was a half season away. He showed promise in the pre-conference games: reluctant to shoot but capable from mid-range, he knew where to be to make plays and hustled to do so. He was a very good passer. Despite his skinny frame, he was able to rebound fairly well and block shots. He even became the emergency center for when Chuckwu and Sidibie were hurting or in foul trouble. But he seemed intimidated in ACC games and his play became tentative. It looked for a time like Moyer might win back the positon from him just because he was stronger and hustled me. But late in the season, Dolezaj seemed to realize that no one was guarding him and he started to hit 10-12 footers. He then drove around the defenders who came over to guard him or passed it to suddenly open teammates. He started doing everything with more confidence and his lack of muscles didn’t seem to matter as much. He scored 20 points against Wake Forest in the ACCT, 17 against TCU in the NCAAs and 12 against Duke in the sweet 16. When he was in the game against Duke, we seemed like the better team, despite all their McDonald’s All-Americans. If he hadn’t gotten in foul trouble, we might have been in the Final Four again. if he’s back next year, (European players has a reputation for going back home after a year or two), I think he’ll be a double figure scorer and he sure knows how to fill up the stat sheet. I also think we’ll get more points out of the center positon with him in there as he can draw the defense away from the basket and pass the past the closing defender to our centers.
Then, on Matt Moyer: The scouting report on him coming out of high school, per Syracuse.com: In terms of on-court skills, Moyer can put the ball on the floor, get to the basket and knock down the mid-range jumper. He needs to add the 3-point shot to round out his arsenal.” He looks to be the physically strongest Orangeman and that could make him the choice of the coach to play center in a pinch, (Tyler Lydon who was thought of as a small forward when recruited wound up playing center and playing pretty well). In the recent public scrimmage, people commented that Matt seemed to play with the biggest “motor”, as well he might, not having played in a game in two years.
Syracusefan.com based on the scrimmage: “I don’t think it will always be pretty but this dude plays hard and never gives up. He started out struggling and then scored a bunch of points in the middle of the game before struggling again on offense at the end. One thing you will never have to worry about with Moyer is a lack of hustle. He went after every rebound and loose ball. He also appears to be a lot stronger than advertised. I could see him struggling against better athletes….His shot has improved but it’s still a bit flat and could sue more refining….Moyer had his hand on 2-3 O-boards in one possession if my vision serves me right. Moyer and Sidibie compete as hard as hell.”
Boeheim on Media Day: “He has benefited from being here for the year. He’s in better condition. He’s improved his shooting. Again, he’s our most experienced forward.’’ (Who has yet to play a game!)
Now: And he won’t be playing another, at least not for us. He certainly showed the hustle described and was at least the most thickly built of a skinny squad. But he showed little in the way of basketball skills. His father seems to have been an issue, telling Coach Boeheim that his son was unavailable to play in a game. Now he’s transferred out. Good luck to him and whoever gets him.
Then, on Tyus Battle: “With White, Gillon, Lydon and now Thompson gone, he’s the star of the team by default- but also because of his ability. He’s got the whole package. There are really only two questions: How will he adjust to being the #1 offensive option and thus the #1 defensive target and, if he has a good year, will he join the list of guys who jumped to the NBA after only 1-2 years here? The former is what matters right now and that may depend on how all of his new teammates produce to take the defensive pressure off of him. The only two returning players who played last year, Chukwu and Howard, don’t figure to be much help. It’s going to be up to Sidibe, Brissett, Dolezaj and Thorpe. At least a couple of those guys will have to become double-figure scorers or Tyus may find himself being double or triple teamed all the time. With all the questions up front and the experience in the backcourt, Boeheim may go to a three guard look sometimes, in which case Battle may find himself playing small forward.
Syracusefan.com based on the scrimmage: “He struggled a bit tonight, especially with Frank guarding him…I guess he went about 4 for 15 and struggled both at the rim and from the 3…it could mean Frank is better than we thought….Battle may have to play some 3 for us to get enough offense on the court…”
Boeheim on Media Day: “We’ve had a couple weeks of practice. I think Tyus has worked extremely hard. I really do. I think he’s a much-improved player. He’s much stronger. Much more physical. Much more confident in what he should do. I think he had a great year last year, particularly the end of the year. He showed against the best teams in the country in our league what he can do. And I think he’s much better this year.’’
Now: Tyus did a terrific job becoming the #1 option and thus the focus of the defense. And he did it on a limited offensive team where we often had 2 or even 3 non-scorers on the court. He was constantly double-teamed and had to drive around people from 30 feet to get to the basket. He did that and also hit pull up jumpers and three pointers and scored 19.2ppg, the highest average for a Syracuse player since Hakim Warrick scored 21.4 in 2004-05. Like Brissett, he can get to the line and score from there: he shot 84%. He’s not a great outside shooter: 32% form three point range and he was almost always right on the line. He doesn’t hit the occasional 25 footer that other good shooters can make. I actually like the fact that he’ll take an open 2 pointer over a guarded trey: 2 point shots that go in score more than three point shots that don’t. He’s got a sometimes pronounced hitch in his form, (but don’t’ tell JB that), that along with his lack of range makes him a borderline NBA prospect at best and leaves us some hope that he’ll come back for his junior year. He needs to be more than just a scorer and he’s capable of that. With his size, he could rebound better and he could look to dish on some of those drives. Towards the end of the season he was doing more rebounding and passing and hopefully that will carry over to next year. Hopefully, he’ll be doing those things for us.
Then: “Frank (Howard) has had an up-and-down career here, with more downs than ups. He’s a good passer but not much of a shot, an indifferent defender and a mediocre ball handler. We now know that his problem last year was an unpublicized “core muscle” injury, (actually four separate injuries: three on the right side and one on the left). From Syracuse.com: “"Some days I would feel pretty good and then the next day it would hurt again,'' Howard said. "I would play three minutes in a game and it would feel like I had played 40. Howard said the recovery and rehab after the surgery was worse than when he tore the ACL in his knee in high school. With the knee, you can stabilize it,'' Howard said. "You have a brace and crutches or whatever. But with your core, there's not much you can do. It hurt whenever I reached for something or rolled over in bed. It just takes time.” He had surgery on May 11. He was back on the court as of the end of June and is now determined to show what he can do while fully healthy. I’m sure he realizes that if he doesn’t perform well, Geno Thorpe will be getting a lot of his minutes.
Syracusefan.com based on the scrimmage: “I’m sure he will frustrate people because he missed a few bunnies during the scrimmage but he shot it well both from three and midrange. He also played really hard on defense like he took it personally…made a few nice passes to both Moyer and Bourama.”
Boeheim from Media Day: “He’s getting better. We’ll see what he can do. I think he’s improved. He’s shooting the ball better. He was a little rusty. Obviously, he didn’t play this summer. I don’t think it hurt him that much because he’s had plenty of game experience. I think he’s a much better player this year at this stage than he was last year.’' He compared him to Scoop Jardine, who “struggled for two years and then had two great years. I think he’s shown more signs than Scoop did.”
Now: Howard, like Chukwu, was a revelation and a necessary one to the success of the team. He had a fine year overall, shooting the ball far better than he ever had before. His three point percentage went from 26% to 33% even though, once he proved he could make that shot, he got a lot more defensive attention. He went from 20 treys to 67. He showed a deeper range than battle or Brissett. He drove to the basket, not as much as battle or Brissett but enough to score 120 two point baskets and get to the line 128 times. He was good free throw shooter, although not quite as good and B&B and scored 92 points from there. It was not a team to collect a lot of assists from: both offensively limited and dedicated to iso plays and drives to the basket. But he averaged 4.7 assists per game. Unfortunately he also averaged 3.4 turnovers, many of them really bad turnovers: steals, mis-dribbles, alley-oops to nowhere. He seemed to not know how many seconds were left on the shot clock, (either shooting too soon or too late). But, unlike in past season, his positive production was more than enough to overcome his mistakes. He rebounded better than battle, who is bigger and more muscular, did. And he played excellent defense all year and was a big reason we kept contact with the shooters in the post season run. I also like what he says in news conferences and interviews. He seems to have matured into a team leader.
Then: “Howard Washington was definitely not our #1 target. He was a point guard from Buffalo who went north to play with Brissett’s team. He wasn’t our #1 guy but we were his #1 school. He was disappointed when we went after Quade Green, from Scoop Jardine’s old high school, Neuman-Goretti in Philadelphia. The word was we wanted Green so much we told him we wouldn’t recruit anybody else. Washington committed to Butler. The Green followed John Calipari’s siren call to Kentucky and we were left without a point guard recruit. Washington de-committed from Butler and accepted an offer from the ‘Cuse. So he was our second choice but second choice players can turn out to be good players. The problems come if you are just collecting warm bodies at the end of the recruiting cycle. Washington wasn’t top 100, either. The best rating I’ve found for him is #122 and 3 stars. But Butler wanted him. They have a strong program so I’d say he has a future here, too.”
Now: Washington became our third guard when Thorpe left. He’d played very little until then and didn’t really play a lot after that, except or the overtime game against Florida State, where he played for 24 minutes and scored 9 points including a trey and had 3 rebounds, an assist and a steal. He didn’t strike me as a major talent, just someone with all-round guard skills who, especially with the guys we have coming in, may be a career reserve if he sticks it out here. But the sample is so limited it’s hard to tell for sure. I wouldn’t have thought Frank Howard could have had the year he had. Maybe Washington will blossom if he gets his shot in the same way.
Then: “Jim also brought in another grad transfer, Geno Thorpe from South Florida, who used to be a Big East rival, and he looks he could be major contributor.”
Now: Nope.
Then: “Overall: The key to the improvement of the football team this fall was the improvement of the defense and that will also be the key to the improvement of the basketball team. We had a lot of exciting games last year but those were our best games. We had to try to out-score people to win. Normally we are a strong defensive team that is able, because of our defense, to stay in games when our offense is malfunctioning and take over games when the offense is productive. I think we will have a productive offense. This year Battle, Thorpe, Brissett, Dolezai and even Sidibie should be able to score. We’ll lack and inside game but and rebounding but hopefully can get a lot of blocks and steals and get out and run. I think Thorpe and Howard will be a big defensive upgrade over Gillon and White and our big men have the length to be disruptive. But the concerns loom large: this will be perhaps our youngest team ever and we will be more dependent on untried players than I can ever remember. We are almost totally lacking in the sort of physical strength that ACC teams often feature up front. There is no depth at center. I’d like to think this team can surprise as so many unheralded Boeheim teams have but the ingredients for a disaster are certainly there as well and the ACC is a totally unforgiving conference. We’ve had 47 consecutive winning seasons, the longest streak in the country. That streak could be in serious jeopardy this year.
One thing we shouldn’t do is to look at this year as just the lead-up to next year. In modern basketball the team has to be reconstructed every year. You can’t be sure who will be on the team next year. This year’s team could have had Chris McCullough, Malachi Richardson, Tyler Lydon and Taurean Thompson. But it doesn’t. We’ve got these guys instead. We need to root for them to go as far as they can go because nobody knows what the future will bring.”
Now: Thorpe, Sidibie and Dolezaj didn’t contribute much to the offense overall. Thorpe had a couple of productive games before he left. Sidibie had one big game against Pittsburgh and Dolezaj had some good games at the end. But our offense consisted almost entirely of the “Big Three”. We were a strong defensive team, save for a few ACC games where we let the other team get off from three point range. But we more than made up for that in the post season with the best defense we’ve played since the 2013 Final Four run. The four NCAA teams we played were all avenging over 80 points a game and we held them to an average of 25 points below their average. Pace was part of that but pace is part of defense and Jim Boeheim used it effectively, even if it wasn’t what old geezers like me remember SU basketball being in the old days.
This was our least experienced team ever after Thorpe left: only three guys had ever played college ball before this season. It was thin, injured and offensively limited. We were playing in the strongest conference in the country, top to bottom. But we stayed in game after game and made it to the NCAAs and had a nice run that gave the season a warm glow- at least until Darius Bazley decided to become a ‘pioneer’ instead of an Orangeman. As of this writing, we have 7 guys coming back from a Sweet 16 team, including all the starters and three promising newcomers for next year. That should be enough to keep the warm glow going until the balls start bouncing again.
Then: “The traditional means Syracuse fans have used to evaluate their teams, aside from post season success, (and even despite it, depending on what point you are trying to make) is the number of losses. In Jim Boeheim’s first 37 seasons, we had single digits in losses 24 times in 37 years. In our first ACC season we went 28-6 but that included a 25-0 start, followed by a 3-6 finish. The next year we went 18-13, (and had no post-season action due to a self-imposed ban: without it there likely would have been a couple more losses). The next year we went to the Final Four but we did it with a 23-14 team. Last season we stumbled to a 19-15 record. We have never won an ACC tournament game. After starting 11-0 in the conference in 2014, we are 30-33 since. It sparked the same sort of “the game has passed him by, let’s ease him into retirement” talk I heard a decade ago, (thus prompting the study noted above). The fact is, in this conference, only our best teams are going to emerge with single digit overall losses and a .500 record in conference play isn’t all that bad: those teams might have won several more games in another conference. We just have to adjust to the fact that the going is harder in this conference than it has traditionally been and only our best teams will have exceptional records. That doesn’t mean there won’t be glory at the end: our 2016 team made the Final Four after a 19-12 regular season and one and done in the ACC tournament. If we can just get in the big dance, we’ll have a chance to make some noise. After all, we’ve been playing teams that good all year.”
Now: We followed up the 3-6 finish of 2014, the 18-13 record from the abbreviated 2015, the 24-13 NCAA run of 2016 and the 19-15 NIT year with a 20-13 record going into selection Sunday with only one win over a ranked team. I think most of us expected another NIT year but we got in an went on another run, winning three games against a Pac 12 team, a Big 12 team and a Big 10 team, then gave Duke all they could handle in the Sweet 16. All those ACC wars toughened us up for the NCAA games which were not easy but seemed very winnable. If Marek Dolezaj hadn’t gotten into foul trouble and been out for what became an 0-10 run at the end of the first half, I think we would have beaten Duke. Kansas is good, not great and barely beat Duke in OT. We might have been back in the Final Four. Our challenge each year is to not play our way out of the Big Dance: once we get in after the ACC gauntlet, we have a shot at a great run to end the season.
Then: “Most teams can have 13 scholarship players. Actually, Boeheim usually doesn’t want that many because you wind up too many disgruntled players who aren’t playing. He prefers 10-11 guys. He thought he’d have 10 this year but unfortunately, he has only 9, which will limit practices, (somebody has to be guarded by a walk on) and leave little margin for error in case of injuries. We lost 3 guys last year. If that happens again, we’ll be down to 6 guys. We were there once before: Ten years ago when Scoop Jardine didn’t tell the coaches he had what turned out to be a hairline fracture of his left shin. He played (badly) with it because we couldn’t afford to lose any more people. If we again have bad luck with injuries we could have young players playing hurt again. Scoop overcame that but somebody else might not.”
Now: We were supposed to have 10 guys this year. But Taurean Thompson never showed up. Geno Thorpe left after 6 games. The Howard Washington tore his ACL after 18 games. We were down to 7 players, all of whom had some kind of injury at some point in the season. Frank Howard played the last several games with his hand wrapped. Tyus Battle did a flip early in the year and banged his head on the court. Dolezaj also went down hard in a game. Moyer turned his ankle. Boeheim made some reference to Brissett playing hurt but I never heard what the injury was. Paschal Chukwu bruised his lower back and Bourama Sidibie had tendonitis in his knee all year but toughed it out, postponing an operation they hope will fix the problem. One hopes that playing with these injuries didn’t make them harder to overcome for the future. We had 65 occasions when a player played an entire game. Tyus Battle once placed all 50 minutes of an overtime game. That said, we didn’t seem to lack energy in the season’s final games.
We were looking at potentially 12 recruited players, (I prefer that term to scholarship players as walk-ons are sometimes given available scholarships as Braedon Bayer was this year). Within a week after the Duke game ended our season we’d already lost two of them, (and Bayer as well), due to transfers and Darius Bazley’s shocking decision to go play in the G league. We could also lose Battle and Brissett to the NBA, (Battle seems more likely) and European players like Dolezaj sometimes only play here for a year or two and go home. We won’t know what next year’s team will be like until the season begins and we won’t even know then because you can lose players during the season, too. Shouldn’t the coaches be stuffing our roster with as many recruited players as possible to deal with all the possible defections for various reasons?
The counter-argument is that if we tried to see what we could get this late in the recruiting season and gave out scholarships to recruits that were not highly regarded, we’d have fewer scholarships available for the next class and if we saved them we might be able to get better players. Alan Griffin just said in a radio interview that the coaching staff, (which is not all at the Final Four), has yet to get together and decide what to do. Jim Boeheim said something interesting in an interview with Doug Gottlieb:
The Doug Gottlieb Show: Jim Boeheim | FOX Sports Radio
Go to the 8:30 part: “We have 9 good players now”. I don’t know if he means that Buddy will be competing against 9 good players or that he’s one of 9 good players. If it’s the later, it would mean that Jim expects to lose one more player, probably Battle. I looked in the SU Media Guide, which has all the stats now for teams form 1980-81 onward. I counted, (from memory), how many recruited players were on each team I came up with no less than 11 teams that had only 9 such players: 1991, 1994, 1997, 2003, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017 and this past season. That includes a national champion, another Final Four team and an outright Big East regular season champion. So it can work but you need some luck, too: you can’t have too many things go wrong with individual players or you will find yourself in a very difficult situation.
Then: “Boeheim said at the end of the season that teaching his complicated zone to freshmen may actually easier than to teach it to transfers as freshmen don’t have to unlearn other defenses. He will get a chance to prove that this year.”
Now: I think he proved it. Once Geno Thorpe left, Jim had 8 guys. Three of them had played college basketball before. Two were juniors who had seen limited action and were coming off of injuries. One was a sophomore who had been the fourth option offensively and would not be the prime target of the defense. The other five guys were all freshmen, one a redshirt freshman. And this group played the best defense we’ve played since the 2013 Final Four run. We struggled mightily on offense but we stayed in games. We lost 14 games but 8 of them were by single digits and another was in overtime. We didn’t lose by 20 to anyone, even though we played Virginia, Duke and North Carolina twice and Kansas once. The previous year, we could score but didn’t defend, (at least until late in the year) and we lost 8 games by double figures, one by 33 points and another by 20.
Then: “Jim had to bring in a lot of new talent. His first recruits for the new class were Bourama Sidibe a 6-11 220 pound center, who was born in Mali but who played is basketball at St. Benedict’s Prep in New Jersey and Oshae Brissett, a 6-6 190 small forward from Toronto. The problem was, neither was then listed in anyone’s top 100 players. You would have thought the sky was falling from all of the internet comments. We were scrapping the bottom of the barrel! How do we compete with Duke, North Carolina and Louisville with guys like this! The thing is, that’s the early signing period. These guys hadn’t played their senior year yet. If they were so bad, why would the coaching staff be “settling” for them rather than pursuing higher rated players? The only answer was that the SU coaches had seen these guys play and gotten to know them and decided that they were the guys they wanted.
Sidibie was recruited by Seton Hall, Virginia Commonwealth, Maryland, SMU, Kansas State, Arizona State and others. I’ve seen him slip into the top 100 at #88 in one listing. Brissett received offers from Maryland, Oregon, Mississippi State, Arizona State, USC, Memphis and others before deciding on Syracuse. He became a classic case of a player who ‘blew up’ after his “snapshot”. He grew three inches, (to 6-9) and added a few pounds (to 200). He became Canada’s player of the year. Comparisons were made to Canadian Andrew Wiggins, who was the #1 overall recruit in 2013 and the #1 NBA draft choice a year later. They didn’t say Brissett was Wiggins but they said he could become Wiggins. He’s now rated #48 from one service I saw and is ranked a 4 star recruit at the present time. Of course we’ll find out how good he really is when he puts on an SU uniform and actually plays for us. But the complaints about our ‘settling for him’ have ceased. These guys hardly represent the “decline” of the program.”
Now: No, they don’t. Brissett, now 6-8 210 was one of the best freshmen in the country, averaging 15 points and 9 rebounds a game and recording 13 double-doubles. He should be one of the best players in the country next season. Sidibie showed his talent in scoring 18 points and getting 16 rebounds vs. Pittsburgh. But his knee problem prevented him from playing consistent minutes and developing at the same rate. But I think he’s a bigger talent than Chukwu, despite being 4 inches shorter. Sidibie’s health allowed Chukwu to develop and become a consistent contributor. I think if Bourama had been healthy, he would have taken over the starting positon from Paschal. The way things worked out, assuming Bourama recovers fully from his surgery by next season, we should have two excellent centers next year.
Here were the early comments on Sidibie last year. They give us a glimpse of what we could see next year: “He’s a bit raw but you can see that he oozes potential. I think next year or the year after we can have a post-game again through him that we haven’t had in years…he plays hard at both ends and is easily better than Paschal…. I think Sibide will be a 10 pt 10 reb guy his freshmen year. Kid played the best big men in the country last year and ended up on the positive side of most of them. Needs weight room I agree but has a lot of potential. Sidibe (and Chukwu with back-up minutes) might surprise this year from reports. It's just a scrimmage, but when's the last time a freshman center lead all scorers at MM?”
Then: “That said, Paschal didn’t look much like a basketball player last year. He looked more like a Daddy Long Legs, skinny, a tendency to fold up under physical pressure, lacking in skills or knowledge of his role in the offense or the defense. Blocking some shots doesn’t make up for that. Syracuse.com’s Chris Carlson said that in a recent public scrimmage, Chukwku was outplayed by Sidibie and missed both his free throws, which means that he’s never made one here, after going 0 for 9 last year. (He had been 24 for 40 = 60% at Providence.)
We have a thread on Syracusefan.com describing that scrimmage, (which was not televised: I didn’t see it myself). Comments on Chukwu, (many of the observations supplied by Cusefan0307, the originator of the thread): “Trying to be nice here, but he looked worse than last year. He still struggles catching the ball, brings it down and consistently got stripped. On defense I thought he gave away the paint way too easily and Bourama had his way with him…I think he’s the 9th man on this team….Chukwu was just God awful, poor kid And he had to sit a lot, then come back in…. Chukwu looked like a dumpster fire…. Chukwu won't play much at all, imo.,,, If you saw what I saw Friday there is literally zero reason to play Chukwu. Sidibe looked like the third year player and Chukwu looked like he was touching the basketball for the first time in his life…. I just don't see how Chukwu can play meaningful minutes and even be moderately successful. He's just so weak, slow and still raw. He'll get bullied, even if he's in good position…. The thing about Chukwu is that his footwork is so bad. He's really clumsy out there. He's going to be a foul magnet.”
Now: Paschal turned out to be a far better player than expected and his improvement basically saved our season. He was the key to our internal defense and proved to a good rebounder, as well. Defensive rebounding is a key part of defense: if the other team winds up with the ball, you haven’t finished playing defense. Last year’s opposition shot 51% from two point range. This year it was 45%. Last year we got 32% of our missed shots. Our opponents got 35%. We reversed that to 35%-30% this year. That’s Chukwu. He averaged 10 points and 4 blocked shots per 40 minutes and, of course the blocked shots are a small percentage of those he altered. His problems were on offense. he had trouble catching passes, timing his leap on alley-oops and brought the ball down to his waste when he did catch passes, which allowed shorter defenders to slap the ball out of his hands. (You are as tall as where you’re holding the ball.) he also needs to continue to get stronger. To use a Matt Park term, he could get “rooted out” by stronger big men. He’s never going to be an Adonis but he could easily add another 10-20 pounds on his frame without slowing down. Paschal did find the range at the free throw line after starting the season 1 for 6 but going 54 for 81 afterwards (66.7%), including 6 for 6 against TCU in the NCAAs. He wound up being known as a clutch guy at the line late in games.
I also said this about Chukwu, (and it also applies to Sidibie): “He’s another in our line of foreign born big men who didn’t grow up playing the game. Boeheim always says that it takes big men longer to develop and not having played the game as a kid, (at least not as much or against the sort of opposition he would have had in America), it takes a foreign-born guy all the longer. On the positive side there’s that comment Boeheim made about it being easier to teach his style of basketball with players who don’t have to unlearn another system. Foreign-born big men tend to be pretty much of a blank slate for the master to draw on.” Hopefully Paschal isn’t done improving.
Then: Draft Express on Oshae Brissett: “Capable straight line driver….covers ground defensively….plays pretty hard more often than not….still a very streaky shooter…doesn’t have the skill set of a traditional wing…feel for a the game is a bit limited…” In other words, he’s a talented freshman. He was the star of the recent scrimmage, with 19 points, including 4 three pointers, 6 rebound and 2 assists. Carlson: “Oshae Brissett was excellent in debut appearance. He arrived at Syracuse with a reputation as a fantastic slasher whose shooting drew mixed reviews depending on who you asked. On Friday it looked plenty good. Brissett knocked down four 3 pointers, providing optimism he can provide both offense and floor-spacing at the forward spot.” Boeheim: “He’s a good shooter…a very good shooter…”
Now: He is a ‘straight line driver’ and that’s a bit of a problem as he gets a lot of charging fouls. But does get to the basket a lot and also to the line, where he is a very good shooter. He was also the team’s top three point shooter (at only 33%). His outside shot was unreliable early in the season but became better as the season went along. He was 39% from three in ACC games, including 5 for 7 in the ACCT loss to North Carolina. He’s also a natural rebounder and a good shot blocker. If he comes back to us, (and he’s expected to at this point), I can see him being a 20/10 man and an All-American. He’s got the whole package. He needs to get stronger, (they all do) and continue to refine his schools.
Then: Marek Dolezaj was a mystery man: “He should be farther along in his development than a typical freshman. He’s also the skinniest guy on a skinny team. Jim Boeheim reminded people the players like Louie Orr and Hakeem Warrick were through to be too skinny when they came here. Louie was an eel-like player who could slither through defenses to score points and get rebounds in a pre-weight room era. Hakim was called “Gumby” because his arms seemed never to end. He was also athletic enough to reach over people to score and rebound. I used to call him “You can’t dunk from there” Warrick, because he could. Whether Marek is comparable to those players remains to be seen. In the tapes he looked very quick- not only running the court but quick in making his moves and getting off the ground. I suspect he’s more likely to play “small” forward at 6-9 than to mix it up underneath. At least his shot will be hard to block. It’s interesting that in the highlights, (I assume he’s #7), he’s playing at the top of the zone, where his long arms could be disruptive.
Syracusefan.com based on the scrimmage: ”Looks a year away to me. You can see flashes of potential off the dribble, shooting and on the break but man is he skinny….Moyer bullied him a bit in the scrimmage. I think he needs a year to develop his body…..I hope Marek grows up this year vs. taking a whole year so we at least we have one guy with size off the bench who isn’t a liability”
Boeheim on Media Day: “He’s an American kind of player. He doesn’t play as much like a European as some typical big guys where they just shoot outside. He can put the ball on the floor, drive. An active player. Rebounds it. Jumps well. Pretty good shooter. Not as good as most European big guys, but a pretty good shooter. But he works hard at the game. Understands the game. He doesn’t understand me much, but he understands the game and how to play.’’ I hope either Marek learns English by the end of the season or that Boeheim learns Slovakian.”
Now: Dolezaj was a half season away. He showed promise in the pre-conference games: reluctant to shoot but capable from mid-range, he knew where to be to make plays and hustled to do so. He was a very good passer. Despite his skinny frame, he was able to rebound fairly well and block shots. He even became the emergency center for when Chuckwu and Sidibie were hurting or in foul trouble. But he seemed intimidated in ACC games and his play became tentative. It looked for a time like Moyer might win back the positon from him just because he was stronger and hustled me. But late in the season, Dolezaj seemed to realize that no one was guarding him and he started to hit 10-12 footers. He then drove around the defenders who came over to guard him or passed it to suddenly open teammates. He started doing everything with more confidence and his lack of muscles didn’t seem to matter as much. He scored 20 points against Wake Forest in the ACCT, 17 against TCU in the NCAAs and 12 against Duke in the sweet 16. When he was in the game against Duke, we seemed like the better team, despite all their McDonald’s All-Americans. If he hadn’t gotten in foul trouble, we might have been in the Final Four again. if he’s back next year, (European players has a reputation for going back home after a year or two), I think he’ll be a double figure scorer and he sure knows how to fill up the stat sheet. I also think we’ll get more points out of the center positon with him in there as he can draw the defense away from the basket and pass the past the closing defender to our centers.
Then, on Matt Moyer: The scouting report on him coming out of high school, per Syracuse.com: In terms of on-court skills, Moyer can put the ball on the floor, get to the basket and knock down the mid-range jumper. He needs to add the 3-point shot to round out his arsenal.” He looks to be the physically strongest Orangeman and that could make him the choice of the coach to play center in a pinch, (Tyler Lydon who was thought of as a small forward when recruited wound up playing center and playing pretty well). In the recent public scrimmage, people commented that Matt seemed to play with the biggest “motor”, as well he might, not having played in a game in two years.
Syracusefan.com based on the scrimmage: “I don’t think it will always be pretty but this dude plays hard and never gives up. He started out struggling and then scored a bunch of points in the middle of the game before struggling again on offense at the end. One thing you will never have to worry about with Moyer is a lack of hustle. He went after every rebound and loose ball. He also appears to be a lot stronger than advertised. I could see him struggling against better athletes….His shot has improved but it’s still a bit flat and could sue more refining….Moyer had his hand on 2-3 O-boards in one possession if my vision serves me right. Moyer and Sidibie compete as hard as hell.”
Boeheim on Media Day: “He has benefited from being here for the year. He’s in better condition. He’s improved his shooting. Again, he’s our most experienced forward.’’ (Who has yet to play a game!)
Now: And he won’t be playing another, at least not for us. He certainly showed the hustle described and was at least the most thickly built of a skinny squad. But he showed little in the way of basketball skills. His father seems to have been an issue, telling Coach Boeheim that his son was unavailable to play in a game. Now he’s transferred out. Good luck to him and whoever gets him.
Then, on Tyus Battle: “With White, Gillon, Lydon and now Thompson gone, he’s the star of the team by default- but also because of his ability. He’s got the whole package. There are really only two questions: How will he adjust to being the #1 offensive option and thus the #1 defensive target and, if he has a good year, will he join the list of guys who jumped to the NBA after only 1-2 years here? The former is what matters right now and that may depend on how all of his new teammates produce to take the defensive pressure off of him. The only two returning players who played last year, Chukwu and Howard, don’t figure to be much help. It’s going to be up to Sidibe, Brissett, Dolezaj and Thorpe. At least a couple of those guys will have to become double-figure scorers or Tyus may find himself being double or triple teamed all the time. With all the questions up front and the experience in the backcourt, Boeheim may go to a three guard look sometimes, in which case Battle may find himself playing small forward.
Syracusefan.com based on the scrimmage: “He struggled a bit tonight, especially with Frank guarding him…I guess he went about 4 for 15 and struggled both at the rim and from the 3…it could mean Frank is better than we thought….Battle may have to play some 3 for us to get enough offense on the court…”
Boeheim on Media Day: “We’ve had a couple weeks of practice. I think Tyus has worked extremely hard. I really do. I think he’s a much-improved player. He’s much stronger. Much more physical. Much more confident in what he should do. I think he had a great year last year, particularly the end of the year. He showed against the best teams in the country in our league what he can do. And I think he’s much better this year.’’
Now: Tyus did a terrific job becoming the #1 option and thus the focus of the defense. And he did it on a limited offensive team where we often had 2 or even 3 non-scorers on the court. He was constantly double-teamed and had to drive around people from 30 feet to get to the basket. He did that and also hit pull up jumpers and three pointers and scored 19.2ppg, the highest average for a Syracuse player since Hakim Warrick scored 21.4 in 2004-05. Like Brissett, he can get to the line and score from there: he shot 84%. He’s not a great outside shooter: 32% form three point range and he was almost always right on the line. He doesn’t hit the occasional 25 footer that other good shooters can make. I actually like the fact that he’ll take an open 2 pointer over a guarded trey: 2 point shots that go in score more than three point shots that don’t. He’s got a sometimes pronounced hitch in his form, (but don’t’ tell JB that), that along with his lack of range makes him a borderline NBA prospect at best and leaves us some hope that he’ll come back for his junior year. He needs to be more than just a scorer and he’s capable of that. With his size, he could rebound better and he could look to dish on some of those drives. Towards the end of the season he was doing more rebounding and passing and hopefully that will carry over to next year. Hopefully, he’ll be doing those things for us.
Then: “Frank (Howard) has had an up-and-down career here, with more downs than ups. He’s a good passer but not much of a shot, an indifferent defender and a mediocre ball handler. We now know that his problem last year was an unpublicized “core muscle” injury, (actually four separate injuries: three on the right side and one on the left). From Syracuse.com: “"Some days I would feel pretty good and then the next day it would hurt again,'' Howard said. "I would play three minutes in a game and it would feel like I had played 40. Howard said the recovery and rehab after the surgery was worse than when he tore the ACL in his knee in high school. With the knee, you can stabilize it,'' Howard said. "You have a brace and crutches or whatever. But with your core, there's not much you can do. It hurt whenever I reached for something or rolled over in bed. It just takes time.” He had surgery on May 11. He was back on the court as of the end of June and is now determined to show what he can do while fully healthy. I’m sure he realizes that if he doesn’t perform well, Geno Thorpe will be getting a lot of his minutes.
Syracusefan.com based on the scrimmage: “I’m sure he will frustrate people because he missed a few bunnies during the scrimmage but he shot it well both from three and midrange. He also played really hard on defense like he took it personally…made a few nice passes to both Moyer and Bourama.”
Boeheim from Media Day: “He’s getting better. We’ll see what he can do. I think he’s improved. He’s shooting the ball better. He was a little rusty. Obviously, he didn’t play this summer. I don’t think it hurt him that much because he’s had plenty of game experience. I think he’s a much better player this year at this stage than he was last year.’' He compared him to Scoop Jardine, who “struggled for two years and then had two great years. I think he’s shown more signs than Scoop did.”
Now: Howard, like Chukwu, was a revelation and a necessary one to the success of the team. He had a fine year overall, shooting the ball far better than he ever had before. His three point percentage went from 26% to 33% even though, once he proved he could make that shot, he got a lot more defensive attention. He went from 20 treys to 67. He showed a deeper range than battle or Brissett. He drove to the basket, not as much as battle or Brissett but enough to score 120 two point baskets and get to the line 128 times. He was good free throw shooter, although not quite as good and B&B and scored 92 points from there. It was not a team to collect a lot of assists from: both offensively limited and dedicated to iso plays and drives to the basket. But he averaged 4.7 assists per game. Unfortunately he also averaged 3.4 turnovers, many of them really bad turnovers: steals, mis-dribbles, alley-oops to nowhere. He seemed to not know how many seconds were left on the shot clock, (either shooting too soon or too late). But, unlike in past season, his positive production was more than enough to overcome his mistakes. He rebounded better than battle, who is bigger and more muscular, did. And he played excellent defense all year and was a big reason we kept contact with the shooters in the post season run. I also like what he says in news conferences and interviews. He seems to have matured into a team leader.
Then: “Howard Washington was definitely not our #1 target. He was a point guard from Buffalo who went north to play with Brissett’s team. He wasn’t our #1 guy but we were his #1 school. He was disappointed when we went after Quade Green, from Scoop Jardine’s old high school, Neuman-Goretti in Philadelphia. The word was we wanted Green so much we told him we wouldn’t recruit anybody else. Washington committed to Butler. The Green followed John Calipari’s siren call to Kentucky and we were left without a point guard recruit. Washington de-committed from Butler and accepted an offer from the ‘Cuse. So he was our second choice but second choice players can turn out to be good players. The problems come if you are just collecting warm bodies at the end of the recruiting cycle. Washington wasn’t top 100, either. The best rating I’ve found for him is #122 and 3 stars. But Butler wanted him. They have a strong program so I’d say he has a future here, too.”
Now: Washington became our third guard when Thorpe left. He’d played very little until then and didn’t really play a lot after that, except or the overtime game against Florida State, where he played for 24 minutes and scored 9 points including a trey and had 3 rebounds, an assist and a steal. He didn’t strike me as a major talent, just someone with all-round guard skills who, especially with the guys we have coming in, may be a career reserve if he sticks it out here. But the sample is so limited it’s hard to tell for sure. I wouldn’t have thought Frank Howard could have had the year he had. Maybe Washington will blossom if he gets his shot in the same way.
Then: “Jim also brought in another grad transfer, Geno Thorpe from South Florida, who used to be a Big East rival, and he looks he could be major contributor.”
Now: Nope.
Then: “Overall: The key to the improvement of the football team this fall was the improvement of the defense and that will also be the key to the improvement of the basketball team. We had a lot of exciting games last year but those were our best games. We had to try to out-score people to win. Normally we are a strong defensive team that is able, because of our defense, to stay in games when our offense is malfunctioning and take over games when the offense is productive. I think we will have a productive offense. This year Battle, Thorpe, Brissett, Dolezai and even Sidibie should be able to score. We’ll lack and inside game but and rebounding but hopefully can get a lot of blocks and steals and get out and run. I think Thorpe and Howard will be a big defensive upgrade over Gillon and White and our big men have the length to be disruptive. But the concerns loom large: this will be perhaps our youngest team ever and we will be more dependent on untried players than I can ever remember. We are almost totally lacking in the sort of physical strength that ACC teams often feature up front. There is no depth at center. I’d like to think this team can surprise as so many unheralded Boeheim teams have but the ingredients for a disaster are certainly there as well and the ACC is a totally unforgiving conference. We’ve had 47 consecutive winning seasons, the longest streak in the country. That streak could be in serious jeopardy this year.
One thing we shouldn’t do is to look at this year as just the lead-up to next year. In modern basketball the team has to be reconstructed every year. You can’t be sure who will be on the team next year. This year’s team could have had Chris McCullough, Malachi Richardson, Tyler Lydon and Taurean Thompson. But it doesn’t. We’ve got these guys instead. We need to root for them to go as far as they can go because nobody knows what the future will bring.”
Now: Thorpe, Sidibie and Dolezaj didn’t contribute much to the offense overall. Thorpe had a couple of productive games before he left. Sidibie had one big game against Pittsburgh and Dolezaj had some good games at the end. But our offense consisted almost entirely of the “Big Three”. We were a strong defensive team, save for a few ACC games where we let the other team get off from three point range. But we more than made up for that in the post season with the best defense we’ve played since the 2013 Final Four run. The four NCAA teams we played were all avenging over 80 points a game and we held them to an average of 25 points below their average. Pace was part of that but pace is part of defense and Jim Boeheim used it effectively, even if it wasn’t what old geezers like me remember SU basketball being in the old days.
This was our least experienced team ever after Thorpe left: only three guys had ever played college ball before this season. It was thin, injured and offensively limited. We were playing in the strongest conference in the country, top to bottom. But we stayed in game after game and made it to the NCAAs and had a nice run that gave the season a warm glow- at least until Darius Bazley decided to become a ‘pioneer’ instead of an Orangeman. As of this writing, we have 7 guys coming back from a Sweet 16 team, including all the starters and three promising newcomers for next year. That should be enough to keep the warm glow going until the balls start bouncing again.