Listen to the Fresh FizzCast on SU Hoops’ Struggles:
Syracuse basketball hasn’t done much to inspire confidence in its fanbase this season. It often seemed to be treading water and barely surviving in non-conference play, against teams we now realize aren’t all that good.
After one of the least impressive 18-game winning streaks in history, SU took one on the chin from Pitt. After that, things started to unravel quickly.
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The Orange is 2-6 in its last eight games, and has shown very little signs of turning things around in the near future. We caught up with The Fizz’s own Mike Couzens on this week’s FizzCast, and he says the team’s problems run deep.
“Jim Boeheim doesn’t have the type of players who are able to understand the game situation and focus in on an exact point in time and say: ‘Alright now we need to calm down.’ They go back down the court, they force shots. You have talented players, but the way you have to recruit and coach is for guys who understand game situations. And nobody on the floor seemed to grasp the reality of the situation last game.”
After Louisville beat Syracuse for the seventh straight time this past Saturday, D.A. wrote about the disgusting amount of success former Jim Boeheim assistant Rick Pitino has had against his mentor. We asked D.A. to come up with a solution to that problem, and he had a brilliant answer.
“Try not to play Louisville in the Big East tournament, and make sure you don’t play them in the NCAA tournament.”
While avoiding the Cardinals in the future would be nice, perhaps the Orange would be better off focusing on self-improvement. D.A. says it’ll need to make major strides if it wants to make its presence felt in the NCAA tournament.
“This is a middle-of-the-road Big East squad that’s gonna have to do some damage down the stretch and do some damage in Madison Square Garden if it wants decent seeding in the Big Dance.”
Thankfully, the tone of the FizzCast didn’t remain negative throughout. Doug Marrone finalized changes to his coaching staff earlier in the week. All the assistants stayed on staff, with some undergoing minor title changes. Back in January, Couzens wrote about the significance of staff’s the only offseason addition, Tim Daoust. Now that Doaust has officially been named defensive ends coach, we asked Couzens to put into perspective once more what Doaust might mean to the program’s future.
“There’s a guy Bill Mallory who used to coach at Indiana. He gave Scott Shafer his start. Scott Shafer gave Tim Doaust his start. So I figure if at some point Scott Shafer moves on to the NFL or to another college team to be a head coach, SU might make Tim Daoust the defensive coordinator because he comes from the same school of thought as Scott Shafer.”
Team Fizz also delves further into the inner workings of the Syracuse football coaching staff, Hoffman explains how the Hoyas offense broke down the Orange defense in the final minutes of Wednesday’s game, and we cap off the podcast with an epic rant about everything that’s wrong with SU basketball.
Posted: Andrew Kanell
