‘C’ Is For “Cupcake”/Mookie Reflections
Cornell, Columbia, and now Colgate. SU looks to continue its feast Monday night when it meets a perennial foe (but more like a pesky little brother) in the Raiders. When Colgate and Syracuse tip off, it will mark the 162nd game between the two, and loyal SU fans know that Syracuse hasn’t played any team as many teams as it has played Cornell.
Head Coach Emmett Davis trots out a winless squad that has looked very bad for most of the year, with the exception of one half where they kept things close with UConn in its first game. It’s a very weak offensive attack; the team’s high watermark in offensive production came in its most recent loss to St. Francis, when it posted a meager 65 points. The Raiders’ two leading scorers are senior Kyle Roemer (18.4 ppg) and sophomore Yaw Gyawu (15.4 ppg). The scoring pretty much starts and ends there, with no other Raider averaging more than 9.3 points per game. By contrast, SU has four players averaging double figures with two others right behind at 9.7 a game.
The Raiders won’t overwhelm you with scoring, nor will they with their size. Their leading rebounders average 4.4 boards a game and haven’t had a player taller than 6′6″ start a game. One of the most frustrating things about this SU team, for all their defensive dominance and balanced scoring, has been how bad they’ve looked on the glass at times. The team’s center, Arinze Onuaku is averaging only 3.8 rebounds per game, and the team hasn’t dominated the category in a game like most of us hoped (or assumed) it would. This is an opportunity on a silver platter to right that ship and assert its inside dominance.
If SU continues to take care of business in the second half and put Colgate away with another of SU’s patented big runs to start it off, we will again see Jim Boeheim use his bench freely. We know that Kris Joseph and Sccop Jardine will get plenty of run despite not starting, and that Dashonte Riley and James Southerland leave far less to be expected, but somewhere in between, just six games in, it’s been a year of ups and downs for Mookie Jones.
Jones looked terrible in his first game, but showed improvement in the two games that followed. Then, he played just two minutes against North Carolina and after that, recorded a DNP against Cornell, when at one point he stormed off to the locker room in the middle of the game, reappearing three game minutes later with Laz Sims. We probably won’t ever know what went on during those three game minutes, but the incident has been handled by the team in such a way as to keep it from festering, and Jones responded with a career-high 12 points Friday night against Columbia.
Mookie is still at the stage in his development where he’s a one-trick pony. If he’s not hitting his threes, he’s not providing any value. Considering his freshman status and the balanced scoring on the team, it’s not a huge issue this season. Nevertheless, since this is my first post since the incident, I think this is as good a time as any to sound off about the whole thing.
The starters on this team all have one thing they’re better at than everyone else, but still have other complimentary facets in their games that make them weapons. AO has a sweet baby hook, is automatic in the post, but when healthy, he can also dominate the glass. Rick Jackson shares the team lead in blocks with Wes Johnson, but he also has a nice array of post moves. Wes is best at driving teams mad with his ability to shoot the three, but can score in approximately seven billion other ways as well as rebound. Brandon Triche is a guard who can slash and withstand contact on the way to the hoop, and Andy Rautins happens to be hitting nearly 50% of his threes, but also epitomizes the team’s defensive tenacity and prowess. Right now, all Mookie Jones does is shoot the three; 18 of his 21 shot attempts have been from beyond the arc. It reminds me of someone else on this team as a freshman, and you can probably guess who that is.
Andy Rautins was every bit as one-dimensional in his freshman year as Mookie Jones has been in his. As freshmen, here are the numbers and percentages surrounding their propensity to stick to the long ball:
Jones, 2009-10: 18 of 21 field goal attempts have been threes, or to put it another way, 85.7% of his shots.
Rautins, 2005-06: 46 of 53 field goal attempts, or 86.8% of his shots.
Andy turned out to be very coachable; it’s easy to see that when you watch him play and compare his skill set to what he had to offer back in 2005-06. Since that time, he steadily (but noticeably) improved his defense and transition game, and that diversity in his skill set is what makes him crucial to the team’s success. I’m not saying Mookie is going to be an Andy Rautins clone when all is said and done, but is Mookie’s incident and whatever clearing of the air that followed indicative of a similar desire to improve? I think it’s too early to draw a definitive conclusion, but considering all the McCroskeys, Wrights, Joneses and other flakes that have left the program this decade, it was a good sign to see Mookie bounce back the way he did and own up to his hot-headedness. Now he has to keep it up while the opportunities are there.
