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Brandon Triche

Is Syracuse Basketball Set For A Final Four Run?

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Syracuse basketball is on a roll, with a win at then-#1 Louisville on Saturday and then getting a home win over a good Cincinnati team yesterday afternoon in the Carrier Dome. As good as Jim Boeheim’s program has been over the years, they haven’t reached a Final Four since the national championship season of 2003 with Carmelo Anthony. Is this finally the year for the Orange? At the very least, are they the best in the Big East? Let’s take a closer look at Syracuse’s personnel and what they’ve done in benchmark games so far this year.

Boeheim has one of America’s best point guards running his offense in sophomore, Michael Carter-Williams. The kid is averaging nine assists per game, and just as importantly, he’s a 6’6” point guard, meaning he’s a big matchup problem for the smaller guards that populate most every college lineup—notably Louisville’s. Indeed, Carter-Williams scored 16 points and had 7 assists in the win over the Cardinals on Saturday and I have every expectation he’ll continue to play well against good teams for the majority of the year.

There’s experience running alongside the young point guard with senior guard, Brandon Triche. It seems as though he’s been around forever, and Triche shoots the ball well from the floor and averages 15 ppg. The frontcourt is where the questions lie, and not because of a lack of talent. While Syracuse doesn’t have a true center, they have a coalition of very good forwards who run 6’8” and 6’9” and in today’s mostly post-less college game, that’s enough to win a national championship with. C.J. Fair is averaging 14 points/7 rebounds, while Rakeem Christmas is a good defensive presence.

Perhaps the biggest question mark surrounds James Southerland. At 6’8” he can play the forward spot, and he’s also a good perimeter shooter—including being the team’s best shooter behind the three-point line. But he hasn’t played the last three games because of some eligibility issues surrounding a term paper. Last year the suspension of Fab Melo cost Syracuse some wins in the regular season and probably a trip to the Final Four, given that a competitive loss to Ohio State in the regional final was how the season ended.

It’s very tough to see how Syracuse can win the Big East without Southerland. I’m not going into picking Final Four chances—we can let the next seven weeks play out and see how teams look, and how the brackets break down. But based purely on talent, Syracuse is not top-four material without their best shooter, nor are they deep enough. Boeheim has a couple pretty good rebounders on his bench in DaJaun Coleman and Baye Keita, but they haven’t seen a lot of playing time to date, and even if they do, there’s no reason to think either one will suddenly start burying treys.

That’s the bad news for Syracuse. The good news is this—if they get Southerland back, you have to think of this as a top four team. They play the excellent zone defense that Boeheim has taught for years, both Southerland and Carter-Williams would be tough to match up against and there would be quality senior leadership from Triche.

Syracuse has only lost one game this year, that being to Temple. While it was a home game, it was a situation caused by the Orange only hitting 2/12 from three-point range and Owl guard Khalif Wyatt going off for 33 points in an 83-79 game. Certainly, the ‘Cuse did not play defense the way their coach would like, but just as certainly, that’s a type of game that’s more aberration than recurring pattern.

Subsequent games have proven this point. Syracuse was able to get the narrow two-point wins over Louisville and Cincinnati without Southerland—indicative of how good the Orange will be if they get him back. They did a terrific job defensively at Louisville, locking down Cardinal point guard Peyton Siva and keeping Louisville center Gorgui Deng off the boards. Triche buried 23 points. Then yesterday, Syracuse won in spite of the fact that Cincinnati hit their three-point shots and did a better job on the glass. It was consistent all-around defense that did the trick, as the Orange held the Bearcats to 32 percent from the floor, while churning out a steady 46 percent themselves. That’s what known as a sustainable victory, when even the other team being hot from long range isn’t enough to trip you up.

It seems like we’re back where we were a year ago—Syracuse looks like the best team in the Big East and maybe the best in the country, but, once again, eligibility questions are lingering.

REVIVAL AT ST. JOHN’S

St. John’s got off to a slow start in non-conference play, with most of the playing time going to five sophomores and two freshmen. But Steve Lavin’s team has started to round into form for Big East play. Point guard D’Angelo Harrison is emerging as a star, with 20 ppg, and Lavin is getting solid work from freshman Jakarr Simpson (14/7). It makes you wonder how good this team might have been if last year’s freshman sensation Moe Harkless had not bolted for the NBA. But these are the dynamics at play in today’s college basketball environment.

The Red Storm are only 11-7 overall, so they’ve got work to do if an NCAA Tournament bid is going to be in their future. However, they have won at Cincinnati in conference play, also knocked off Notre Dame, and beat DePaul last weekend.

The challenge for Lavin is putting together a win streak when he has a team with no three-point shooting threats. Most nights you can win by beating teams within the arc and St. John’s does well at that, but if you put together a sustained winning streak—like the Johnnies need to, you probably need to steal one here or there by getting hot from three-point range. Or on the flip side, at least not get one stolen from you. In their wins, St. John’s has defended the three-point shot well, and if they can neutralize this part of the game, they’ll win their share the rest of the way. St. John’s revival might have started late, but there’s still enough time to make an NCAA Tournament push.

A Closer Look At Syracuse Basketball

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Syracuse is ranked #2 in the country and along with Kentucky seen as one of the two teams who really have separation from the rest of the nation. Do the Orange have the personnel to back it up as the season hits its crunch point? Just as TheSportsNotebook did with Kentucky last week, we’ll take a player-by-player look at the Syracuse lineup, in anticipation of both tonight’s game at Louisville (7 PM ET, ESPN) and what’s ahead the rest of the way.

G: Scoop Jardine—A 6’2” senior, Jardine runs the offense and his playmaking skills are superior. Not only is his season-long average of 5 assists per game solid, but he’s been at his best of late. Over the past eight games, Jardine’s exceeded his average, including eight assists in last Wednesday’s thriller over Georgetown. His lack of scoring is not an issue, because there’s plenty in this lineup to pick up the slack and as a pretty decent shooter from the floor Jardine can make defenses pay if they back him too much. Where his big flaw comes is at the free throw line, where he’s at 52 percent. It almost goes without saying that a team that’s going to win a series of big games in March is going to have to hit free throws down the stretch. On this 25th anniversary of Syracuse’s championship game loss to Indiana, where the Orange missed chances down the stretch at the foul line, no one knows this better than Jim Boeheim. Jardine’s got to find a way to convert these shots or to get the ball out of his hands.

G: Brandon Triche—The junior is the free-throw shooter that Jardine is not, at 88 percent. While more reliable in the closing minutes, he’s less dynamic throughout the rest of the game. Triche’s three-point shooting is okay, but nothing that’s going to loosen defenses up. He scores 10 ppg, which is solid, but nothing that’s going to alter a defensive game plan. In short, he’s a cog, not a difference-maker.

G: Dion Waiters—The best of the backcourt group, Waiters scores 12 a game, and hits nearly 50 percent from the floor. If we want to ring him up on something it’s that in Syracuse’s two toughest Big East games—against Marquette and Georgetown, he didn’t have a standout game in either one, compared to Triche’s 16-point game against Marquette and Jardine’s playmaking against the Hoyas. But that’s picking nits to a degree—Waiters hasn’t been in the tank either. At 6’4”, the sophomore is a good asset to a championship-caliber team.

F: C.J. Fair—The season-long numbers of 9 points/5 rebounds aren’t remarkable, but the 6’8” sophomore has saved big games for the biggest moments. Again using Georgetown and Marquette as a benchmark, he’s averaged 13.5/10 in those two games. Nothing like having an X-factor in your back pocket when you face the best teams.

F: Kris Joseph—The 6’7” senior is the most consistent player on this team. He’s more of finesse forward, shooting about four treys a game and getting five rebounds. He averages 14 ppg, and exceeded that against Marquette, while going off for 29 against Georgetown. At 37 percent from three-point range, that’s good enough to make shooting it worthwhile, but for a forward I’d like see the average be closer to 40 before stepping out as often as Joseph does.

C: Fab Melo—He was suspended for three games in January, at which time Syracuse suffered its only loss, at Notre Dame. Though in fairness, the Orange were so thoroughly outplayed that night in South Bend that I can’t really blame that on one player. But Melo is a huge difference-maker on the defensive end. The 7-foot sophomore from Brazil has blocked at least four shots nine times this season. Including six against Georgetown and an epic ten-block game against Seton Hall early in the conference schedule. If the season does come down to Syracuse-Kentucky on a Monday night in April, Melo would be a worthy adversary for Kentucky’s Anthony Jones. Come to think of it, the way those two block shots the ball might never see the rim.

Overall, I’m not as impressed with Syracuse’s personnel as I am with Kentucky’s. I don’t want to come off knocking Brandon Triche because he’s a decent player on an excellent team, but when you look at the rest of the players on both squads, he seems sort of out of place. Jones is more consistent than Melo. And most of all, the free-throw shooting issue from Jardine concerns me. I don’t want to get carried away in evaluating Kentucky-Syracuse as though they’re about to play, because the odds of the best two teams surviving the NCAA Tournament aren’t great. But I would consider the Orange much more vulnerable than the Wildcats to an early exit.

Looking at the rest of the way, denying Syracuse an outright Big East crown is going to be tough. They lead Marquette by two games and don’t play the Golden Eagles a second time. And after tonight, Syracuse’s remaining schedule is quite manageable—at Rutgers, South Florida, at UConn and then a home date with Louisville to end the regular season. The Orange would have to lose tonight to make Marquette catching them even a possibility, and that’s still on the presumption that MU runs the table. So whatever my doubts about their national championship mojo, Jim Boeheim has done a fabulous job with this team and sits on the brink of a Big East championship when he takes the court tonight.