SWC75
Bored Historian
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- Aug 26, 2011
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FORWARDS
MAREK DOLEZAJ
Then:
Marek has grown from when he was a 6-9 175 pound freshman – but not much. His game was pretty well established when he came here. He knew where the ball was and what was happening on the court, which enabled him to get rebounds and loose balls and to make effective but not flashy passes. He is quick and can run the court. He is a good “help defender” and can block shots. He’s shown he can hit jump shots – he hit 38% of his 29 trey attempts last year. I haven’t seen many drives to the basket but he can move with the ball. His thinness prevents him from being a true center. He can’t bang with big guys or use his body to stop drives in the paint. But his real weakness has been his reticence to shoot. He has spent two years deferring to his teammates. One thing a passer needs to do is to make the defense guard him. If he doesn’t, he’ll have his four teammates guarded by five guys. Often times when Marek and Paschal were in the game at the same time, it was five guys guarding the only three guys who could score for us. We’ve now got plenty of guys who can score. That would be a good thing for a passer like Marek but it also means that Boeheim will be tempted to put Marek on the bench if he’s not scoring in favor of someone who will. Marek doesn’t need to score a lot of points but he needs to take the shots that are there for him. He didn’t play in Italy due to an injured hand and has missed a lot of practice because of it but should be healthy once the season starts.
It will be interesting to see how Boeheim chooses to use him. He’s got seniority and multiple useful skills so he could start at forward. Or he could get starter’s minutes coming off the bench at both forward and center, (which he played about half the time last year). Jim has said he would prefer not to use him at center due to his slender build but with the quality of our other forwards, he may have to play center to get playing time. Both the offense and defense are better when he’s in there, due to his hustle, shot blocking and rebounding ability and his ability to keep the ball moving with his passes, which this year could result in more assists as we have big men who can score and others who can shoot.
Now:
Jim Boeheim used Marek at center when he felt he could get away with it, against the smaller teams and when he had to use him with Bourama in foul trouble. It was quickly established that he was the #2 center and Jesse Edwards was a distant third.
Marek had a fine year. He led the team in ‘net points’ ten times, second to Elijah Hughes’ 13. He scored 19 on Seattle, had 11p 9r 3a 3s 3b at Georgia Tech, 13p 9r 4a at Georgetown, 17p 5r 8a 3s vs. North Florida, 9p 12r and 4 blocks vs. Niagara, 13p 10r 7a vs. Notre Dame in the Dome, 7p 12r 6a 2s 2b in the OT win at Virginia, consecutive double-doubles in wins over Virginia Tech and Boston College, a career high 22 points vs. Duke, 20 more against Georgia Tech, including 12 for 12 from the line, 17 p 7r at Miami and 13 points in only 24 minutes in the finale against North Carolina.
He did develop a spinning move to the basket that bulkier big men couldn’t keep up with. Surrounded by jump shooters, he was able to dominate the middle of the defense with his passes, his ball-handling, (despite being long and gangly, he has one of the team’s best handles), and those “whirling dervish” drives. He was a good and versatile finisher. But his most impressive thing was his ability to take a defensive rebound and dribble the length of the court on a one-man fast break. The presence of several shooters on the court meant that defenders kept away from him to cover his passes and it left him a lane to the basket. He started out poorly from the foul line, (19 of 36, 52.8%, in the first 6 games) but then hit 90 of 110 after that, 81.8%.
The one thing missing from his Slovak Army Knife was a jump shot. He was 1 for 7 from three point range after being 11 for 29 last season. There’s no stat for medium range jumpers but he was very reluctant to try them. Eventually, defenses realized that and didn’t guard him at the top of the key. Instead they packed it in underneath and kept contact with the shooters outside, (which may have been a reason for the decline of the three point shooting as the season went on). Marek had injured his hand over the summer had not practiced his jump shot much. JB mentioned several times that he hopes that Marek can get even better next year by working on his shot. He thought in terms of three pointers but we have other guys who can hit those. I want him in the middle of the defense, in the high post, shooting from there, passing from there and driving from there.
Marek also developed a habit of committing some cheap fouls that got him in foul trouble, something that had happened less frequently his first two seasons. He fouled out 9 times and had four fouls 6 other times. He’d been 6/5 as a sophomore and 4/7 as a freshman. As with Sidibie, (remember Marek was playing center much of the time), the external defense might have contributed to this.
ELIJAH HUGHES
Then:
Elijah came here as a transfer who had scored 7.8 points a game as a freshman for lowly East Carolina and is now the sole returning starter and likely star of at a legendary program like Syracuse. That’s quite a change but his talent brought him to this point. He’s a mobile, athletic, talented player and one of the few Orange frontcourt players who isn’t on the skinny side. Last year he scored 13.7 points and 4.7 rebounds as a small forward and our third scoring option. He was a very good outside shooter, 37% from three with great range. In fact, unbelievable range, as he showed against Duke when he hit an 80 footer at the half that had to go AROUND a low-hanging scoreboard to go in:
It was the shot of the season for SU because we beat #1 Duke in their own place in overtime. We stumbled to a 20-13 record on Selection Sunday so that one game and that one shot probably put us in the NCAA tournament.
But Hughes wasn’t just an outside bomber: He could drive to the basket and finish. if anything, the one criticism of him last year is that he become a little too three point happy down the stretch and there wasn’t enough of that kind of play. Hopefully we’ll see the full range of his talents this year.
Now:
John F. Kennedy liked Aristotle’s definition of happiness: “the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope”. That describes Elijah Hughes’ junior season. He led the team and the ACC in scoring with 19.0 points per game and added 4.9 rebounds, 3.4 assists plus a block and a steal per game. He scored inside on drives to the basket and outside on long range bombs. He often ran the offense himself. He was an exciting dunker but an even more exciting blocker as he’d come out of nowhere at least once a game to send a lay-up into the stands. He was an NBA player playing for Syracuse. His one problem was that he got banged around a lot. He hurt his groin and couldn’t go at all in a close loss to NC State and got what was likely a concussion in the first half of another close loss against Miami and was unable to play the second half. If we’d won those games, we might have been in the NCAA tournament…except there wasn’t one this year.
Now he has to decide if he wants to jump to the NBA or come back here for his senior season. I don’t think those injuries are in our favor- the look on his face during the second half against Miami seemed to suggest he was wondering why he’s playing for free. I don’t see how another season here would make him into a much better player.
QUINCY GUERRIER
Then:
Quincy was the best high school player in Canada last year, which means more than it sounds. They don’t just play hockey and lacrosse up there anymore. A lot of good players have been coming out of Canada recently, (and probably more in the future now that Toronto has won the NBA title). One of them was Oshae Brissett whom Quincy knows and has worked out with. Quincy said in an interview that he’s similar to Oshae except he’s a better outside shooter, (Oshae was 27% from three last year after 33% as a freshman). That didn’t really reveal itself in Italy, where Guerrier was 3 for 10. He spent most of his time blowing by the Italian players for lay-ups and dunks, (he made 16 of 19 two point shots -84%!). Oshae was a wiry looking guy: athletic but he had trouble finishing when closely defended. He never really developed post-up skills. Quincy scored 47 points and had 38 rebounds in Italy with 7 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks. He had 4 turnovers and 3 fouls, which is not bad for 78 minutes.
Guerrier is a physical specimen who isn’t going to be out-muscled by anyone and is an athletic dunker. Most people have him starting over both Dolezaj and Braswell. He and Hughes would make quite a combination at forward even if neither is particularly tall.
Now:
Quincy started out comically bad, playing like a bull in a china shop. His outside shot stayed outside- the arena. He was 3 for 24 from the arc and wasn’t any better inside of it. His game was about muscling his way to the basket for buckets and rebounds, although he did show an ability to actually avoid defenders on his drives late in the season. He had a nice stretch at the free throw line in mid-season, going 33 for 43 (76.7%). The rest of the time he was 30 for 61, (49.2%). He also couldn’t stay out of foul trouble, fouling out 3 times and getting four fouls 8 times, despite only playing an average of 20 minutes a game.
But he always brought energy to the game and, as noted, he was one Syracuse player who wasn’t going to get out-muscled by anyone. He improved significantly as the year went along. Per 40 minutes he averaged a double-double: 13.5, 10.4r. He had 14p 7r in 17 minutes against Seattle, 10/5 in 16 vs. Cornell, 13/10 in 31 minutes vs. Penn State’s big guys, 10/7 in 16 vs. North Florida, 10/5 in 17 vs. Notre Dame, 12/9 in 25 minutes vs. Va Tech, 10/8 in 27 minutes vs. Pitt, 13/3 in 15 vs. Wake, 16/10 in 37 vs. NC State, 13p 2r 1a 1s 2b in 22 minutes vs. Florida State’s tall front line, 14/12 in 32 minutes in the disaster at Louisville and, after a late-season slump, 7/9 in 19 in the triumphant finale vs. UNC.
Both Quincy and Jim Boeheim say that he makes jump shots in practice- he just hasn’t made them in games. I don’t care if he ever hits a three pointer but a pull-up jumper would give his game an extra dimension. If he can learn to avid fouls and play 30 minutes a game, he could become quite a player. He and Dolezaj could make an impressive pair of forwards. He also gives us some muscle to make up for Marek’s lack of it when the latter is playing center.
ROBERT BRASWELL
Then:
Braswell is such a man of mystery that Lindy’s pre-season preview magazine doesn’t even list him as being on the team. He was quite the high school athlete, winning the South Carolina high jump championship twice in a row with a high of 6-10! As a freshman he appeared in only 12 games and played only 55 minutes but his numbers were amazing: 27 points, 10 rebounds, 5 assists 6 steals and a blocked shot. He did have 7 turnovers but just 2 fouls. He only attempted 2 treys and made one. In Italy he played 61 minutes with about the same numbers: 26 points, 19 rebounds, 2 assists, 4 steals and a block vs. 5 turnovers and 3 fouls. He was 3 for 8 from the arc. A freshman who doesn’t foul but does a lot of good things is very rare: it means he knows what’s going on out there: where he needs to be and what he needs to do. He also passed the “look” test. He just looked like a player in his element, with the game going at the speed he wanted it to. He just looked like he would turn out to be a really good player for us when his turn came.
A couple of disclaimers: He only played late in blow-outs, (he was behind Hughes, Brissett and Dolezaj), and only faced deep bench reserves and walk-ons and some bad Italian teams. But he just looked like a guy who knew how to play the game and that his skills would still be there against better opposition. The other thing is that he’s still behind Hughes and Dolezaj and probably Quincy Guerrier, two juniors and a freshman. We’ve also got some good forward prospects being recruited for next year. So his turn seems to still be far away. He could redshirt and we probably wouldn’t miss him. He could also transfer, which would make me sad. I don’t want to see him starring for someone else after Hughes and Dolezaj are gone. I’d hate to see Robert get lost in the shuffle but I also don’t see a lot of daylight.
Now:
Braswell hardly played and didn’t play as well as he did as a freshman. In 48 minutes he had 12 points, 8 rebounds and 2 steals. No blocks or assists. He did hit 4 of 6 three pointers but was 0 for 3 inside the arc. That’s about as one-dimensional as it gets. He played in just 7 of our first 13 games, then announced that he was bothered by chin splints that he’s had since high school. Apparently the only treatment is rest, so he took the second semester off and is rumored to be transferring, which would be too bad because if Hughes goes pro, the small forward positon is wide open.
MAREK DOLEZAJ
Then:
Marek has grown from when he was a 6-9 175 pound freshman – but not much. His game was pretty well established when he came here. He knew where the ball was and what was happening on the court, which enabled him to get rebounds and loose balls and to make effective but not flashy passes. He is quick and can run the court. He is a good “help defender” and can block shots. He’s shown he can hit jump shots – he hit 38% of his 29 trey attempts last year. I haven’t seen many drives to the basket but he can move with the ball. His thinness prevents him from being a true center. He can’t bang with big guys or use his body to stop drives in the paint. But his real weakness has been his reticence to shoot. He has spent two years deferring to his teammates. One thing a passer needs to do is to make the defense guard him. If he doesn’t, he’ll have his four teammates guarded by five guys. Often times when Marek and Paschal were in the game at the same time, it was five guys guarding the only three guys who could score for us. We’ve now got plenty of guys who can score. That would be a good thing for a passer like Marek but it also means that Boeheim will be tempted to put Marek on the bench if he’s not scoring in favor of someone who will. Marek doesn’t need to score a lot of points but he needs to take the shots that are there for him. He didn’t play in Italy due to an injured hand and has missed a lot of practice because of it but should be healthy once the season starts.
It will be interesting to see how Boeheim chooses to use him. He’s got seniority and multiple useful skills so he could start at forward. Or he could get starter’s minutes coming off the bench at both forward and center, (which he played about half the time last year). Jim has said he would prefer not to use him at center due to his slender build but with the quality of our other forwards, he may have to play center to get playing time. Both the offense and defense are better when he’s in there, due to his hustle, shot blocking and rebounding ability and his ability to keep the ball moving with his passes, which this year could result in more assists as we have big men who can score and others who can shoot.
Now:
Jim Boeheim used Marek at center when he felt he could get away with it, against the smaller teams and when he had to use him with Bourama in foul trouble. It was quickly established that he was the #2 center and Jesse Edwards was a distant third.
Marek had a fine year. He led the team in ‘net points’ ten times, second to Elijah Hughes’ 13. He scored 19 on Seattle, had 11p 9r 3a 3s 3b at Georgia Tech, 13p 9r 4a at Georgetown, 17p 5r 8a 3s vs. North Florida, 9p 12r and 4 blocks vs. Niagara, 13p 10r 7a vs. Notre Dame in the Dome, 7p 12r 6a 2s 2b in the OT win at Virginia, consecutive double-doubles in wins over Virginia Tech and Boston College, a career high 22 points vs. Duke, 20 more against Georgia Tech, including 12 for 12 from the line, 17 p 7r at Miami and 13 points in only 24 minutes in the finale against North Carolina.
He did develop a spinning move to the basket that bulkier big men couldn’t keep up with. Surrounded by jump shooters, he was able to dominate the middle of the defense with his passes, his ball-handling, (despite being long and gangly, he has one of the team’s best handles), and those “whirling dervish” drives. He was a good and versatile finisher. But his most impressive thing was his ability to take a defensive rebound and dribble the length of the court on a one-man fast break. The presence of several shooters on the court meant that defenders kept away from him to cover his passes and it left him a lane to the basket. He started out poorly from the foul line, (19 of 36, 52.8%, in the first 6 games) but then hit 90 of 110 after that, 81.8%.
The one thing missing from his Slovak Army Knife was a jump shot. He was 1 for 7 from three point range after being 11 for 29 last season. There’s no stat for medium range jumpers but he was very reluctant to try them. Eventually, defenses realized that and didn’t guard him at the top of the key. Instead they packed it in underneath and kept contact with the shooters outside, (which may have been a reason for the decline of the three point shooting as the season went on). Marek had injured his hand over the summer had not practiced his jump shot much. JB mentioned several times that he hopes that Marek can get even better next year by working on his shot. He thought in terms of three pointers but we have other guys who can hit those. I want him in the middle of the defense, in the high post, shooting from there, passing from there and driving from there.
Marek also developed a habit of committing some cheap fouls that got him in foul trouble, something that had happened less frequently his first two seasons. He fouled out 9 times and had four fouls 6 other times. He’d been 6/5 as a sophomore and 4/7 as a freshman. As with Sidibie, (remember Marek was playing center much of the time), the external defense might have contributed to this.
ELIJAH HUGHES
Then:
Elijah came here as a transfer who had scored 7.8 points a game as a freshman for lowly East Carolina and is now the sole returning starter and likely star of at a legendary program like Syracuse. That’s quite a change but his talent brought him to this point. He’s a mobile, athletic, talented player and one of the few Orange frontcourt players who isn’t on the skinny side. Last year he scored 13.7 points and 4.7 rebounds as a small forward and our third scoring option. He was a very good outside shooter, 37% from three with great range. In fact, unbelievable range, as he showed against Duke when he hit an 80 footer at the half that had to go AROUND a low-hanging scoreboard to go in:
It was the shot of the season for SU because we beat #1 Duke in their own place in overtime. We stumbled to a 20-13 record on Selection Sunday so that one game and that one shot probably put us in the NCAA tournament.
But Hughes wasn’t just an outside bomber: He could drive to the basket and finish. if anything, the one criticism of him last year is that he become a little too three point happy down the stretch and there wasn’t enough of that kind of play. Hopefully we’ll see the full range of his talents this year.
Now:
John F. Kennedy liked Aristotle’s definition of happiness: “the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope”. That describes Elijah Hughes’ junior season. He led the team and the ACC in scoring with 19.0 points per game and added 4.9 rebounds, 3.4 assists plus a block and a steal per game. He scored inside on drives to the basket and outside on long range bombs. He often ran the offense himself. He was an exciting dunker but an even more exciting blocker as he’d come out of nowhere at least once a game to send a lay-up into the stands. He was an NBA player playing for Syracuse. His one problem was that he got banged around a lot. He hurt his groin and couldn’t go at all in a close loss to NC State and got what was likely a concussion in the first half of another close loss against Miami and was unable to play the second half. If we’d won those games, we might have been in the NCAA tournament…except there wasn’t one this year.
Now he has to decide if he wants to jump to the NBA or come back here for his senior season. I don’t think those injuries are in our favor- the look on his face during the second half against Miami seemed to suggest he was wondering why he’s playing for free. I don’t see how another season here would make him into a much better player.
QUINCY GUERRIER
Then:
Quincy was the best high school player in Canada last year, which means more than it sounds. They don’t just play hockey and lacrosse up there anymore. A lot of good players have been coming out of Canada recently, (and probably more in the future now that Toronto has won the NBA title). One of them was Oshae Brissett whom Quincy knows and has worked out with. Quincy said in an interview that he’s similar to Oshae except he’s a better outside shooter, (Oshae was 27% from three last year after 33% as a freshman). That didn’t really reveal itself in Italy, where Guerrier was 3 for 10. He spent most of his time blowing by the Italian players for lay-ups and dunks, (he made 16 of 19 two point shots -84%!). Oshae was a wiry looking guy: athletic but he had trouble finishing when closely defended. He never really developed post-up skills. Quincy scored 47 points and had 38 rebounds in Italy with 7 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks. He had 4 turnovers and 3 fouls, which is not bad for 78 minutes.
Guerrier is a physical specimen who isn’t going to be out-muscled by anyone and is an athletic dunker. Most people have him starting over both Dolezaj and Braswell. He and Hughes would make quite a combination at forward even if neither is particularly tall.
Now:
Quincy started out comically bad, playing like a bull in a china shop. His outside shot stayed outside- the arena. He was 3 for 24 from the arc and wasn’t any better inside of it. His game was about muscling his way to the basket for buckets and rebounds, although he did show an ability to actually avoid defenders on his drives late in the season. He had a nice stretch at the free throw line in mid-season, going 33 for 43 (76.7%). The rest of the time he was 30 for 61, (49.2%). He also couldn’t stay out of foul trouble, fouling out 3 times and getting four fouls 8 times, despite only playing an average of 20 minutes a game.
But he always brought energy to the game and, as noted, he was one Syracuse player who wasn’t going to get out-muscled by anyone. He improved significantly as the year went along. Per 40 minutes he averaged a double-double: 13.5, 10.4r. He had 14p 7r in 17 minutes against Seattle, 10/5 in 16 vs. Cornell, 13/10 in 31 minutes vs. Penn State’s big guys, 10/7 in 16 vs. North Florida, 10/5 in 17 vs. Notre Dame, 12/9 in 25 minutes vs. Va Tech, 10/8 in 27 minutes vs. Pitt, 13/3 in 15 vs. Wake, 16/10 in 37 vs. NC State, 13p 2r 1a 1s 2b in 22 minutes vs. Florida State’s tall front line, 14/12 in 32 minutes in the disaster at Louisville and, after a late-season slump, 7/9 in 19 in the triumphant finale vs. UNC.
Both Quincy and Jim Boeheim say that he makes jump shots in practice- he just hasn’t made them in games. I don’t care if he ever hits a three pointer but a pull-up jumper would give his game an extra dimension. If he can learn to avid fouls and play 30 minutes a game, he could become quite a player. He and Dolezaj could make an impressive pair of forwards. He also gives us some muscle to make up for Marek’s lack of it when the latter is playing center.
ROBERT BRASWELL
Then:
Braswell is such a man of mystery that Lindy’s pre-season preview magazine doesn’t even list him as being on the team. He was quite the high school athlete, winning the South Carolina high jump championship twice in a row with a high of 6-10! As a freshman he appeared in only 12 games and played only 55 minutes but his numbers were amazing: 27 points, 10 rebounds, 5 assists 6 steals and a blocked shot. He did have 7 turnovers but just 2 fouls. He only attempted 2 treys and made one. In Italy he played 61 minutes with about the same numbers: 26 points, 19 rebounds, 2 assists, 4 steals and a block vs. 5 turnovers and 3 fouls. He was 3 for 8 from the arc. A freshman who doesn’t foul but does a lot of good things is very rare: it means he knows what’s going on out there: where he needs to be and what he needs to do. He also passed the “look” test. He just looked like a player in his element, with the game going at the speed he wanted it to. He just looked like he would turn out to be a really good player for us when his turn came.
A couple of disclaimers: He only played late in blow-outs, (he was behind Hughes, Brissett and Dolezaj), and only faced deep bench reserves and walk-ons and some bad Italian teams. But he just looked like a guy who knew how to play the game and that his skills would still be there against better opposition. The other thing is that he’s still behind Hughes and Dolezaj and probably Quincy Guerrier, two juniors and a freshman. We’ve also got some good forward prospects being recruited for next year. So his turn seems to still be far away. He could redshirt and we probably wouldn’t miss him. He could also transfer, which would make me sad. I don’t want to see him starring for someone else after Hughes and Dolezaj are gone. I’d hate to see Robert get lost in the shuffle but I also don’t see a lot of daylight.
Now:
Braswell hardly played and didn’t play as well as he did as a freshman. In 48 minutes he had 12 points, 8 rebounds and 2 steals. No blocks or assists. He did hit 4 of 6 three pointers but was 0 for 3 inside the arc. That’s about as one-dimensional as it gets. He played in just 7 of our first 13 games, then announced that he was bothered by chin splints that he’s had since high school. Apparently the only treatment is rest, so he took the second semester off and is rumored to be transferring, which would be too bad because if Hughes goes pro, the small forward positon is wide open.
