Why does JB coach differently in Nov/Dec than March?

[orangefan13]

Some thoughts
early in the season...
1.Motion offense works better,
2.the zone is better as teams don't shoot as well and haven't played against it to late in the season
3. m2m defense isn't as good early in the season
4. teams don't know as much about opponents strengths and weaknesses.Nor the weaknesses of opposing go to guys early in the season.

late in the season
1. motion offense doesn't work as well
2. teams have played against zone alittle more and shoot alot better with good looks
3. m2m defense gets better and physical guard defense gets rewarded more.
4.teams learn more about opponents strengths weaknesses and go to guys weaknesses as the season goes along. For instance you guard uk's randle pushing him left, cj you guard pushing him right.
5. Because of #'s 1 and 4 teams are more dependent on their isolation scorers late in the season. And some other teams have had better ones then us through the years.
6. recently jb's freshmen and sophmores have jumped instead of staying another year. I don't blame them but other programs like duke parker coming back, or napier/kemba walker are different stories.
7. recently our bench has been short scorers that will show alot more in march.
8. lack of quick shooters under pressure and centers scoring as of late.

Its a different age of basketball 2 things I think JB should consider
1. having some open practices for the fans 5-6 a year, heck put it on orange all access even ($$$ and the fans would stop questioning the bench, I would pay as a out of towner, and I know others would pay to watch the replay for 3-4 dollars)
2. pre game warmups. I think we should change them. Someone like fair could have benefitted from shooting jumpers from the corners pregame. And someone like Cooney could benefit from spotting up after alittle lateral movement with a hand jumping out at him pregame. Ennis shoot a few dribble pullups pregame. I am not saying wear your self out but atleast get the body and the shots going up from areas the defense could drive you, and players going through the shooting motions they will be going through in game. Instead of basic layup, wide open set 3 point shots, and rebounding drills. Teams scout teams better in this day and age, and you are pushed more to shots the defense gives you then the ones you want to take.

 

[Cowtown]

I agree with this for this season. The team got hot early and won relatively CLOSE games against mediocre competition before those teams started playing better.

SU didin't improve, Coleman goes down, and the bench didn't get utilized enough for whatever reasons.

Not enough offensive skill anyways to make a F4. From shooting, ballhandling, passing. Opposing coaches all saw this as the regression happened.

Being undefeated while moving up the chart brings more and more pressure with each win. It makes you do things you might ordinarily do differently, with substitutions, changes to your O & D. The pressure to keep validating your success keeps building. I had a couple of HS teams to whom something similar happened. I can't imagine what it's like in the national spotlight of Div I.

 

[Cheriehoop]

You're as good as the players pushing you in practice too. If bench/walk-ons challenge players in practice, teams improve. If you need to possess more skills to score in practice, players will develop those skills. I wonder how effective our players were in pushing each other in practice or if matchups were very one-sided.

 

[orangefan13]

imo, Part of the game is gelling at the right time and getting better, teams that try to hold on like this years can hit a rough stretch or look less impressive in march.

Its good to have a guy like mcw, or dion get better as the year goes on. Ennis was headed in that direction he just didn't have the guns around him.

 

[djdan]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I see a lot of teams progress throughout the year and I feel like Syracuse teams rarely get exponentially better. I feel this also has to do with only playing certain players and not allowing younger players to develop. Just a thought.

Um, last year.

 

[orangepassion]

I think we generally hit our peak in November. JB is obviously an excellent coach, but his greatest strength is also his greatest weakness IMO-He plays every game like it's the national championship. As opposed to this, a coach like Izzo will sometimes struggle during the regular season and hit their peak in March.

 

[longislandcuse]

I just have to wonder when multiple people on this board say we're not going anywhere if we rely on CJ to be our main player this year, we play that way for the whole year and the wa-la, the season crashes and burns and were still running an iso-CJ offense and his postseason numbers were brutal.

We finally start running the offense through Ennis at end of games and magically he makes some big plays. Ennis should have been the go to guy all the time once it was established he was a stud and CJ wasn't going to make that leap we hoped he was. Play the offense through him like Florida does with Wilbekin. They have some nice role players, one shooter, similar team to us but he's the guy.

I don't proclaim to know more than JB but I could see how this season would end from my couch when we refused to change up our approach.

Then we let Dayton shorten the game with no apparent adjustments other than JB saying "make shots" at halftime to the sideline reporter? Well, we haven't been making shots aside from FSU and our first round game, maybe try to do something different since shot making is not our forte. It's like me telling my sales team who are incapable of closing to "sell" and then when I get fired because my office has horrible sales numbers I'm like well, I told them to sell but they didn't. Oh well..

If we lose to Florida because we can't make shots, fine, but against a team like Dayton there were things we could have done to overcome bad shooting and still survive and advance ie, not sitting back in a passive zone all game and running the same freakin play where Cooney comes off a screen, then CJ follows him off another screen and then shenanigans ensue or they pass it right back to Ennis with half the shot clock gone and hope he makes a play.

 

[OttoMets]

I remember young Fabricio's freshman year. Pretty sure the fan base thought he got way too much "developmental time" in 2011. And D-Nic was pegged as a wasted scholarship during his first year.

JB is damned if he plays guys before they're ready, and he's damned if he doesn't.

Some of us thought both of those guys suffered because Boeheim was too quick with the hook.

Nichols had his confidence destroyed and our 2004 and 2005 seasons ended early because of it.

From the start of Fab's freshman year, it was apparent that he needed to run his fat ass up and down the court for 30 minutes a night; sitting on the bench wasn't going to solve his problems.

 

[SoBeCuse]

I just have to wonder when multiple people on this board say we're not going anywhere if we rely on CJ to be our main player this year, we play that way for the whole year and the wa-la, the season crashes and burns and were still running an iso-CJ offense and his postseason numbers were brutal.

We finally start running the offense through Ennis at end of games and magically he makes some big plays. Ennis should have been the go to guy all the time once it was established he was a stud and CJ wasn't going to make that leap we hoped he was. Play the offense through him like Florida does with Wilbekin. They have some nice role players, one shooter, similar team to us but he's the guy.

I don't proclaim to know more than JB but I could see how this season would end from my couch when we refused to change up our approach.

Then we let Dayton shorten the game with no apparent adjustments other than JB saying "make shots" at halftime to the sideline reporter? Well, we haven't been making shots aside from FSU and our first round game, maybe try to do something different since shot making is not our forte. It's like me telling my sales team who are incapable of closing to "sell" and then when I get fired because my office has horrible sales numbers I'm like well, I told them to sell but they didn't. Oh well..

Valid points. This season was such a bizarre one. I'm sort of tired of hearing the simply "make shots" defense. One pass and a shot, make it or not, is not high-level offense. Boeheim supposedly watches all this college bball on TV as well. I suspect Boeheim didn't want to overburden Ennis the first 3/4 of the season knowing there was basically zero PG depth. The model wasn't broken yet so nothing was fixed. The next few seasons will be interesting. More high level recruits coming in and supposedly shooters. Hopefully we'll see some improvement at the end of the season, some fundamental ball skills developing, and maybe some tweaks in the zone. I will never forget the play when the Dayton defender looked at Miller, lost the ball as it rolled five feet towards Ennis, and was allowed to go ahead and pick it back up like nothing happened.

 

[OttoMets]

You're as good as the players pushing you in practice too. If bench/walk-ons challenge players in practice, teams improve. If you need to possess more skills to score in practice, players will develop those skills. I wonder how effective our players were in pushing each other in practice or if matchups were very one-sided.

That's a very good point.

I've gotten the sense that criticism of walk-ons is off-limits on this board, but their (limited) game performance has been markedly different in the two years since Resavy and the big kid (Tomazewski?) graduated. Wonder how that shows in practice.

 

[Pat Kelly]

We play November games like they are March. Other teams are working in new guys, working out their rotations. We play the same exact 6 or 7 and make no changes.

Wellllll UConn and Michigan St got a combined 5 bench points yesterday, so I wouldn't say that it needs to be changed.

 

[CU44SE]

Um, last year.

Granted we played well in the postseason, but we lost 5 out of our last 8 games at the end of the season.

 

[CuseFaninVT]

CJ is better conditioned than the average college kid, and the average kid can run up and down the court all day long.

If playing 3-4 minutes less a game would make that much of a difference, CJ better find a park bench and learn how to play chess.

This would be a fantastic argument if CJ was playing basketball against average college kids, but he wasn't. He was playing games against kids who are in similar condition, but don't play as many minutes. Thus their legs aren't as tired (not saying it's a ton - but maybe just enough they hit one more shot than CJ) and their teams are better positioned to win.

 

[CuseFaninVT]

Wellllll UConn and Michigan St got a combined 5 bench points yesterday, so I wouldn't say that it needs to be changed.

You don't always need points from the bench! The bench can also be used to rest the starters for a few minutes here and there so they CAN FINISH THE GAME STRONG!

 

[Pat Kelly]

You don't always need points from the bench! The bench can also be used to rest the starters for a few minutes here and there so they CAN FINISH THE GAME STRONG!

Scoring-wise, our starters weren't even starting the game strong, so I wouldn't be too worried about them finishing.

 

[SoBeCuse]

Wellllll UConn and Michigan St got a combined 5 bench points yesterday, so I wouldn't say that it needs to be changed.

True but they have two potent guards and Daniels who was playing like a lottery pick in the Tourney. Michigan State has five guys who can score all the time. We play 4 sometimes 3 on 5 often.

 

[CuseFaninVT]

Scoring-wise, our starters weren't even starting the game strong, so I wouldn't be too worried about them finishing.

Again, I think that may have been (please note the use of may) overuse and fatigue. That's what we are saying.

 

[Pat Kelly]

Again, I think that may have been (please note the use of may) overuse and fatigue. That's what we are saying.

And to that I would disagree, but you are entitled to your opinion.

 

[Coach Orange]

I offered thoughts on this thread's questions a couple of weeks ago. I figured that I would just link that here rather than typing the same response again:

http://syracusefan.com/threads/is-jab-our-dave-winfield.71952/page-2#post-986524

That said, certain patterns are pretty clear in terms of the program at this point. Some of these patterns allow the program to be as successful as it is, while others limit how successful it can be.

The ones that potentially limit include:

• The lack of recruiting players with sound basketball fundamentals.
• The lack of recruiting players with complimentary offensive skill sets.
• The lack of team development throughout individual seasons.
• The inconsistent player development results.
• The tactical stubbornness.
• The commitment to playing exclusively zone defense (which is also part of the program's success) with the occasional desperate 1-2-1-1 press thrown in.
• The "nepotism" of the coaching staff at this time.

Ultimately, in terms of potential program limitations, it is worth considering that Boeheim has one title in 38 years. This is the same total as coaches like Rollie Massimino, Steve Fisher, Jerry Tarkanian, Nolan Richardson, Jim Harrick, Lute Olson, Tubby Smith, Tom Izzo (more Final Fours than Boeheim), Gary Williams, and John Calipari (more Final Fours than Boeheim). For those who defend Boeheim by using the "Keith Smart" argument, Calipari should likewise be granted the "Mario Chalmers" defense.

Does racking up more victories, many of them in the regular season against the Cornells and Colgates, really make Boeheim a better coach than some of the others listed above?

One could easily contend that Boeheim's championship was earned solely because he had arguably the best college basketball player of the last 20+ years for that magical season. Though no coach wins without good talent, Boeheim detractors could claim that he has not shown the ability to win without the college game's most elite talent--once-in-a-generation talent. This argument would also then explain the once-a-decade visit to the Final Four--transcendent talents don't enter the Melo Center every day.

If one accepts that premise as true, one then has to question how "elite" Boeheim's coaching (especially in terms of player development) really is.

Let me make it clear that I am an admirer of Boeheim's coaching. I certainly can make a list of patterns that have led to the program's current level of success, and why these items should continue to produce similar results. Along with this, I can list the reasons we are lucky as a fans to have Coach Boeheim at the helm. I'll save that list for another post.

However, asking critical questions and identifying areas for improvement are important keys to enhancing success. No one should have a "lifetime pass" from such professional (or personal) development, no matter how many "successes" he or she has on his or her resume.

I would hope that Coach Boeheim encourages these vital development tools behind closed doors with his staff and players in order to improve the likelihood of future tournament success; he certainly doesn't accept critical questions or constructive comments from others well.

The minute Boeheim stops asking the types of questions and making the sorts of observations that many posters here have offered over the last week or so and, more importantly, the minute he stops trying to improve and correct said issues, is the minute I no longer want him as the head coach of the Syracuse Orange.

Would you?

 

[CorduroyG]

I just have to wonder when multiple people on this board say we're not going anywhere if we rely on CJ to be our main player this year, we play that way for the whole year and the wa-la, the season crashes and burns and were still running an iso-CJ offense and his postseason numbers were brutal. We finally start running the offense through Ennis at end of games and magically he makes some big plays. Ennis should have been the go to guy all the time once it was established he was a stud and CJ wasn't going to make that leap we hoped he was. Play the offense through him like Florida does with Wilbekin. They have some nice role players, one shooter, similar team to us but he's the guy. I don't proclaim to know more than JB but I could see how this season would end from my couch when we refused to change up our approach. Then we let Dayton shorten the game with no apparent adjustments other than JB saying "make shots" at halftime to the sideline reporter? Well, we haven't been making shots aside from FSU and our first round game, maybe try to do something different since shot making is not our forte. It's like me telling my sales team who are incapable of closing to "sell" and then when I get fired because my office has horrible sales numbers I'm like well, I told them to sell but they didn't. Oh well.. If we lose to Florida because we can't make shots, fine, but against a team like Dayton there were things we could have done to overcome bad shooting and still survive and advance ie, not sitting back in a passive zone all game and running the same freakin play where Cooney comes off a screen, then CJ follows him off another screen and then shenanigans ensue or they pass it right back to Ennis with half the shot clock gone and hope he makes a play.

Spot on about ennis. I started a thread in mid January "should ennis look to get his sooner", as opposed to waiting till there's 2 minutes left in a 50-50 game. It was obvious to me by mid January ennis was our best player and he needed to take over games a lot earlier. Of course most of the responses were "we're winning that's all that matters, that's not Ennis's game", etc.

This is where jb's loyalty and stubbornness is a problem. He said all year "cj is our go to guy". Why? Cuz he's a senior? Ennis was our best player and could get to the lane just about anytime he wanted, yet we only saw that in the last couple minutes of games.

 

[OrangeXtreme]

You don't always need points from the bench! The bench can also be used to rest the starters for a few minutes here and there so they CAN FINISH THE GAME STRONG!

The other team isn't going to stop scoring while your bench is playing (and not scoring).

If you rest your starters 5-6 minutes each, and the other team outscores you by 12-14 points, it won't matter how strong you finish if you've dug too deep a hole.

 

[SoBeCuse]

I offered thoughts on this thread's questions a couple of weeks ago. I figured that I would just link that here rather than typing the same response again:

http://syracusefan.com/threads/is-jab-our-dave-winfield.71952/page-2#post-986524

That said, certain patterns are pretty clear in terms of the program at this point. Some of these patterns allow the program to be as successful as it is, while others limit how successful it can be.

The ones that potentially limit include:

• The lack of recruiting players with sound basketball fundamentals.
• The lack of recruiting players with complimentary offensive skill sets.
• The lack of team development throughout individual seasons.
• The inconsistent player development results.
• The tactical stubbornness.
• The commitment to playing exclusively zone defense (which is also part of the program's success) with the occasional desperate 1-2-1-1 press thrown in.
• The "nepotism" of the coaching staff at this time.

Ultimately, in terms of potential program limitations, it is worth considering that Boeheim has one title in 38 years. This is the same total as coaches like Rollie Massimino, Steve Fisher, Jerry Tarkanian, Nolan Richardson, Jim Harrick, Lute Olson, Tubby Smith, Tom Izzo (more Final Fours than Boeheim), Gary Williams, and John Calipari (more Final Fours than Boeheim). For those who defend Boeheim by using the "Keith Smart" argument, Calipari should likewise be granted the "Mario Chalmers" defense.

Does racking up more victories, many of them in the regular season against the Cornells and Colgates, really make Boeheim a better coach than some of the others listed above?

One could easily contend that Boeheim's championship was earned solely because he had arguably the best college basketball player of the last 20+ years for that magical season. Though no coach wins without good talent, Boeheim detractors could claim that he has not shown the ability to win without the college game's most elite talent--once-in-a-generation talent. This argument would also then explain the once-a-decade visit to the Final Four--transcendent talents don't enter the Melo Center every day.

If one accepts that premise as true, one then has to question how "elite" Boeheim's coaching (especially in terms of player development) really is.

Let me make it clear that I am an admirer of Boeheim's coaching. I certainly can make a list of patterns that have led to the program's current level of success, and why these items should continue to produce similar results. Along with this, I can list the reasons we are lucky as a fans to have Coach Boeheim at the helm. I'll save that list for another post.

However, asking critical questions and identifying areas for improvement are important keys to enhancing success. No one should have a "lifetime pass" from such professional (or personal) development, no matter how many "successes" he or she has on his or her resume.

I would hope that Coach Boeheim encourages these vital development tools behind closed doors with his staff and players in order to improve the likelihood of future tournament success; he certainly doesn't accept critical questions or constructive comments from others well.

The minute Boeheim stops asking the types of questions and making the sorts of observations that many posters here have offered over the last week or so and, more importantly, the minute he stops trying to improve and correct said issues, is the minute I no longer want him as the head coach of the Syracuse Orange.

Would you?

Bravo, sir.

 

[Guinness]

I offered thoughts on this thread's questions a couple of weeks ago. I figured that I would just link that here rather than typing the same response again:

http://syracusefan.com/threads/is-jab-our-dave-winfield.71952/page-2#post-986524

That said, certain patterns are pretty clear in terms of the program at this point. Some of these patterns allow the program to be as successful as it is, while others limit how successful it can be.

The ones that potentially limit include:

• The lack of recruiting players with sound basketball fundamentals.
• The lack of recruiting players with complimentary offensive skill sets.
• The lack of team development throughout individual seasons.
• The inconsistent player development results.
• The tactical stubbornness.
• The commitment to playing exclusively zone defense (which is also part of the program's success) with the occasional desperate 1-2-1-1 press thrown in.
• The "nepotism" of the coaching staff at this time.

Ultimately, in terms of potential program limitations, it is worth considering that Boeheim has one title in 38 years. This is the same total as coaches like Rollie Massimino, Steve Fisher, Jerry Tarkanian, Nolan Richardson, Jim Harrick, Lute Olson, Tubby Smith, Tom Izzo (more Final Fours than Boeheim), Gary Williams, and John Calipari (more Final Fours than Boeheim). For those who defend Boeheim by using the "Keith Smart" argument, Calipari should likewise be granted the "Mario Chalmers" defense.

Does racking up more victories, many of them in the regular season against the Cornells and Colgates, really make Boeheim a better coach than some of the others listed above?

One could easily contend that Boeheim's championship was earned solely because he had arguably the best college basketball player of the last 20+ years for that magical season. Though no coach wins without good talent, Boeheim detractors could claim that he has not shown the ability to win without the college game's most elite talent--once-in-a-generation talent. This argument would also then explain the once-a-decade visit to the Final Four--transcendent talents don't enter the Melo Center every day.

If one accepts that premise as true, one then has to question how "elite" Boeheim's coaching (especially in terms of player development) really is.

Let me make it clear that I am an admirer of Boeheim's coaching. I certainly can make a list of patterns that have led to the program's current level of success, and why these items should continue to produce similar results. Along with this, I can list the reasons we are lucky as a fans to have Coach Boeheim at the helm. I'll save that list for another post.

However, asking critical questions and identifying areas for improvement are important keys to enhancing success. No one should have a "lifetime pass" from such professional (or personal) development, no matter how many "successes" he or she has on his or her resume.

I would hope that Coach Boeheim encourages these vital development tools behind closed doors with his staff and players in order to improve the likelihood of future tournament success; he certainly doesn't accept critical questions or constructive comments from others well.

The minute Boeheim stops asking the types of questions and making the sorts of observations that many posters here have offered over the last week or so and, more importantly, the minute he stops trying to improve and correct said issues, is the minute I no longer want him as the head coach of the Syracuse Orange.

Would you?

Fantastic post.

 

[GoSU96]

If he's not willing to fail, why do we do it so much in March? Boeheim is not a tinkerer. It's good for stability but if there's something wrong, then the wheels really come off. His teams either respond or they don't. He doesn't do much in the way of rethinking his plan. His press conference answer to every bad game this year, for example, was that we have to shoot better. Nothing about getting better shots, rethinking the offensive strategy, etc.

They had plenty of good shots all year that didn't fall, it was THE problem. Getting good looks wasn't.

 

[CuseFaninVT]

The other team isn't going to stop scoring while your bench is playing (and not scoring).

If you rest your starters 5-6 minutes each, and the other team outscores you by 12-14 points, it won't matter how strong you finish if you've dug too deep a hole.

If our bench is giving up that many points in 5-6 minutes, we no longer have a conditioning issue, we have a recruiting issue.