Why Syracuse will be better than last year's Final Four team

[realorange]

Imo, What will make this team different is consistancy. Can Dajuan Gbinije and Ennis be the solid go scorers. The guy you want as a first/second option on any team in the country or will they show inconsistancies and be more of a 3rd option like even our best teams in recent years.

As far as march you really can't judge you lose one game and your out. you can be the best team in the country against the 16th best and if you don't match up well then you can lose. You got to understand that cuse players have bad games on offense in march when we lose.

What makes this team special is Fair and Dajuans ability to isolate and score consistantly. Isolation scorers are the most consistant. Also Gbinijes height to dribble like a pg, rediculous speed, finishing in the lane in motion/off screens. His ability to pullup very good, with some isolation skills, the potential to be really consistant at creating his looks and finishing every night without a rest in big moments. Gbinije has the potential to be way more consistant the southerland, Triche or MCW this year.

Compare that to Southerland not being able to get open to shoot and mike being doubled in the high post and his layups shut down once he drove against michigan. Michigan was able to shut their strengths down and plan B didn't work for them Gbinije and Dajuan might be able to overcome that every night. BJ Patterson and Roberson Grant are all developing a sidestep pullup to shoot off the dribble or a post up faceup shot they have a outsider chance of being a solid go to guy even as a freshmen. Rak will be Rak he could surprise I would like to hear he practiced sliding laterally all offseason at the four to make his leg musclesPaul Harris-ish but thats wishfull thinking.

I think Ennis will bring a driving offense as opposed to a entry pass one. They will be forced to double him with a second defender in the high post at times, but he could have a better outside shot then MCW on top of it. Keita being a 35 year old Veteran out there. That is why this team can be better.

This team has atleast 5 third scoring options but its up for Dajuan, Gbinije, possibly Ennis with a outside chance of someone else ALSO to be more. The other thing is unselfishness the coach is going to play the best players for certain situations, but the players need to buy into it and I think they will 100% as our bigs lead the way as upperclassmen and freshmen know sometimes you have to be patient.

Hearing the staff want BJ and Gbinije as a SG in the zone means they are thinking he can handle the responsibility defensively. Thats much different then them grabbing Mookie for his offense as a SG for his outside shot.

Just WOW!

How big is your crystal ball??!!

 

[Quazzum69]

Who would have thought that we would be in the Final Four in 2013 after losing Scoop, Jospeh, Waiters and Fab Melo the year before going to the Elite Eight? This years incoming class is much deeper and talented than last years and we have lost less. Losing Scoop/Joseph feels very similar to losing MCW/Southerland: seniors who were pretty good, were capable of carrying the team but ultimately were too inconsistent/flawed to make a huge impact. The loss of Fab and Dion was probably worse than MCW, especially when you consider who is going to replace them.

Unless this team cannot develop the defensive chemistry like last years, we will be better. Except at point guard (probably) we will be better at every position, including a deeper, more talented bench.

 

[Shenexon]

But at Syracuse we don't rebuild, we RELOAD. I think we'll be just fine. At the very least, it will be an athletic, fun team to watch. There may be some growing pains but there is an awful lot of returning and incoming talent. ACC, look out!

We have some great players coming in and some extraordinary players coming back. It's hard not to be excited about the potential of next year's players. We've had a number of great teams over the past 5 years though arguably our best teams faltered at the end with injuries and lack of attention to schoolwork. We're in a really good era of SU basketball, appropriate for the end of the Boeheim era. Anything is possible and it's a superb time to be an orange fan.

 

[jordoo]

You know last year this time I said we could be better than the season prior IF DC2 was an effective offensive option, Brandon finally came into his own offensively, Cooney was an effective shooter and MCW was as good as I expected him to be. We weren't as good as the prior squad, DC2 was a non factor, Triche had maybe his worst shooting season, Cooney shot the ball very poorly, MCW started out better than I expected and then other teams realized he couldn't shoot and yet we went to the final four and played the eventual championship team better than anyone else beating them on the road, just loosing to them late at home and colapsing after controlling them for 25min @MSG.
You can't really judge how good a team was exclusively by how far they go in the NCAA's. Its matchups and how well guys shoot that aften times determines things. If we could have made some shots against Mich we would have faced Lville for a 4th time. It was our defense that made us good last season but we still had a really really poor run of games where we struggled so much to score that our defense also lapsed a bit.
Every team is different and winds up having a different personality. What will this season bring? I'm pretty optamistic every season but almost everyone can see that this season we have all the peices to be very very good but it all hinges on Ennis being an effective PG which I expect him to be. I doubt we will be quite as good on defense out top. MCW was great and Brandon was one of the best at staying on his asignment and being in position they were also excellent rebounders. Still MikeG and Trevor have experience and length. Ennis is smart, Patterson has super long arms and likes to defend and BJ is very long as well. I think they will be good as a group. I think our front line will be even better defensively as we get everyone back outher than James. Offensovely we weren't very good so I expect to be better there as well as klong as our shooter step up and shoot.
All in all its one of the best times to be an SU fan bball wise. We are loaded every year and have plenty of guys to turn to for answers. If you follow recruiting it doesn't look like that is going to stop anytime soon.

 

[VaBeachOrFan]

You simply cannot say we will be better than a FF team unless you think we will win the NC. That is not to say that we will definitely be worse, but in order to be similiarly good we need the following questions all answered affirmatively:

1. Will DC2 take the big step to become a bona fida starter ?

2. Will Ennis be able to put up his 10 & 5, play solid D, and not make too many freshman mistakes ?

3. Will MikeG be able to replace Triche reasonably adequately on O and also give us MCW's length at the top of the Zone ?

4. Will Jerami improve as much as everybody here is expecting ?

5. Will we get significant contributions from at least one other frosh besides Ennis (lead candidate Roberson) ?

6. Will our D be as good ?

7. Will we find somebody who can give us some semblance of a backup PG (Patterson ?) ?

8. Will we get reasonable improvement from Trevor ?

9. Will we have no significant injuries or off the court issues ?

I think there is a better than 50 - 50 chance that each of the above questions is answered positively, but if we fall short in just a couple of those areas we will not be back to the FF. That is also not to mention that it takes some luck to get to the FF in terms of the team peaking at the right time, getting a decent seeding, and a decent draw.

All good questions, and with luck, 4-5 of them will pan out. The only problem is we don't have a clue as to which ones will. TBD.

I also agree with sufandu that SUBB's record shows we can't count on freshmen to contribute significantly -- with the exception this year of Ennis, of course, because we have to count on him. I'd be happy with any of the following outcomes (and I'd be ecstatic if all of these panned out): 1. if DC played like Wes Unseld, grabbing rebounds and firing crisp outlet passes to start the fast break; 2. if Ennis played like Shane Larkin - smart decisions and an accurate shot off the point; 3. if any of the freshman forwards proved to be a "sneaky-good" scorer like CJ in his freshman year. (Moten, of course, was the prototype "sneaky-good" player, in that unlike a Pearl or a Melo, he wasn't expected to have an immediate impact but was always in the right place and knew how to finish around the basket.)

The problem areas will be: 1. gelling as a team; and 2. finding a leader. CJ will be the senior, but he's a Triche-type quiet player who leads by example. Who will have the fire of Scoop, or the spark of Southie, or the bravado of Dion or Devo? All TDB, but the best thing we have going for us is that the overall talent level is rising and the bench is deep. It's a good thing that guys are playing a lot this summer to help sort all this out. I love the complexity.-VBOF

 

[Hoov50]

When trying to predict if a freshman is going to be successful I don't think you can make a blanket statement. In most cases shooters and ball handlers have a much better chance of coming in and being successful as freshman than a player who relies on his size and muscle. In many cases a 6-9+ high school player is going to come into college raw, because their success relied on size mismatches, a lot of time even in AAU games. You see this year after year at SU with the improvement our big guys make throughout their careers. IMHO a majority of post players aren't forced to learn more than the basic basketball skills until they are finally going up against competition that rivals them in size. In most areas throughout the country (with the exception of private high schools that are essentially basketball factories) the majority of the teams are going to be playing with a 6-5 center. This allows the few legitimate NCAA sized centers to dominate simply due to their size. I also think playing the middle of our zone is one of the toughest things to learn, hence the reason why players like Coleman, Christmas and Melo struggled early on in their SU careers on defense.

Getting back to my point (if there really was one!), I think it is much more realistic to "count" on guards and wing players to contribute as freshman, which makes me think our team next year may be able to be better than our team this year. We have depth down in the post and hopefully those guys have continued to develop their games so we aren't needing a ton of production from our freshman in those positions.