ACC Basketball: 5 biggest takeaways from first month of 2019-2020
By Bryan Mauro
4. Syracuse Orange
Jim Boeheim is one of the games most legendary coaches. He has won national championships and has been to final fours. Coach Boeheim plays his signature style with a 2-3 zone and anymore tries to keep games low scoring. Syracuse is another one of those team who is always going to get the benefit of the doubt especially when it comes to qualification for the NCAA tournament. Every fan of the sport has seen it happen before, Syracuse will look terrible and have the looks of a team who will miss the NCAA tournament. Then they will beat Duke and North Carolina in a week away from New York and squeak into the tournament.
The Orange are off to a miserable start this season, much like years past, the difference this year is that Syracuse doesn’t have much in the way of offense and their zone defense is not doing anything to stop anyone. This appears to be one of the worst Syracuse teams Boeheim has had in his tenure there. Outside of Elijah Hughes and upstart freshman Quincy Guerrier the Orange don’t have much.
In the last week against other power competition in Oklahoma State, Penn State and Iowa the Orange were exposed and gave up a lot of points. Those are going to have to be fixed before ACC play gets ramped up again. Is Syracuse going to be fine and still make the NCAA tournament? History tells us yes they will win enough games to be in or at the very least a bubble team come March. Players like Joe Girard and Marek Dolezaj will improve and play better than they have.
However, right now through the first month, the Orange has not performed well against the other power schools on their schedule. For a team that I picked to be much better than they have performed, their performance over the first month is a story.