Syracuse Orange

Virginia hits the road for its second matchup against Syracuse this season, having weathered a furious comeback attempt by the Orange a few weeks ago. Last year’s trip to the Carrier Dome was a nightmare for Virginia; will this year’s visit be an improvement?

Game Details:

Date/Time: Saturday, Feb 3rd, 4:00 PM Eastern
Location: Carrier Dome, Syracuse, NY
TV: ACCN (local affiliates), WatchESPN

What ‘They’ Say

Depth Chart:

Starters

Key Reserves

The ABC’s of SU:

A) This is a really thin team, and getting thinner. With the season-ending injury to backup guard Howard Washington, the Orange’s starting back court Howard, Battle, and Brissett are playing essentially every competitive minute. The 4 and 5 spots are the only positions with any rotation, but even that has question marks. At the 4, true freshman Euro import Dolezaj and RS Freshman (and Kyle Guy BFF) Moyer are splitting time, but Moyer is coming back from a high ankle sprain that limited him to only 2 minutes at Georgia Tech. The center spot is the only position with relief, where true freshman Sidibe is backing up former role player and Providence transfer Chukwu. KenPom has dropped them to dead last in terms of bench minutes played. The Zone allows them to rest to some degree, but Virginia should make them work at both ends.

B) The offense is really off track. Maybe it’s a talent issue, maybe it’s experience. But the Orange are really struggling to score this year. They’re 12th in the ACC in scoring efficiency, 12th in effective FG%, 14th in committing turnovers and coughing up steals. None of their players are scary three point shooters, the best of them being Howard’s 34.7%. Tyus Battle has been trying to single handedly carry this team, scoring in double figures in every ACC game, with a high of 37 in a 2OT loss to FSU. They’re surviving on offensive rebounding (6th in the ACC, grabbed 19 against us last month) and drawing FTs (1st in the ACC, shot only 11 FTAs against us last time). Everyone of their guard/wing trio is looking to drive. The posts are mostly only threats on putback attempts.

C) The Syracuse Zone is back with a fury. For all of the Orange’s struggles this year, the defense has not been one of them. Their zone works best when there’s size and length at all 5 positions, and gone are the smaller guards like Trevor Cooney or John Gillon at the top. Instead, they run out two long guards in Howard (6-5) and Battle (6-6), have size on the wings with Brissett (6-8), Dolezaj (6-9), and Moyer (6-8); all anchored by the tallest center in Boeheim’s history, Chukwu (7-2). Through 9 conference games, Cuse has the ACC’s 2nd best defensive efficiency at 97.3, and is shutting teams down both inside (#1 in the ACC in 2P% D at 38.7%) and outside (#5 at 33.9%). They’re forcing teams into turnovers at an above average rate as well. Allowing offensive rebounds has been the biggest weakness, 14th in the ACC. 

Their season to date:

Syracuse is 15-7 on the season, 4-5 in the ACC. Their best wins are over Maryland and Virginia Tech. They fattened their record by beating Pitt twice, and have struggled away from home, dropping games at Wake, FSU, UVA, and most recently Georgia Tech

Keys to getting the win:

1) Limit them to one shot. The Orange can’t shoot. We covered that above. What’s keeping them in games is their second chance offense; they’re 6th in the ACC in offensive rebounding percentage, grabbing just under a third of their misses (32.4%). They are sending all three of their forwards/centers to the glass hard on every shot, and all five guys who rotate in at the 3-5 spots have O-Reb percentages between 7.5% and 13.2% (anything above 8 is good, above 10 is great). Howard and Battle generally sprint back, but our forwards in this game better be prepared to not just body up, but also gain leverage for position. Hold them to one shot (should go without saying… without bailing them out and putting them on the FT line) and their offense will crack in a hurry. Despite our systemic success on the defensive glass, this is certainly an important focus area; we gave up 19 offensive rebounds to them in the last outing.

2) Attack in transition if at all reasonable. Not going to lie, that zone continues to scare me a little this year with Chukwu in the middle (Cuse scored 5 blocks as a team in the 1st game), especially if our mid-range jumpers aren’t falling. So we should get down the floor and score before it sets up if at all possible. I don’t think we’re going to get a lot of transition opportunities off rebounds, because we’re going to need all hands on deck to close out defensive possessions; dangerous to leak out a runner. But Cuse’s ball-handling is sloppy, second to last in the ACC, including in giving up live ball steals. Given how effective our turnover generation has been this year (best in the ACC in both total turnovers and live ball steals), that means we should expect at least 7 or 8 live ball opportunities this game, and we should absolutely be running on those to get easy buckets before the zone sets up. With zero depth, Battle and Howard can’t afford to get into foul trouble, so they should shy from aggression here. Getting about 10 points running off of turnovers could make a huge difference in a slow, grinding game.

3) Break down the zone with the midrange game. Beating the zone consistently requires working methodically through it. Yes we can, and should, shoot over it enough to force the wings and guards to honor Devon, Ty, and Kyle. But at the end of the day you have to get some shots in the paint, and that means trying to dissect the zone gaps. In the first game, we rotated big guards through the high post (a 2-3 zone’s primary gap), and found success with each of Jerome, Hall, and Hunter. We’ve continued to use that systematic zone attack in games since, with some success, but also some weaknesses exploited. We’ve been at our most efficient when the center comes up to challenge, which either allows the ball-handler to drive by or, should we have one side effectively overloaded, kick to a cutter on the baseline or a shooter flaring to the wing. I’m expecting a large part of Cuse’s game plan to be to dare us to shoot the 15-footer, leaving Chukwu home at the rim and the wings watching the corners. That means open mid-range shots, but that’s not been a look we’ve been hitting consistently enough for my liking. Wilkins has seemingly lost all confidence in his jumper, so he cannot play that position for us. Hall, Hunter, and Jerome have to hit this rhythmically enough early on to force Cuse to abandon the strategy, and then we can start to use that position more as a distributor in the second half.

Predictions:

Shooting in the Dome is a weird thing. It’s a strange venue (remember, it’s a football venue first) with strange lighting and fan seating configurations. Those sorts of things play with shooters’ depth perception, so I’m not overly optimistic we can punish Cuse by shooting from the high post gap. But I have a feeling we see Tony dial the ball pressure way up in this one. Force them to make contested passes and prey on that all day. I also expect our rebounding to be improved from last time… if we can hold Duke (who’s a better rebounding team than Cuse) to only 12 offensive rebounds, we can do better on the Orange too. I think our defense, and the fast break offense it can create, carry the day.

Hoos Win – 65-53