GET TO KNOW THE OPPOSITION

If you were designing a team specifically to beat Syracuse you’d want to  start with an ultra quick point guard to pressure the ball – much like Florida has in 5’8 Erving Walker.  Next, you’d need to be able to defend the three – much like Florida can.

The key to defending the three (in both zone and man) is length, and Florida has a lot of it in Parsons, Tyus, Werner, Macklin, even Boynton and Shipman from the guard positions.  My point with all this is, if I was going to build a team specifically to beat Syracuse it would look a lot like this Florida team, and have a lot of the same attributes.  Offensively, their balanced scoring attack and multitude of players comfortable shooting from all over the court is hell on the zone.   These are all good things to keep in mind as you read the game analysis.

THE GAME

If Florida is such a bad match up for Syracuse, where did we have the advantage?  That’s an easy question to answer – the guy on the sideline.  Billy Donovan might be a good recruiter (though I think Florida University itself has a lot to do with it) but he’s a terrible game coach and was abused by Boeheim tonight – almost as badly as Boehieim abused him last year.  Were you watching Brandon?

Florida’s press was at its most effective when it was simple one man pressure from Erving Walker.  The few times they tried to trap out of the press, Syracuse punished them.  A combination of their slow, late forming trap and our height and skilled passing resulted in a lay up pretty much every time the trap was invoked.

Speaking of the press, Triche got caught in it the very first time he went down court and turned the ball over, then learned from his mistake and never made another turnover the rest of the game.  Very encouraging.  It was Rautins who first realized that Florida wanted to double Onuaku (who played great against them last year) and was pretty much ignoring Jackson.  The speed at which our guys recognize things like this is staggering.  The rest of the half it was the Triche and Rautins to Jackson show, with glowing results.   Were you watching Brandon?

In fact, the game almost got out of hand seven minutes in when our defense figured Florida out and caused five straight turnovers.  We failed to convert those turnovers by missing two threes, a mid range jumper, and two free throws.  Then Parsons hit two back to back thirty foot 3’s keeping the game close.  I just want to relay how improbable this series was.  All season long Syracuse made jumps shots – whether they were covered or not – in this stretch Syracuse missed several wide open shots, and Florida’s back up forward hit a couple 3’s from well beyond NBA range.  If all these improbable things don’t happen, this game is another 20+ point blow out where you see the walk-ons.

By the second half Walker had lost a step, so Jardine (who really struggled against his quickness in the first half) was able to play again – an underappreciated bonus of having two point guards.  When Walker was gassed from pressuring Triche the entire first half, we were able to play a fresh Jardine and exploit Walker’s tired legs.  A great, though subtle, coaching move by Boeheim.  Were you watching Brandon?

Donovan, to his credit, figured out that he might want to guard the 6’9 beast who tore his team up for 16 first half points.  And the game became a straight up strength against strength battle – with the exception of Rautins outlets to Joseph.  We got several, very key baskets from that combination throughout the game.  Donovan called Rautins “as good as any passer in the country” afterwards but I was more impressed with Joseph’s speed.  Somehow he managed to get 10 boards and be the first player down court on the break almost every time.  It’s like there were two of him out there.

As the game got tough, Rautins and Johnson stepped up and carried us.  Defensively, Onuaku absolutely manhandled Macklin and Tyus, pushing them farther away from the basket than they were comfortable operating and rendering their jump hooks completely ineffective.  SU’s zone (Jardine and Joseph deserve special mention) cut off every Florida option inside the three point line, and the game became a battle of Syracuse’s offense against Florida’s ability to take and make NBA range threes.  Florida, to its credit, did a fantastic job of making a lot of extremely difficult shots, (they are a much better shooting team than the stats up to this point would make you think, and they made us pay every time we blew coverage on a shooter – which should make this game a good teaching tool for Boeheim) but make no mistake, they were taking the shots that Syracuse wanted them to take.  Strategy wise, Boeheim’s won out.  Were you watching Brandon?

As the old saying “live by the three, die by the three” goes, Florida’s shooting eventually turned cold and that was all she wrote in a game where Florida did a great job defending our shooters and making difficult shots themselves, but still probably should have been blown off the court by a far superior Syracuse team.  And all this came against a team, as I said in the beginning, who is uniquely qualified to have success against our style of play.  Scary.

I know which school I’d be leaning towards committing to if I was the number one high school basketball player in the country and I had a choice between Syracuse and Florida.

STAT OF THE GAME

I want to break down two stats in this section.

The first is Syracuse’s 43-31 advantage on the boards.  People tend to assign a lot more importance to rebounding than it deserves.  In some games rebounding is a real difference maker, but that’s usually when both teams miss a lot of shots.  The rest of the time it’s usually the team that misses the most jump shots that gets the most rebounds.  In this game, Syracuse shot very poorly from three while Florida was hot from the outside (plus Jackson missed about 5 lay ups that he rebounded and put back in), hence Syracuse won the rebounding battle.  Had we shot 40% from three and they shot 20%, they probably would have won the rebounding battle (like North Carolina and Cal did against us) but we probably would have won the game by a lot more.  I’d much rather make my shots than get rebounds.  The rebounding statistic is usually not an overly important one, unless its one of those games where neither team shoots very well from the field.

The second stat is Syracuse’s 58% from the free throw line.  I know this is not what you want to see, but historically teams shoot very poorly from the line in their first few road games.  This was not a true road game, but Florida did have its student section behind the basket, which is the thing that tends to mess players up early in the year.  I don’t think we are going to be a great free throw shooting team, but I don’t see it as an Achilles heel either.  Give the team a few road games before you bash them for how they shoot from the stripe.

Key Plays

The key stretch in this game came when Florida took the lead with about 9 minutes to play.  Here are the sequence of events that followed.

Rautins hits a dagger of a 3, which gets all the publicity the next day.  What follows is equally important.

Boynton misses 35 footer, and Boehiem calls a timeout during SU’s next possession.

Coming out of timeout, the ball goes exactly where it needs to, and Wes Johnson hits a 3.

Erving Walker shoots an air ball from about 35 feet out.

Wes Johnson gets a lay up.

Florida turns the ball over (Onuaku blocks Parsons, jump ball, possession SU).

Timeout Donovan.

Of course, giving Boeheim more time to strategize just helped to dig Florida’s grave a little deeper, and after the time out Jardine stole the ball.  SU dominance.

PLAYER RANKINGS

Every player is ranked relative to the expectations I have for them.  So the guys who play the best might not necessarily have the highest ranking. A 5 means the player lived up to expectations. Obviously higher than a 5 is outperforming expectations and lower than a 5 in underperforming expectations.

Rauints – His clutch shooting and passing win him player of the game, but it was really a very typical game for him so far this year.  I don’t know who’s playing better than Rautins in the entire country.   I feel bad for Mookie, because he’s ready to contribute, but Rautins is playing at such a high level that you just cant sit him on the bench in any close game.  His passing, defense, shooting, and leadership are at as high a level as you can get and the kid has ice water in his veins.  Ranking: 5

Jackson – Proved that you have to game plan for him or he’s going to kill you.  Kudos to the team for finding him early and often in this game.  I have to say that I’m most impressed with Jackson’s defense both in this game and to this point in the season.  Ranking: 8

Joseph: Offensively he’s playing within himself, learning not to force things, passing well and giving us a little ball handling.  All these things will improve as the year goes on.  Defensively he’s as good as anybody on our team and in transition he’s as good as anybody in the country.  Very impressed with Joseph tonight.  Ranking: 9

Triche: I was really worried about Triche’s ability to handle an ultra quick guard like Walker, but he did a fantastic job getting the ball down court and finding open guys.  Offensively he did a phenomenal job getting in the lane, but had his first bad day as far as converting baskets goes.  He was taking off a little too far away from the basket.  This is an easily correctible mistake, and Triche is a smart kid.  Sooner rather than later he’s going to be scoring 20 points in games like this one.  Ranking: 6

Jardine: Really struggled against Walker’s pressure in the first half, and needs to take much better care of the ball.  Luckily for him, Triche came in and wore down Walker while Jardine rested.  When he came into the game in the second half turnovers were no longer a problem and he was an absolute terror on the defensive end.  Apparently Boeheim trusts Jardine’s experience late in the game more than Triche, and who can blame him?  Jardine came through for us.  Ranking: 5

Onuaku:  Really did a good job getting position on the defensive end.  He absolutely shut Macklin down.   Offensively Onuaku and Jackson are kind of an either/or option at this point as far as scoring goes, so he didn’t get many points.  Rebounding wise, Onuaku seems to be taking over the boxing out duties for the entire team, allowing Jackson, Johnson and Joseph to crash the boards, so he deserves a lot of credit for all three of those guys putting up double-doubles.  Ranking: 5

Johnson:  You’re going to see a lot of games like this from Johnson as our schedule becomes more difficult.  He has what I call, just enough of a handle to get himself into trouble, and needs to defer offensively when his shot is not falling or he is well covered.  Johnson did a great job differing to his teammates in the first half, then took over in the second half when we needed it.  An almost perfect game in that regard.  The one thing he needs to do is improve his passing.  He looked terrible in that regard tonight.  And I want to see him become an even bigger difference maker on the defensive end of the ball.  Ranking: 5

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 12th, 2009 at 1:30 pm by Paul C. . 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.