After the Orange took a ten-day layoff, it went back on the court, taking control in the second half of Saturday’s game against the Long Beach State 49ers. Just two days later, SU returns to work against the the preseason Horizon League favorite in Cleveland State. The Vikings are coached by Gary Waters, who led Rutgers from 2001-2006. For what it’s worth, Waters went 2-5 against Boeheim during his five seasons in Piscataway.

Cleveland State and Syracuse are night and day when it comes to offensive philosophies. The Vikings really like to keep things slow and make their opponents play down to their pace. CSU has held its last four opponents to an average of 48 points apiece, but has also managed to lose two of those games. The modest offensive stats, then, dictate that Cleveland State is very gunshy in putting up three pointers, and that is indeed the case. The Vikings have made just 35 threes all season, which is as many as Andy Rautins and Jonny Flynn have combined.

In terms of defensive matchups, Cleveland State has shown a tendency to be quite handsy. J’Nathan Bullock and D’Aundray Brown are the primary pickpockets, as they both average more than two steals per game. Bullock and Brown are also the team’s leading rebounders, but neither are very tall. Bullock has an atypical build similar to Paul Harris at 6’5″, 240, which has allowed him to get inside for six boards a game, while Brown somehow manages to get six a game himself despite clocking in at under two bills.

The key for the Orange will be to get CSU out of its comfort zone while keeping things moving quickly and crisply on offense, while not getting anxious on defense when the Vikings take their time. SU’s bigs have major size advantages inside, so it will be important to keep getting AO touches down low, while Flynn and Eric Devendorf should continue to blow by opposing guards. It will also be important for Syracuse to not make this game any harder than it needs to be by waiting until the second half to turn things up. Even if it struggles out of the gate again, I look for SU to win this one handily.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 14th, 2008 at 5:50 pm by Brian G. . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.