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I don't think anyone will argue when I say that even though SU was better at the end of the regular season than the beginning, they still weren't anywhere near as good as they are now.
SU took a huge step forward after that week off between the end of the regular season and the beginning of the ACC tournament, then, a second huge step forward during the week off between the end of the ACC tournament and the beginning of the NCAA tournament.
This team will eventually reach its ceiling, but I don't think they are quite there yet. I believe there is a decent chance that the SU team that plays Houston will be noticably better than the one that played West Virginia. So I want to take a look at the two previous week long breaks and dissect what changed during that time, then try to predict what changes we might see after this week off.
End of regular season to ACC tournament week:
The elephant in the room ... maybe you noticed Jim Boehehim has a son who is playing quite well? I'm sure you've heard all the accolaids and read all the numbers, but I'm going to try to provide a new perspective anyway ...
In 02/03, future Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony came to Syracuse and played the greatest season of basketball any freshman had ever played up to that point. He ushered in an era of superstar one and done prospects that we are still living in now almost twenty years later. The story of college basketball cannot possibly be told without mentioning his name.
In the Big East tournament he scored 29 points. In the ACC tournament Buddy scored 58
In the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament he scored 30 points. Buddy scored 55.
Buddy has a LONG way to go to be compared with Melo, and I'm not suggesting otherwise, but to be nearly doubling up his numbers going into the half way point of this tournament is impressive as hell.
In our last regular season game Buddy scored 17 points against Clemson on 6-15 shooting. A good game by mortal standards against one of the best defenses in the country, but nothing like what is happening now. The important thing to note here, is that this development is so much more than just Buddy getting hot from 3. The whole team has accepted him as the star of the show and is working extremely hard to get him good looks, knowing that if they do he will bury them. Its the team nature of Buddy's output that is the key to it being long lasting rather than a flash in the pan.
Our improvement goes beyond Buddy though. The ACC tournament is when Braswell cemented his spot as the #1 small forward in the rotation (no need to worry about who starts when Braswell is getting 30 minuts a game). He's been on this team for 3 years and understands the defense better than anyone. He's long, he has hops, and because of that he improves us defensively in a big way. The thing that has impressed me most is his rebounding. Early in the year he was being bullied down low by mid-major back ups in garbage time. And now, while you're not going to confuse him with Dennis Rodman, he held his own against WV, the #5 rebounding team in the country.
Back to the offensive side of the ball, I want to talk again about the guy shooting 54% from beyond the arc in ACC and NCAA tournament games ... nope, not Buddy ... that's Braswell's percentage. He hangs out beyond the 3 point line, stretching the D, and he's so tall and long that if you help off him, you can't recover enough to bother him. He's been automatic. Any other year and his shooting would be the highlight of our tournament run. For obvious reasons Buddy has overshadowed him.
Acc tournament to NCAA tournament week:
In the ACC tournament I saw a very good Syracuse team which had one major weakness. The PG position. Kadary's knee hurt so much he could barely run up and down the court and Girard was playing terrible. Even if the other 4 guys are playing great (which they were) you have a rather limited ceiling playing 5 on 4.
I was of the opinion going into the tournament that anybody predicing how SU would do without knowing Kadary's health was just guessing, so I was pleasantly surprised to see Kadary come in against San Diego St. and move much better. But the funny thing is, it didnt end up mattering that much. The real revelation was Joe Girard. He's shooting 44% from 3 in the two tournament games, and some of those are DEEP. Its one thing to have Buddy hitting 3's from the logo, a defense can handle that. Its quite another to have both Buddy and Joe hitting 3's from the logo. That's an absolute back bracker. It makes it so difficult to apply any kind of help defense anywhere. For NBA fans, Golden State over the last 3 years has taught this lesson better than I ever could. When just Steph Curry plays they are a below average NBA team, when both Steph and Klay play they are elite. The difference between having 1 great deep shooter and 2 is a very big difference indeed.
If you've noticed Braswell has started scoring on back cuts, and Dolezaj, while always a good passer, is starting to look like Magic Johnson out there. Thank Joe and Buddy for that. They are spacing these defneses farther than they were built to be spread.
Joe's rebounding ... I don't think its a fluke. For him to get a lot of rebounds he needs the opposing team to have a lot of bad misses that ricochet back out, but when that happens, he's excellent at grabbing them. He is great at anticipating where they will be, and when there is a scrum he's great at coming out of it with the ball. Did he get that from football? Sometimes I can almost picture him using the skills he leared in fumble drills to come up with long rebounds.
Our defense is even better now than it was in the ACC tournament. I've already talked about Braswell, but not enough people are talking about Guerrier. He played the best defensive game of his career against WV, and his 5 blocks were absolutely the difference between a win and loss. 5 blocks. That's Patrick Ewing/Emeka Okafor territory. Against both SDSU and WV he was all over the court, blocking any path to easy points and really making his presence felt. Its was a big change from even late regular season, and a very very welcome change.
I don't think everyone always gets just how important our forwards are to our defensive scheme, but you can look at how much of the court they cover to see just how important they are. I estimate that of the portion of the court we have to defend while set up in our half court defense, the forwards cover about 70% of it. The other 3 players combined cover 30%. When our defense is playing good like it is, you know both forwards must be playing good defense as well. They are that important.
Sweet 16 week:
So what might change and improve going into our next game?
I think Kadary is a likely candidate. He seemed to be moving so much better in the last two games, and if you noticed, he hit a mid range jump shot in both. This is huge. The elite skill Kadary has is how he plays once he beats his man off the dribble - he's great at finishing, great at finding the open man, and always seems to make the right choice between the two. Unfortunately he almost never finds himself in that position because teams don't have to respect his jump shot. Houston is going to try to crowd us and make it hard to hit shots, Kadary's skill set is going to be required. Also, while Kadary was fine defensively in the last two games he wasn't the elite defensive force he is capable of being. That could change too.
Another likely candidate is Guerrier. I thought he was set up to have a great offensive game against WV. And while 12 points on 5-9 shooting is far from bad (especially considering how much effort he put in on the defensive side of the ball) opportunities were there for him to do much more damange than he was able to do. It seemed like West Virginia was able to speed him up just enough to make him uncomfortable. After a week of healing and practice, Guerrier will get another chance to shine against a Houston team who is going to guard him with someone smaller who is not likely to see much help in the form of double teams. Lets see what Guerrier can do.
The last guy is Edwards. At this point every time he steps on the court might be the time another piece of the puzzle falls into place for him. His last 4 games were very interesting. A great performance agaisnst NCST, a terrible performance against Virginia. A great performance against SDST, and a terrible performance against WV. We obviously want him to find more consistency. Phantom foul calls can mess with even a veteran center, so I'm willing to give him a break on the WV game where he got a couple foul calls that were rediculous, but he really got pushed around on the boards in that game. The thing I worry most about with Edwards is his hands. Houston will come at him hard. Will he be able to hang on to the ball? If he can, he will be a valuable piece in this game (playing Edwards, Dolezaj, and Guerrier together offers us great height for rebounding and forces Houston to try to guard Guerrier with a 6'5 player which is to our advantage). If he can't grab rebounds he won't be able to play much. He's had a week to work on it.
SU took a huge step forward after that week off between the end of the regular season and the beginning of the ACC tournament, then, a second huge step forward during the week off between the end of the ACC tournament and the beginning of the NCAA tournament.
This team will eventually reach its ceiling, but I don't think they are quite there yet. I believe there is a decent chance that the SU team that plays Houston will be noticably better than the one that played West Virginia. So I want to take a look at the two previous week long breaks and dissect what changed during that time, then try to predict what changes we might see after this week off.
End of regular season to ACC tournament week:
The elephant in the room ... maybe you noticed Jim Boehehim has a son who is playing quite well? I'm sure you've heard all the accolaids and read all the numbers, but I'm going to try to provide a new perspective anyway ...
In 02/03, future Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony came to Syracuse and played the greatest season of basketball any freshman had ever played up to that point. He ushered in an era of superstar one and done prospects that we are still living in now almost twenty years later. The story of college basketball cannot possibly be told without mentioning his name.
In the Big East tournament he scored 29 points. In the ACC tournament Buddy scored 58
In the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament he scored 30 points. Buddy scored 55.
Buddy has a LONG way to go to be compared with Melo, and I'm not suggesting otherwise, but to be nearly doubling up his numbers going into the half way point of this tournament is impressive as hell.
In our last regular season game Buddy scored 17 points against Clemson on 6-15 shooting. A good game by mortal standards against one of the best defenses in the country, but nothing like what is happening now. The important thing to note here, is that this development is so much more than just Buddy getting hot from 3. The whole team has accepted him as the star of the show and is working extremely hard to get him good looks, knowing that if they do he will bury them. Its the team nature of Buddy's output that is the key to it being long lasting rather than a flash in the pan.
Our improvement goes beyond Buddy though. The ACC tournament is when Braswell cemented his spot as the #1 small forward in the rotation (no need to worry about who starts when Braswell is getting 30 minuts a game). He's been on this team for 3 years and understands the defense better than anyone. He's long, he has hops, and because of that he improves us defensively in a big way. The thing that has impressed me most is his rebounding. Early in the year he was being bullied down low by mid-major back ups in garbage time. And now, while you're not going to confuse him with Dennis Rodman, he held his own against WV, the #5 rebounding team in the country.
Back to the offensive side of the ball, I want to talk again about the guy shooting 54% from beyond the arc in ACC and NCAA tournament games ... nope, not Buddy ... that's Braswell's percentage. He hangs out beyond the 3 point line, stretching the D, and he's so tall and long that if you help off him, you can't recover enough to bother him. He's been automatic. Any other year and his shooting would be the highlight of our tournament run. For obvious reasons Buddy has overshadowed him.
Acc tournament to NCAA tournament week:
In the ACC tournament I saw a very good Syracuse team which had one major weakness. The PG position. Kadary's knee hurt so much he could barely run up and down the court and Girard was playing terrible. Even if the other 4 guys are playing great (which they were) you have a rather limited ceiling playing 5 on 4.
I was of the opinion going into the tournament that anybody predicing how SU would do without knowing Kadary's health was just guessing, so I was pleasantly surprised to see Kadary come in against San Diego St. and move much better. But the funny thing is, it didnt end up mattering that much. The real revelation was Joe Girard. He's shooting 44% from 3 in the two tournament games, and some of those are DEEP. Its one thing to have Buddy hitting 3's from the logo, a defense can handle that. Its quite another to have both Buddy and Joe hitting 3's from the logo. That's an absolute back bracker. It makes it so difficult to apply any kind of help defense anywhere. For NBA fans, Golden State over the last 3 years has taught this lesson better than I ever could. When just Steph Curry plays they are a below average NBA team, when both Steph and Klay play they are elite. The difference between having 1 great deep shooter and 2 is a very big difference indeed.
If you've noticed Braswell has started scoring on back cuts, and Dolezaj, while always a good passer, is starting to look like Magic Johnson out there. Thank Joe and Buddy for that. They are spacing these defneses farther than they were built to be spread.
Joe's rebounding ... I don't think its a fluke. For him to get a lot of rebounds he needs the opposing team to have a lot of bad misses that ricochet back out, but when that happens, he's excellent at grabbing them. He is great at anticipating where they will be, and when there is a scrum he's great at coming out of it with the ball. Did he get that from football? Sometimes I can almost picture him using the skills he leared in fumble drills to come up with long rebounds.
Our defense is even better now than it was in the ACC tournament. I've already talked about Braswell, but not enough people are talking about Guerrier. He played the best defensive game of his career against WV, and his 5 blocks were absolutely the difference between a win and loss. 5 blocks. That's Patrick Ewing/Emeka Okafor territory. Against both SDSU and WV he was all over the court, blocking any path to easy points and really making his presence felt. Its was a big change from even late regular season, and a very very welcome change.
I don't think everyone always gets just how important our forwards are to our defensive scheme, but you can look at how much of the court they cover to see just how important they are. I estimate that of the portion of the court we have to defend while set up in our half court defense, the forwards cover about 70% of it. The other 3 players combined cover 30%. When our defense is playing good like it is, you know both forwards must be playing good defense as well. They are that important.
Sweet 16 week:
So what might change and improve going into our next game?
I think Kadary is a likely candidate. He seemed to be moving so much better in the last two games, and if you noticed, he hit a mid range jump shot in both. This is huge. The elite skill Kadary has is how he plays once he beats his man off the dribble - he's great at finishing, great at finding the open man, and always seems to make the right choice between the two. Unfortunately he almost never finds himself in that position because teams don't have to respect his jump shot. Houston is going to try to crowd us and make it hard to hit shots, Kadary's skill set is going to be required. Also, while Kadary was fine defensively in the last two games he wasn't the elite defensive force he is capable of being. That could change too.
Another likely candidate is Guerrier. I thought he was set up to have a great offensive game against WV. And while 12 points on 5-9 shooting is far from bad (especially considering how much effort he put in on the defensive side of the ball) opportunities were there for him to do much more damange than he was able to do. It seemed like West Virginia was able to speed him up just enough to make him uncomfortable. After a week of healing and practice, Guerrier will get another chance to shine against a Houston team who is going to guard him with someone smaller who is not likely to see much help in the form of double teams. Lets see what Guerrier can do.
The last guy is Edwards. At this point every time he steps on the court might be the time another piece of the puzzle falls into place for him. His last 4 games were very interesting. A great performance agaisnst NCST, a terrible performance against Virginia. A great performance against SDST, and a terrible performance against WV. We obviously want him to find more consistency. Phantom foul calls can mess with even a veteran center, so I'm willing to give him a break on the WV game where he got a couple foul calls that were rediculous, but he really got pushed around on the boards in that game. The thing I worry most about with Edwards is his hands. Houston will come at him hard. Will he be able to hang on to the ball? If he can, he will be a valuable piece in this game (playing Edwards, Dolezaj, and Guerrier together offers us great height for rebounding and forces Houston to try to guard Guerrier with a 6'5 player which is to our advantage). If he can't grab rebounds he won't be able to play much. He's had a week to work on it.
