Syracuse Basketball: Lack of star power will force Orange to play team ball

Syracuse basketball doesn’t have any proven stars in 2019-20. Here’s why that’s a good thing and how it’ll force the Orange to play team basketball.

Syracuse basketball fans finally got their first look at the 2019-20 version of the squad on Friday night in the dome.

While some fans got to watch the Orange play overseas in Italy, not every fan did.

This year’s squad will take some getting used to. There isn’t a familiar name that will stand out like year’s past and that’s a good thing.

Head coach Jim Boeheim said as much in his press conference following the annual Orange-White scrimmage in the loud house:

"“The difference between this year’s team and last year’s team with Tyus Battle, Frank Howard, and Oshae Brissett is you had three guys that were going to play 38 minutes. This year, at this stage, the only guy who looks like he’ll be playing that much is Elijah Hughes. I think there’s more flexibility with the minutes, in terms of getting guys on the court. Nothing is set in stone. I think we’ll be flrexible with how we play guys. It could change, literally, from game-to-game. We’ll just see how people play.” – via Chris Carlson of Syracuse.com."

A term that has been used over the last two calendar years, more so two years ago, is ‘hero ball’. The term is defined as one player trying to win the game for his team.

Now that can sometimes be a good thing, but it wasn’t always pretty. Two years ago Battle had to often play ‘hero ball’ because quite frankly there was no one else on the roster capable of keeping the team in the game.

Last year the Orange on paper got better depth, which meant that Battle could shoot less volume and be more efficient as a scorer. Well this year it doesn’t look like that’ll be a problem early on.

At ACC Media Day last week, Boeheim suggested that this year’s team has probably the best depth he’s had on a basketball squad in nearly a decade.

Some of the top highlights from the Orange-White Scrimmage:

• Brycen Goodine won a 3-point contest against Buddy Boeheim, Joe Girard III, and Robert Braswell. For those counting at home, Goodine converted 80 percent of his attempts (12-of-15).
• The Orange passing looked phenomenal. Which feeds back into the original thought by Boeheim that the lack of star power on the team will force the starters and bench guys to share the rock, which is great news for the Orange.
• Boeheim said the team “has five guards and four of them can play the point for us.” The leading favorite is sophomore Jalen Carey who has looked really good through the foreign trips in Greece and Italy.