Dr. Gross is beaming this morning (and it’s not because of visions of the Big 10 dancing in his head). He likely was walking on air back from the mailbox after grabbing this week’s issue of Sports Illustrated.
SI¬†featured Syracuse’s white-hot start in its “Inside College Basketball” section.
“Clearly, losing the top three scorers (guards Jonny Flynn and Eric Devendorf and forward Paul Harris, who all left early for the pros) from last year’s 28-10 squad has not been the calamity many predicted. Indeed, their replacements have made Syracuse a bigger and better team.”
“We were a good offensive team last year,” says coach Jim Boeheim, “but we couldn’t stop the good teams.”
Wanna number-crunch you budding Bill James you?
“So far that offense has been more unselfish (23.1 assists a game at week’s end, against 15.7 turnovers), efficient (55.2% shooting) and prolific (88.3 points per game) than the Orange of a year ago. Its continued high performance owes a lot to the 6’7″ Johnson (59.4% from the field and 54.1% from the arc), and two other players who didn’t see a minute of action last year.”
While sharing time at the point guard spot vacated by Flynn, 6’4″ freshman Brandon Triche and 6’2″ redshirt sophomore Scoop Jardine (who sat out last year with a stress fracture in his left shin) had through Sunday combined to average 18.6 points and 9.2 assists a game.”
With¬†two AP writers voting Syracuse #1, three Top-15 wins on ESPN and visions of a Final Four dancing in Orange Nation’s head, these are the good new days for SU hoops.
Hey Big 10… suck it.
