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Message: [QUOTE="VaBeachOrFan, post: 1059664, member: 1274"] Hmmm. This sudden parade of future Orange talent is causing me to hallucinate: I think I'm seeing JB troll for the same Wun&Dun fish that Coach Cal usually nets. UK loads up its five-shooter with 5 blue-chip bullets each year, starts them all, and then watches them leave for the pros only to reload with the next year's group. His philosophy: Talent trumps experience, and most of the time he pulls it off. Some of us SU fans have been chiding Cal for ruining college BB and making a travesty of its student-athlete foundation. But there's nothing like someone else's success to motivate change, and UK's success -- coupled with Syracuse's own growing prestige and its having to compete head-on with the Duke/UNC Blue Chip Recruiting Pipeline -- has moved JB and staff to raise their sights and start taking reservations for 2014, 2015 and, soon, 2016 graduates. And what a splendid harvest of talent they're recruiting! However, I sense an Orange twist to Cal's Wun&Dun theme. JB usually finds only 5-7 players who can master The Zone to his satisfaction in any given year (the super-deep 2009-10 team with its "Starting Seven" was a wonderful exception), so the rest of the bench watches and learns. Then, miraculously, some of the frosh "get it" in year two or three and become contributors. But while past SU teams were populated with "sleepers" (Warrick, Shump, AO and CJ to name but a few), redshirts and 5th year seniors (Andy, Scoop, etc.) who took years to develop, now we have frosh with "unlimited talent" (Waiters, MCW, Roberson) who can barely get playing time one year but may bolt for the NBA the next. SU's emerging theme, IMHO, is that front-court recruits will continue to ferment on the bench as frosh unless they come in with Melo-like skills. In contrast, it appears that carefully selected high-level PGs can run a Syracuse offense their first year out, move on to the pros and be replaced the following year without significant damage to either offense or defense. Mix in the few remaining redshirts and "developmental" players as seasoned backups, and it's a formula that could take SU to a new and continuously contending level. What it means for us fans is that, rather than seeing consistent SU-style basketball reproduced each year with a gradually shifting cast of veterans, an "all new" SU team will emerge each year with its unique personality TBD. JB will throw everyone into a pot and see which 5-7 players reach his level of confidence in playing together, and they'll determine the style for that year. Fab gave us a monster shot-blocker and charge-taker in the middle; Ennis brought his value-the-ball style into play (with its plusses and minuses), and I can't wait to see Kaleb Joseph's ankle-breaking moves next fall along with an anticipated return to the run-and-gun. If every year is going to bring a different personality to SUBB, we'll have to start giving each team its own name.-VBOF [/QUOTE]

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