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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 4217059, member: 289"] PART TWO: THE TEAM [I]So do we have a team that will allow us to dream of cutting down the nets – or one that will at least make us curious, rather than nervous on Selection Sunday? I don’t know. I do think we will have enough talent to be a Syracuse team – one that continues the streak of winning seasons and is capable of beating anyone they play. It will be a team that lost some strengths from last season but also gained some. Each team is different and that’s going to be more true than ever now with the wide open transfer portal. Not only can we lose players to the pros, to academics, personal problems and injuries. Now they can just decide to leave and won’t have to sit out a year. Of course, we can also gain talent, not only from high schools, the international ball and, junior colleges but also from players transferring from other schools. JB and his staff wasted no time in taking advantage of this, bringing in three transfers and a top high school recruit to replace no less than five guys with eligibility left who departed from last year’s team. These days you can’t build a team: you assemble it from available parts. I’ve always said that a college basketball team is like a jigsaw puzzle where you don’t have all the pieces and you have to fit them together as best you can to try to get something resembling a complete picture. We’ve lost some speed and athleticism but gained size and firepower, traits which might be more useful in the Boeheim zone defense and pick-and-roll offense.[/I] Well, I certainly wasn’t nervous on Selection Sunday. In fact, I slept through it. But this didn’t come about the way I wanted it to. Our season was over and March Madness had become just another major event on the yearly sporting calendar, like the Masters, the Kentucky Derby or the Indy 500. I would watch the event as aficionado of the sport but with no special angst or pleasure because I had no rooting interest in any team beyond wanting our opponents do well so we would look better, (or less bad), and wanting to see close games and another first time champion. We certainly were not able to compete against anyone we played at the beginning of the season. We didn’t even compete with Colgate. Pressure defenses like those of VCU and Villanova and Miami in the second half took us out of our offense and anyone with a strong inside player were undefendable. Even teams that were not notably good from outside would set season highs for three pointers against us. Being tall made little difference when we were slow. You’ve got to “get there with the mostest” and having the tallest made no difference if you couldn’t get there. And against national championship contenders like Auburn, Villanova. and Duke you could see the difference between us now and the sort of teams we used to have. And yet, we somehow improved as the season progressed to the point where we were winning games – some of them by substantial margins - and were competing with everyone except Duke. Getting another winning record and even making the NCAA tournament seemed possible. Then Jesse Edwards, who was becoming our star center went down, followed by Symir Torrance, our back-up and only true point guard ten Benny Williams, our disappointing blue-chip forwards, after he had his one big game against Duke. Finally, our leading scorer, Buddy Boeheim, inexplicably threw a punch at an opponent and got himself suspended for the final game, also against Duke. Yet we lost to North Carlina in overtime, had a 10 point lead late in the Miami fame and were tied against Duke late in that final game. With better luck, we might have obtained our twin goals and, even in defeat, you had to be impressed with the player’s competitive fortitude and the coaching staff’s ability to put together this year’s jigsaw puzzle, (even if you blame them for choosing the pieces). They will have a different set of pieces next year. The big issue is: will we get Cole Swider back, which would give us a shot at putting together a pretty good veteran starting line-up of Torrance, Girard, Williams, Swider and Edwards, hoping that Benny will find himself as a sophomore, and then back it up with the 5 man recruiting class. After last year’s mass exodus, people are nervous that we could not only lose Swider but also maybe Benny and Frank Anselem but I haven’t heard anything that even rises to a rumor about them. If we do lose Cole, who told JB that he was only going to be here one year but then indicated he might change his mind, we could have two freshman, Paul Carey and Maliq Brown, battling for his spot while a third, Chris Bunch, pushes Benny at the other. That would a totally unproven group at this level but could be a very talented one. We should be a lot quicker and could be even taller and deeper and still have enough firepower to outscore people. But off of Benny’s example, (as well as Matthew Moyer, Jalen Carey, Brycen Goodine, Woody Newton, etc.), relying on freshmen to be big contributors is a serious concern. Don’t expect JB to pull too many rabbits out of the transfer portal. Last year’s haul was his own son, a guy who grew up here and a guy he had heavily recruited who went to another northeastern school. That’s not exactly using the portal as a menu. He said recently that he’d look into the transfer portal if he lost someone he expected would stay. Would Cole Swider qualify? Stay tuned. [/QUOTE]

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