SWC75
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This is my annual season-end comparison of what I said about the team before the season and what my views are now. My current comments are in italics.
CENTERS
It’s been a long road for DAJUAN COLEMAN. When he was in high school at Jamesville-DeWitt, he was one of two big stories in local basketball. The other was Breanna Stewart at Cicero-North Syracuse. Both were McDonald’s All-Americans and people wondered who would go on to have the greater college career. Breanna went to UCONN and became the latest superstar in their women’s basketball dynasty, winning three national championships and being national player of the year twice- so far. DaIuan, like a lot of high school big men, struggled to adjust to the college game, where suddenly he’s not that much bigger than everybody else and the moves he used in high school weren’t working. A particular problem was that he tended to hold the ball low so the opposition could get at it. There’s no point in being 6-9 if you are going to hold the ball at 5-9. But he was a big strong guy, (280 pounds) and rebounded well. He had some passing skills and could score facing the basket.
Then the injuries piled up on him. He ripped up his left knee twice in two seasons and wound up going through something called OATS surgery. SB Nation: That procedure addresses cartilage damage by scooping out an area of healthy bone and cartilage from a non-weight bearing part of the former McDonald All-American's leg and inserted it into a small hole of cartilage damage in his knee.” (I didn’t know “scoop out“ is a medical term.) Coleman went on a “juice” diet to reduce his weight from 282 to 258 pounds and take the pressure off his knee, then built himself back up. So he’s spent most of the least two years in rehab, which takes a particular sort of determination. He’s worked hard in practice and reports from there and pick-up games have been promising. But it’s hard to learn how to play at this level without playing actual games. In his development, he’s more of a freshman or early sophomore. But we need him to come on like his fellow Mickey Dee, Rakeem Christmas, did last year.
For that his knee has to hold up for 30+ games and his skill development has to accelerate. In the first exhibition against LeMoyne, (a team with the sort of size he faced in high school), the game looked like it was going too fast for him in the first half. He picked it up in the second half and wound up with 15 points and 7 rebounds on 7 for 9 shooting. In that second half he held the ball high and made some good moves to the basket. In the first half he was still holding it low. The big concern is that he looked lost on defense the whole game. He’s not a shot-blocker, so he has to learn to use his body to prevent drives to the basket, the way Arinze Onuaku learned to do. He seemed to have no clue how to do this. We will see plenty of good big men in the ACC and we aren’t going to be able to cover them unless things improve rapidly.
DaJuan continue4d to struggle for much of the season. He came on strong in the post season, increasing his net points from 8.2 in conference play to 19.1 in the post season. The big differences were more rebounds, (9.3 per 40 mintues to 12.7) and fewer fouls ((7.3 to 3.9).He’s still not very mobile and can’t jump and he still bobbles the ball from time to time but he’s learning how to play the game and could be primed for a big senior season. I wouldn’t compare it to Rakeem Christmas’s big senior season or even Rick Jackson’s. Arinze Onoahu is the best comparison, although DaJuan still has a ways to go to be as good as A. O. became. It will be interesting to see how he is used because a center i=with exactly the opposite abilities, (7-2 shot-blocker Paschal Chukwu), will be splitting time with him.
CHINOSO OBOKOH is another NCAA victim. Like Moustapha DIange and Baye Moussa Keita, he’s part of our “African pipeline” of big men. He’s from Nigeria and went to high school in Rochester, (a teammate of Thomas Bryant). From an article on Syracuse.com: “After occupying his Rochester summers with classes to supplement his Bishop Kearney education, after sitting at the kitchen table for hours at a time trying to make sense of schoolwork in his secondary language, after securing the grades and the standardized test score to qualify him to play basketball as a college freshman, Obokoh learned the NCAA required him to sit out his first season at Syracuse. The organization that oversees college sports considered his Nigerian school transcripts and ruled that Obokoh had spent an additional year at Bishop Kearney, thus providing him with a competitive advantage. NCAA spokeswoman Emily James described on-time graduation and subsequent enrollment in college as an "important NCAA safeguard." "Students who spend additional years in high school or delay enrollment in college are typically older," she wrote in an email, "and have additional time to develop their athletic skills relative to their peer group."
So the NCAA denied Chinoso a year of eligibility so he wouldn’t have an advantage over his peers in college. And yet his whole problem is that he hasn’t played the game as much as the American players who grew up with it. He’s thus in his junior season, even though he is just learning the game. He’s listed at 6-9 215 but looks thicker and stronger than that. He’s got an impressive v-shaped upper torso with muscular arms. He didn’t play all that poorly in limited action against lesser opposition last year. In 89 minutes, (a little over two full games) he had 10 points and 21 rebounds. Unfortunately he also committed 19 fouls, meaning that he was unable to play very long in games even if we wanted to.
In the LeMoyne game, he looked as lost on defense as Coleman did. He played 11minutes and never scored or grabbed a rebound. We are a “donut” team but on defense, rather than offense. It’s likely to be a problem all season.
It was for much of the season until Coleman improved toward the end of the year and Boeheim used Lydon at center as well with his shot-blocking abilities. Chinoso did not contribute to the improvement, except perhaps in practice. He played only 67 minutes all season, none after February 11th, and transferred out.
FORWARDS
Here come the Tylers. TYLER ROBERSON is a wiry but strong 6-8 226. His form is good, physically and terms of how he plays. His whole problem has been that he seems rather mechanical and has tended to be hesitant to shoot. The other team lets him free at any spot outside the paint but his lack of confidence in his shot produced miss after miss. His whole game has been about going after the ball and making follow-shots. He’s done very well at that. Ask Duke. He had 19 points and 10 rebounds in the Dome and 16 and 9 in Cameron. Ask NC State against whom he had 16/12 in our final game. If he could ever learn to relax and use his good form to make that 12 footer they are always giving him, he could be quite a player. Even if he doesn’t he’ll be a key player on the team.
Roberson got better as the season went along but there were steps backward as well as forward. He gave up on the 12 footer and just concentrated on getting the ball. She could score when he did but not when he didn’t. Mike Hopkins referred to him as “Turned on Robey” when he played aggressively. Jim Boeheim had some other words for him when he disappeared in games. But he became a consistent contributor down the stretch. He again terrorized Duke with 14 points and 20 rebounds. His net points went from 12.8 in the rpe-season to 15.8 in conference play to 18.6 in the post season. He’s been described as a collegiate Dennis Rodman and that at least describes his role. He had at least 8 rebounds in every post season game, with a high of 18 vs. Dayton. One of our recruits is 6-8 Matthew Moyer, a top 50 type who is supposed to be a good all-round forward. I think his primary role next year will be to push Roberson into being “Turned-on Robie” more often.
TYLER LYDON was supposed to be a skinny outside shooter. Then he was supposed to be a do-it-all NBA prospect. In the LeMoyne game he looked like a good college player. Shooting was his biggest problem: He was 1 for 5, 0 for 4 from three. But he did score 6 points and pull down six rebounds in 22 minutes. Unlike Coleman and Okoboh, he is a shot blocker, getting 3 of them vs. the smaller Dolphins. He’s our third string center by default. What impressed me the most was simply that he looked like he knew what was going on out there- where the ball was, what people were doing. He had 3 assists. He didn’t look skinny to me. He looked more like 220 than 200. He’ll be a good player for us this year. Whether he’ll be a star player this year, I don’t know. We may not need him to be one. “Good” will do for now.
And he was good, often very good. He found his shot, (41.7% from three point range), and showed he could pass and dribble-drive for scores. He was surprisingly effective at center, blocking 22 shots in 6 post season games. He was probably the MVP of our victory in the Battle for Atlantis. Next year he will be a star. He’ll be playing his natural position of forward, with the skills of a power forward and small forward. He has a game similar to Wes Johnson’s in that he can score inside and out and could still get plenty of blocks on “help” defense. It’s only a matter of how long we can keep the guy. He says he’s coming back and hopefully he doesn’t change his mind.
GUARDS
I’m going to list the rest of the players under “guard” because, although several of them are basically “swing men” most of them will see at least sometime in the backcourt. I suspect our plan will be a Villanova-type three guard offense, or even four in some situations.
MICHAEL GBINIJE Mike’s 6-7 200 and a natural small forward in college. But when he came to Syracuse, Jim Boeheim geared him to be a point guard because he needed depth at that positon. It may have been because he was in an unfamiliar positon. It may have been because he was with a new team with some veterans on it and he was deferring to them. But he didn’t have much of a sophomore season. He shot only 38% from the field. He could fill a stat sheet. Per 40 minutes he averaged 9 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists 2 steals and a block. But the great skills he showed in that high school video just didn’t seem to be present. His best game was the loss to Dayton in the NCAA tournament, when he hit 4 of 5 shots and scored 8 points in 22 minutes.
He started last year in a similar mode, scoring only 55 points in the first 8 games and going 3 for 21 beyond the arc. Then he started to assert himself with 18 points, 8 rebounds and 5 assists vs. highly ranked Villanova. The early struggles of Roberson and the absence of McCullough forced him into the small forward role for which he is best suited at this level. It also forced him into a leadership role, which meant he had to produce. He had 24 points, 6 rebounds and 8 assists vs. Long Beach State. But he really got going in the ACC schedule, when the going got tougher. He averaged 15 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists in conference play. He had 14 points and 10 rebounds vs. Georgia Tech, 17 points, 11 rebs and 7 assists vs. Wake Forest and 17/8/4 vs. Boston College. But his best stretch was against North Carolina, Virginia Tech, Pittsburgh, Boston College, that first Duke game and then Louisville. In those six games, with the completion as good as it gets, he scored 123 points, grabbed 28 rebounds, passed for 29 assists, stole 15 balls and had 3 blocks. He shot 59% from the field and 51% from the arc. He was playing like an All-American and JB actually called him the best player in the conference at one point.
After that, he faded a bit, probably because he was playing above himself and because he was playing 40 minutes a game due to our lack of depth. Now he comes into this year as the closest thing to a star player we’ve got. It seems strange to me that he’s now switching back to point guard. We have a returning point guard, in Kaleb Joseph. Franklin Howard can surely play the point. Even Trevor Cooney could give us some minutes there. Gbinije probably wants to play as a guard because that’s what he’ll be on the next level. But the small forward positon puts him in the best positon to do all the various things he can do for the team: score inside and out, rebound, play defense, handle the ball and pass the ball.
Mike did play from the backcourt throughout the year. His rebounds fell from 5.7 per 40 minutes to 4.3. but his assists rose from 4.1 to 4.6. His shooting actually improved from 51% from two and 39% from three to 53% and 39%. He became very good at driving to the basket off of high ball screens. He was our most potent scorer at 18.4 per 40 minutes, with a high of 34 in his last game at the Dome. He had a poor post-season, mostly because his three point shooting fell off to 32%. But he was the tar of this team, finally becoming the player we saw in those impressive high school tapes. He will be missed, but not forgotten.
TREVOR COONEY began his career with a reputation as an unreal outside shooter. Dion Waiters was on the team at that time and said “He never misses”. And Dion never talks about anything except Dion. Gerry McNamara called him the greatest shooter he’d seen. But Cooney has missed, and often, 538 times in his first three years. He’s hit 37% of his shots overall and 33% from the arc, disappointing numbers for a “shooting” guard. He shoots but often, he doesn’t score. He’s had his moments, like that 33 point game against Notre Dame two year ago, 28 against North Carolina last year, (on 10 for 26 shooting), but he’s also had too many single digit games, 9 last year, including a shut out vs. Pitt and a 2 point game against St. John’s and a 3 point game against Louisville.
He can shoot but isn’t a great shooter. We’ve certainly had better. But his big problem is that he hasn’t had much help from outside. Opposing coaches can just point to him and say “make sure you cover that guy” and he gets taken out of the game. Either he can’t get shots off or they are so hurried they become very low percentage plays. In the LeMoyne game, we had plenty of shooters: his teammates made 12 threes. But he made none in three attempts.
The thing is, he can be more than just a gunner. He can handle the ball. He can drive to the basket to score, (he was 3 for 3 inside the arc against the Dolphins). He gives us good height in the backcourt at 6-4 and is an underrated defender with good hands and anticipation. (He’s got 148 steals in his career.) What he is is a good all-around guard miscast in the role of an outside gunner. He and the team will be better off if he just plays the game and takes advantage of the opportunities that come to him. He will certainly have the chance to do that with the players around him.
He again struggled most of the season shooting a very average 33% from three in conference games, the bottom being hit with consecutive games against NC State and Pittsburgh in which he hit only 2 of 17 shots, including 1 for 13 three pointers. He did try to drive to the basket to score more but had problems finishing, shooting just under 30% in two point shots in conference play. He never did develop a third option: a pull up jumper. As the season went on he became the center of a firestorm of criticism and an equally impassioned counter-attack from his defenders. Then he proceeded to have an excellent post season, increasing his nets point average from 7.3 in the conference season to 14.5. A big key was that the percentage of his shots that were three pointers dropped from 64% to 44%. He also started finshing better, hitting 41% of his two pointers and only took the best three point shots, (with the defense knowing he could drive by them to score so they had to back off), and hit 48%. If he’d been playing that way all along, he would have been a very popular plsyer.
KALEB JOSEPH was a victim of Tyler Ennis, as well as Michael Carter-Williams, Scoop Jardine, Brandon Triche and Johnny Flynn. We’d had a run of good point guards, one after the other, including two who were great as freshman, (Flynn and Ennis). Joseph looked like he could be another one, from his high school highlights.
But those fancy dribbles, fancy passes, fancy shots and fancy dunks were few and far between last year. Joseph shot 38% from the field and only 7 for 35 from the arc. He averaged 5.6 assists and 3.4 turnovers per 40 minutes, not an ideal ratio, (you want at least 2-1). They don’t keep track of this but he must have set a blocked shot record- a record for the number of his shots that were blocked. He had the same problem as DaJuan Coleman, even if he wasn’t a big guy: the moves that were working in high school weren’t working at this level. Also he wasn’t a big enough guy: 6-3 165. Despite his athleticism, JB said more than once that he had to get stronger to deal with the guys he had to go against, on offense and defense. And his defense probably hurt us more than his offense. We were not stopping the ball at the top of the key the way we need to to get the zone really working well and most of the penetration was coming from Joseph’s man.
This year, he’s up to 180 and a year under JB’s and has a Gerry McNamara’s tutelage. I think he will benefit even more if he realizes what Trevor Cooney must also realize: that he doesn’t have to do it alone. He’ll be surrounded by players who can handle the ball, pass it and shoot it. He doesn’t have to force everything. He doesn’t need the ball all the time. He can just look for opportunities to do the things he knows he can do. He’ll be a better player for it.
Kaleb got off to a fine start. In the two exhibition games he scored 19 points on 8 for 17 shooting in 31 minutes of play. He was 5 for 9 from three point range and had 5 assists to 2 turnovers. Then in the opener against Lehigh he scored 8 points on 2 for 3 from three point range in 14 minutes. His year just deflated like a balloon with a hole in it after that. He never hit another three pointer, scored 8 points the rest of the year. he played exactly 10 minutes in conference games and none in the post season. He’d obviously totally lost the confidence of his coach. I don’t know what happened here but Kaleb elected to transfer after the season ended.
When Thomas Bryant decided not to do what Mommy wanted, MALACHI RICHARDSON became our highest-rated recruit. He’s a 6-6 205 swing man with a reputation as a shooter but who also has all-around skills. I saw him in some all-star games and was not impressed. But I rarely am impressed with SU recruits in such games. Our guys tend to be team players who are not into the flashy stuff that dominates such games. They often tend to fade into the background in the dunk contests these games become but equally often turn out to be good players for SU. That said, Richardson didn’t shoot the ball well in those games. He didn’t look much different in the brief “Midnight Madness” scrimmage. But he did have a productive game against LeMoyne: 13 points on 5 for 12 shooting, (3 for 8 from the arc), 7 rebounds, (all on the defensive end) and assist and a steal. He handled the ball a lot and looked as if he could also share the point guard duties. He helped us to run as much as we did in that game. He’s another one who will benefit from the fact that he doesn’t have to be the one to do everything: We are going to do it, not I am going to do it. That’s the key.
Richardson looked very flashy indeed at times this season. He also looked awful at times. He was our team’s biggest “Dow Joneser, a Dick Vitale term for players whose quality of play varies wildly. This is usually about shooting that was the big factor here, as well. “Malware” scored in double figures in our first six games and then went into a deep slump that made it seem as if he had malware. In our first losses, to Wisconsin and Georgetown, he was 4 for 19 and 1 for 12 from the arc. Then in our worst game, a loss to a pathetic St. John’s team, he was 4 for 20 and an agonizing 0 for 11 from outside. Then he went off on another hot streak, scoring 16 points a game over a 12 game conference stretch. Then he went 3/19 and 2/12 in losses to Louisville and Pittsburgh. He was wildly up and down in the post season, leading the team with 21 points against Dayton, then missing 23 of his next 27 shots before he caught fire in the rally against Virginia, scoring 21 second half points in that amazing win. He continued scoring well in the nationalsemi0final vs. North Carolina, scoring 17 points. This last burst had led to speculation that Richardson might consider jumping to the NBA and he refused to commit himself to staying. He obviously needs to get physically stronger and more consistent to be an NBA prospect but logical things like that rarely play any role in the decision-making. If he stays, he’ll move into the back court into Cooney’s spot, where he would represent an upgrade.
FRANKLIN HOWARD was the most unheralded of our recruits but it was his highlight tape I liked best. He just seemed to have an instinct for the game, knowing where people were and what the openings were. Like all our guards, he has all-around skills but he looked the best at penetrating and breaking down a defense. I didn’t see him in the all-star games but at Midnight Madness and against LeMoyne I saw exactly what I saw in the You-Tube films. This guy is going to be a real good one.
He’s another big guard: listed at 6-4 190 on the SU athletic site but I’ve seen him listed as 6-5. The two great assets of our backcourt and of our team are the versatility of our guards and their size. We can surround the zone with guys ranking from 6-3 to 6-7, all waving their arms, (we can also start a 6-9, 6-9, 6-8 front line to go with it. This could be almost impenetrable- if we also use our feet and prevent penetration. That can be a problem with young players and it could be a problem here. But college basketball is all about the backcourt and we seem really blessed with size, talent and depth in that area.
One of our problems is that despite our size out front, we really didn’t do a good job of blocking penetration into the paint, which exposed our weak underbelly. We’ll have an even bigger line-up next year but we’ll still needed to prevent penetration to be effective. Frank Howard played very little early in the year but started to show up in the rotation towards the end of the year. He didn’t put up big numbers and JB cringed whenever frank shot the ball but the offense seemed to run more smoothly with him in there. He had easily the top assist average per 40 minutes on the team, 6.7. He was very creative with his passing, being enamored of one-handed passes, which also made JB cringe. Burt he was the best on the team at penetrating the defense and setting his teammates up for passes. This should give him the isnde track on the point guard battle next year, although our top recruit, 6-5 Tyus Battle, wants to play the point, fro basically the same reason Gbinije did: that’s what he’ll probably be in the pros. I see a rotation of Howard, Richardson and Battle in the backcourt next year and those are three long, talented players.
What I think we have is a three guard look, with some very big guards. Everything will be done by committee. Any of the guys can bring it up, call out the offense, probe the defense, get the ball moving or make a move or a shot themselves. We will challenge the other team to cover them all. People have compared it to the Jay Wright Villanova teams and that’s a good comparison but I also think we’ll be a throwback to the SU teams in the early days of the Carrier Dome when this community really fell in love with SU basketball: the teams that lacked a strong inside presence but had plenty of shooters and ball-handlers, pressed, (at least in the half court), and got out and ran and ran, scoring a bunch of points and thrilling the fans, even if they usually- but not always came up short against the teams with the “aircraft carriers” underneath. We put up 70 shots and scored 97 points against Lemoyne and JB said the pace of the game “was not tremendously fast”. We used to get free fries if we scored 100. These days we get free tacos if we score 75. Put those fries in the broiler!
Well, it was another year of grinding, half-court basketball. We had to resort to the press a couple of times in the post season and did very well with it, although JB tried to down-play it. He doesn’t believe in the press and doesn’t want to be pressured into using it. He said that we don’t have the kind of players who are good in the press, which is nonsense. We have long, quick athletic players and next year we will have a 7-2 shot-blocker to guard the basket. But we will still only press if we are down by double figures late in the game. Ironically a Jay Wright Villanova team won the national championship. And in the title game, both teams used at least mild full court pressure on nearly every possession. Tacos got reduced to 70 points, a mark we reached only 17 times in 37 games. We never got fries.
CENTERS
It’s been a long road for DAJUAN COLEMAN. When he was in high school at Jamesville-DeWitt, he was one of two big stories in local basketball. The other was Breanna Stewart at Cicero-North Syracuse. Both were McDonald’s All-Americans and people wondered who would go on to have the greater college career. Breanna went to UCONN and became the latest superstar in their women’s basketball dynasty, winning three national championships and being national player of the year twice- so far. DaIuan, like a lot of high school big men, struggled to adjust to the college game, where suddenly he’s not that much bigger than everybody else and the moves he used in high school weren’t working. A particular problem was that he tended to hold the ball low so the opposition could get at it. There’s no point in being 6-9 if you are going to hold the ball at 5-9. But he was a big strong guy, (280 pounds) and rebounded well. He had some passing skills and could score facing the basket.
Then the injuries piled up on him. He ripped up his left knee twice in two seasons and wound up going through something called OATS surgery. SB Nation: That procedure addresses cartilage damage by scooping out an area of healthy bone and cartilage from a non-weight bearing part of the former McDonald All-American's leg and inserted it into a small hole of cartilage damage in his knee.” (I didn’t know “scoop out“ is a medical term.) Coleman went on a “juice” diet to reduce his weight from 282 to 258 pounds and take the pressure off his knee, then built himself back up. So he’s spent most of the least two years in rehab, which takes a particular sort of determination. He’s worked hard in practice and reports from there and pick-up games have been promising. But it’s hard to learn how to play at this level without playing actual games. In his development, he’s more of a freshman or early sophomore. But we need him to come on like his fellow Mickey Dee, Rakeem Christmas, did last year.
For that his knee has to hold up for 30+ games and his skill development has to accelerate. In the first exhibition against LeMoyne, (a team with the sort of size he faced in high school), the game looked like it was going too fast for him in the first half. He picked it up in the second half and wound up with 15 points and 7 rebounds on 7 for 9 shooting. In that second half he held the ball high and made some good moves to the basket. In the first half he was still holding it low. The big concern is that he looked lost on defense the whole game. He’s not a shot-blocker, so he has to learn to use his body to prevent drives to the basket, the way Arinze Onuaku learned to do. He seemed to have no clue how to do this. We will see plenty of good big men in the ACC and we aren’t going to be able to cover them unless things improve rapidly.
DaJuan continue4d to struggle for much of the season. He came on strong in the post season, increasing his net points from 8.2 in conference play to 19.1 in the post season. The big differences were more rebounds, (9.3 per 40 mintues to 12.7) and fewer fouls ((7.3 to 3.9).He’s still not very mobile and can’t jump and he still bobbles the ball from time to time but he’s learning how to play the game and could be primed for a big senior season. I wouldn’t compare it to Rakeem Christmas’s big senior season or even Rick Jackson’s. Arinze Onoahu is the best comparison, although DaJuan still has a ways to go to be as good as A. O. became. It will be interesting to see how he is used because a center i=with exactly the opposite abilities, (7-2 shot-blocker Paschal Chukwu), will be splitting time with him.
CHINOSO OBOKOH is another NCAA victim. Like Moustapha DIange and Baye Moussa Keita, he’s part of our “African pipeline” of big men. He’s from Nigeria and went to high school in Rochester, (a teammate of Thomas Bryant). From an article on Syracuse.com: “After occupying his Rochester summers with classes to supplement his Bishop Kearney education, after sitting at the kitchen table for hours at a time trying to make sense of schoolwork in his secondary language, after securing the grades and the standardized test score to qualify him to play basketball as a college freshman, Obokoh learned the NCAA required him to sit out his first season at Syracuse. The organization that oversees college sports considered his Nigerian school transcripts and ruled that Obokoh had spent an additional year at Bishop Kearney, thus providing him with a competitive advantage. NCAA spokeswoman Emily James described on-time graduation and subsequent enrollment in college as an "important NCAA safeguard." "Students who spend additional years in high school or delay enrollment in college are typically older," she wrote in an email, "and have additional time to develop their athletic skills relative to their peer group."
So the NCAA denied Chinoso a year of eligibility so he wouldn’t have an advantage over his peers in college. And yet his whole problem is that he hasn’t played the game as much as the American players who grew up with it. He’s thus in his junior season, even though he is just learning the game. He’s listed at 6-9 215 but looks thicker and stronger than that. He’s got an impressive v-shaped upper torso with muscular arms. He didn’t play all that poorly in limited action against lesser opposition last year. In 89 minutes, (a little over two full games) he had 10 points and 21 rebounds. Unfortunately he also committed 19 fouls, meaning that he was unable to play very long in games even if we wanted to.
In the LeMoyne game, he looked as lost on defense as Coleman did. He played 11minutes and never scored or grabbed a rebound. We are a “donut” team but on defense, rather than offense. It’s likely to be a problem all season.
It was for much of the season until Coleman improved toward the end of the year and Boeheim used Lydon at center as well with his shot-blocking abilities. Chinoso did not contribute to the improvement, except perhaps in practice. He played only 67 minutes all season, none after February 11th, and transferred out.
FORWARDS
Here come the Tylers. TYLER ROBERSON is a wiry but strong 6-8 226. His form is good, physically and terms of how he plays. His whole problem has been that he seems rather mechanical and has tended to be hesitant to shoot. The other team lets him free at any spot outside the paint but his lack of confidence in his shot produced miss after miss. His whole game has been about going after the ball and making follow-shots. He’s done very well at that. Ask Duke. He had 19 points and 10 rebounds in the Dome and 16 and 9 in Cameron. Ask NC State against whom he had 16/12 in our final game. If he could ever learn to relax and use his good form to make that 12 footer they are always giving him, he could be quite a player. Even if he doesn’t he’ll be a key player on the team.
Roberson got better as the season went along but there were steps backward as well as forward. He gave up on the 12 footer and just concentrated on getting the ball. She could score when he did but not when he didn’t. Mike Hopkins referred to him as “Turned on Robey” when he played aggressively. Jim Boeheim had some other words for him when he disappeared in games. But he became a consistent contributor down the stretch. He again terrorized Duke with 14 points and 20 rebounds. His net points went from 12.8 in the rpe-season to 15.8 in conference play to 18.6 in the post season. He’s been described as a collegiate Dennis Rodman and that at least describes his role. He had at least 8 rebounds in every post season game, with a high of 18 vs. Dayton. One of our recruits is 6-8 Matthew Moyer, a top 50 type who is supposed to be a good all-round forward. I think his primary role next year will be to push Roberson into being “Turned-on Robie” more often.
TYLER LYDON was supposed to be a skinny outside shooter. Then he was supposed to be a do-it-all NBA prospect. In the LeMoyne game he looked like a good college player. Shooting was his biggest problem: He was 1 for 5, 0 for 4 from three. But he did score 6 points and pull down six rebounds in 22 minutes. Unlike Coleman and Okoboh, he is a shot blocker, getting 3 of them vs. the smaller Dolphins. He’s our third string center by default. What impressed me the most was simply that he looked like he knew what was going on out there- where the ball was, what people were doing. He had 3 assists. He didn’t look skinny to me. He looked more like 220 than 200. He’ll be a good player for us this year. Whether he’ll be a star player this year, I don’t know. We may not need him to be one. “Good” will do for now.
And he was good, often very good. He found his shot, (41.7% from three point range), and showed he could pass and dribble-drive for scores. He was surprisingly effective at center, blocking 22 shots in 6 post season games. He was probably the MVP of our victory in the Battle for Atlantis. Next year he will be a star. He’ll be playing his natural position of forward, with the skills of a power forward and small forward. He has a game similar to Wes Johnson’s in that he can score inside and out and could still get plenty of blocks on “help” defense. It’s only a matter of how long we can keep the guy. He says he’s coming back and hopefully he doesn’t change his mind.
GUARDS
I’m going to list the rest of the players under “guard” because, although several of them are basically “swing men” most of them will see at least sometime in the backcourt. I suspect our plan will be a Villanova-type three guard offense, or even four in some situations.
MICHAEL GBINIJE Mike’s 6-7 200 and a natural small forward in college. But when he came to Syracuse, Jim Boeheim geared him to be a point guard because he needed depth at that positon. It may have been because he was in an unfamiliar positon. It may have been because he was with a new team with some veterans on it and he was deferring to them. But he didn’t have much of a sophomore season. He shot only 38% from the field. He could fill a stat sheet. Per 40 minutes he averaged 9 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists 2 steals and a block. But the great skills he showed in that high school video just didn’t seem to be present. His best game was the loss to Dayton in the NCAA tournament, when he hit 4 of 5 shots and scored 8 points in 22 minutes.
He started last year in a similar mode, scoring only 55 points in the first 8 games and going 3 for 21 beyond the arc. Then he started to assert himself with 18 points, 8 rebounds and 5 assists vs. highly ranked Villanova. The early struggles of Roberson and the absence of McCullough forced him into the small forward role for which he is best suited at this level. It also forced him into a leadership role, which meant he had to produce. He had 24 points, 6 rebounds and 8 assists vs. Long Beach State. But he really got going in the ACC schedule, when the going got tougher. He averaged 15 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists in conference play. He had 14 points and 10 rebounds vs. Georgia Tech, 17 points, 11 rebs and 7 assists vs. Wake Forest and 17/8/4 vs. Boston College. But his best stretch was against North Carolina, Virginia Tech, Pittsburgh, Boston College, that first Duke game and then Louisville. In those six games, with the completion as good as it gets, he scored 123 points, grabbed 28 rebounds, passed for 29 assists, stole 15 balls and had 3 blocks. He shot 59% from the field and 51% from the arc. He was playing like an All-American and JB actually called him the best player in the conference at one point.
After that, he faded a bit, probably because he was playing above himself and because he was playing 40 minutes a game due to our lack of depth. Now he comes into this year as the closest thing to a star player we’ve got. It seems strange to me that he’s now switching back to point guard. We have a returning point guard, in Kaleb Joseph. Franklin Howard can surely play the point. Even Trevor Cooney could give us some minutes there. Gbinije probably wants to play as a guard because that’s what he’ll be on the next level. But the small forward positon puts him in the best positon to do all the various things he can do for the team: score inside and out, rebound, play defense, handle the ball and pass the ball.
Mike did play from the backcourt throughout the year. His rebounds fell from 5.7 per 40 minutes to 4.3. but his assists rose from 4.1 to 4.6. His shooting actually improved from 51% from two and 39% from three to 53% and 39%. He became very good at driving to the basket off of high ball screens. He was our most potent scorer at 18.4 per 40 minutes, with a high of 34 in his last game at the Dome. He had a poor post-season, mostly because his three point shooting fell off to 32%. But he was the tar of this team, finally becoming the player we saw in those impressive high school tapes. He will be missed, but not forgotten.
TREVOR COONEY began his career with a reputation as an unreal outside shooter. Dion Waiters was on the team at that time and said “He never misses”. And Dion never talks about anything except Dion. Gerry McNamara called him the greatest shooter he’d seen. But Cooney has missed, and often, 538 times in his first three years. He’s hit 37% of his shots overall and 33% from the arc, disappointing numbers for a “shooting” guard. He shoots but often, he doesn’t score. He’s had his moments, like that 33 point game against Notre Dame two year ago, 28 against North Carolina last year, (on 10 for 26 shooting), but he’s also had too many single digit games, 9 last year, including a shut out vs. Pitt and a 2 point game against St. John’s and a 3 point game against Louisville.
He can shoot but isn’t a great shooter. We’ve certainly had better. But his big problem is that he hasn’t had much help from outside. Opposing coaches can just point to him and say “make sure you cover that guy” and he gets taken out of the game. Either he can’t get shots off or they are so hurried they become very low percentage plays. In the LeMoyne game, we had plenty of shooters: his teammates made 12 threes. But he made none in three attempts.
The thing is, he can be more than just a gunner. He can handle the ball. He can drive to the basket to score, (he was 3 for 3 inside the arc against the Dolphins). He gives us good height in the backcourt at 6-4 and is an underrated defender with good hands and anticipation. (He’s got 148 steals in his career.) What he is is a good all-around guard miscast in the role of an outside gunner. He and the team will be better off if he just plays the game and takes advantage of the opportunities that come to him. He will certainly have the chance to do that with the players around him.
He again struggled most of the season shooting a very average 33% from three in conference games, the bottom being hit with consecutive games against NC State and Pittsburgh in which he hit only 2 of 17 shots, including 1 for 13 three pointers. He did try to drive to the basket to score more but had problems finishing, shooting just under 30% in two point shots in conference play. He never did develop a third option: a pull up jumper. As the season went on he became the center of a firestorm of criticism and an equally impassioned counter-attack from his defenders. Then he proceeded to have an excellent post season, increasing his nets point average from 7.3 in the conference season to 14.5. A big key was that the percentage of his shots that were three pointers dropped from 64% to 44%. He also started finshing better, hitting 41% of his two pointers and only took the best three point shots, (with the defense knowing he could drive by them to score so they had to back off), and hit 48%. If he’d been playing that way all along, he would have been a very popular plsyer.
KALEB JOSEPH was a victim of Tyler Ennis, as well as Michael Carter-Williams, Scoop Jardine, Brandon Triche and Johnny Flynn. We’d had a run of good point guards, one after the other, including two who were great as freshman, (Flynn and Ennis). Joseph looked like he could be another one, from his high school highlights.
But those fancy dribbles, fancy passes, fancy shots and fancy dunks were few and far between last year. Joseph shot 38% from the field and only 7 for 35 from the arc. He averaged 5.6 assists and 3.4 turnovers per 40 minutes, not an ideal ratio, (you want at least 2-1). They don’t keep track of this but he must have set a blocked shot record- a record for the number of his shots that were blocked. He had the same problem as DaJuan Coleman, even if he wasn’t a big guy: the moves that were working in high school weren’t working at this level. Also he wasn’t a big enough guy: 6-3 165. Despite his athleticism, JB said more than once that he had to get stronger to deal with the guys he had to go against, on offense and defense. And his defense probably hurt us more than his offense. We were not stopping the ball at the top of the key the way we need to to get the zone really working well and most of the penetration was coming from Joseph’s man.
This year, he’s up to 180 and a year under JB’s and has a Gerry McNamara’s tutelage. I think he will benefit even more if he realizes what Trevor Cooney must also realize: that he doesn’t have to do it alone. He’ll be surrounded by players who can handle the ball, pass it and shoot it. He doesn’t have to force everything. He doesn’t need the ball all the time. He can just look for opportunities to do the things he knows he can do. He’ll be a better player for it.
Kaleb got off to a fine start. In the two exhibition games he scored 19 points on 8 for 17 shooting in 31 minutes of play. He was 5 for 9 from three point range and had 5 assists to 2 turnovers. Then in the opener against Lehigh he scored 8 points on 2 for 3 from three point range in 14 minutes. His year just deflated like a balloon with a hole in it after that. He never hit another three pointer, scored 8 points the rest of the year. he played exactly 10 minutes in conference games and none in the post season. He’d obviously totally lost the confidence of his coach. I don’t know what happened here but Kaleb elected to transfer after the season ended.
When Thomas Bryant decided not to do what Mommy wanted, MALACHI RICHARDSON became our highest-rated recruit. He’s a 6-6 205 swing man with a reputation as a shooter but who also has all-around skills. I saw him in some all-star games and was not impressed. But I rarely am impressed with SU recruits in such games. Our guys tend to be team players who are not into the flashy stuff that dominates such games. They often tend to fade into the background in the dunk contests these games become but equally often turn out to be good players for SU. That said, Richardson didn’t shoot the ball well in those games. He didn’t look much different in the brief “Midnight Madness” scrimmage. But he did have a productive game against LeMoyne: 13 points on 5 for 12 shooting, (3 for 8 from the arc), 7 rebounds, (all on the defensive end) and assist and a steal. He handled the ball a lot and looked as if he could also share the point guard duties. He helped us to run as much as we did in that game. He’s another one who will benefit from the fact that he doesn’t have to be the one to do everything: We are going to do it, not I am going to do it. That’s the key.
Richardson looked very flashy indeed at times this season. He also looked awful at times. He was our team’s biggest “Dow Joneser, a Dick Vitale term for players whose quality of play varies wildly. This is usually about shooting that was the big factor here, as well. “Malware” scored in double figures in our first six games and then went into a deep slump that made it seem as if he had malware. In our first losses, to Wisconsin and Georgetown, he was 4 for 19 and 1 for 12 from the arc. Then in our worst game, a loss to a pathetic St. John’s team, he was 4 for 20 and an agonizing 0 for 11 from outside. Then he went off on another hot streak, scoring 16 points a game over a 12 game conference stretch. Then he went 3/19 and 2/12 in losses to Louisville and Pittsburgh. He was wildly up and down in the post season, leading the team with 21 points against Dayton, then missing 23 of his next 27 shots before he caught fire in the rally against Virginia, scoring 21 second half points in that amazing win. He continued scoring well in the nationalsemi0final vs. North Carolina, scoring 17 points. This last burst had led to speculation that Richardson might consider jumping to the NBA and he refused to commit himself to staying. He obviously needs to get physically stronger and more consistent to be an NBA prospect but logical things like that rarely play any role in the decision-making. If he stays, he’ll move into the back court into Cooney’s spot, where he would represent an upgrade.
FRANKLIN HOWARD was the most unheralded of our recruits but it was his highlight tape I liked best. He just seemed to have an instinct for the game, knowing where people were and what the openings were. Like all our guards, he has all-around skills but he looked the best at penetrating and breaking down a defense. I didn’t see him in the all-star games but at Midnight Madness and against LeMoyne I saw exactly what I saw in the You-Tube films. This guy is going to be a real good one.
He’s another big guard: listed at 6-4 190 on the SU athletic site but I’ve seen him listed as 6-5. The two great assets of our backcourt and of our team are the versatility of our guards and their size. We can surround the zone with guys ranking from 6-3 to 6-7, all waving their arms, (we can also start a 6-9, 6-9, 6-8 front line to go with it. This could be almost impenetrable- if we also use our feet and prevent penetration. That can be a problem with young players and it could be a problem here. But college basketball is all about the backcourt and we seem really blessed with size, talent and depth in that area.
One of our problems is that despite our size out front, we really didn’t do a good job of blocking penetration into the paint, which exposed our weak underbelly. We’ll have an even bigger line-up next year but we’ll still needed to prevent penetration to be effective. Frank Howard played very little early in the year but started to show up in the rotation towards the end of the year. He didn’t put up big numbers and JB cringed whenever frank shot the ball but the offense seemed to run more smoothly with him in there. He had easily the top assist average per 40 minutes on the team, 6.7. He was very creative with his passing, being enamored of one-handed passes, which also made JB cringe. Burt he was the best on the team at penetrating the defense and setting his teammates up for passes. This should give him the isnde track on the point guard battle next year, although our top recruit, 6-5 Tyus Battle, wants to play the point, fro basically the same reason Gbinije did: that’s what he’ll probably be in the pros. I see a rotation of Howard, Richardson and Battle in the backcourt next year and those are three long, talented players.
What I think we have is a three guard look, with some very big guards. Everything will be done by committee. Any of the guys can bring it up, call out the offense, probe the defense, get the ball moving or make a move or a shot themselves. We will challenge the other team to cover them all. People have compared it to the Jay Wright Villanova teams and that’s a good comparison but I also think we’ll be a throwback to the SU teams in the early days of the Carrier Dome when this community really fell in love with SU basketball: the teams that lacked a strong inside presence but had plenty of shooters and ball-handlers, pressed, (at least in the half court), and got out and ran and ran, scoring a bunch of points and thrilling the fans, even if they usually- but not always came up short against the teams with the “aircraft carriers” underneath. We put up 70 shots and scored 97 points against Lemoyne and JB said the pace of the game “was not tremendously fast”. We used to get free fries if we scored 100. These days we get free tacos if we score 75. Put those fries in the broiler!
Well, it was another year of grinding, half-court basketball. We had to resort to the press a couple of times in the post season and did very well with it, although JB tried to down-play it. He doesn’t believe in the press and doesn’t want to be pressured into using it. He said that we don’t have the kind of players who are good in the press, which is nonsense. We have long, quick athletic players and next year we will have a 7-2 shot-blocker to guard the basket. But we will still only press if we are down by double figures late in the game. Ironically a Jay Wright Villanova team won the national championship. And in the title game, both teams used at least mild full court pressure on nearly every possession. Tacos got reduced to 70 points, a mark we reached only 17 times in 37 games. We never got fries.
