We haven’t seen much of Kaleb Joseph this season. As the year has gone on he’s gotten on the floor increasingly less, and now he’s going entire games without taking off the warmups. Last year’s starting point guard has become an afterthought, and while it’s unlikely that he actually won’t play another minute for Syracuse, it certainly seems like his days as a name Syracuse fans know are numbered.
It’s not like Joseph’s absence from the court this season has gone unnoticed, but when you take a good look at the numbers it really is shocking how much less he has been used.
Last season Joseph started all but one game for the Orange. He played less than 17 minutes once. This year he hasn’t started a game, and his 17 minutes against Charlotte were the most he’s played on the year. He’s only logged double-digit minutes three times, and didn’t play against Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech. In his 114 total minutes on the year Joseph has scored 16 points, while last year he scored 14 in a single game.
But is it that surprising that Joseph isn’t getting time? Last year Joseph turned the ball over 72 times, and he was constantly a step behind on defense. If you had to pick two things Jim Boeheim hates more than anything else, those would be it. The offseason was supposed to be Joseph’s chance to work on his game and perfect the 2-3 zone so he could be a big role player off the bench (I don’t think many people actually thought he’d get the start over Trevor Cooney or Michael Gbinije), but apparently Coach Boeheim isn’t impressed. Now he isn’t even the first guard off the bench with the emergence of Frank Howard, and being the fourth guard in the rotation doesn’t get you many minutes when the first two are playing 35+ minutes every game.
The future doesn’t look any better. The Orange are losing Cooney and Gbinije, but that still leaves Malachi Richardson and Howard in front of Joseph (assuming that Richardson moves to the 2). Then you bring Tyus Battle and Matthew Moyer into the mix, and there’s a lot of people for Joseph to beat out.
He probably hasn’t played his last minute for the Orange, but as time goes on it’s becoming more and more clear that the era of Kaleb Joseph being a major part of Syracuse’s game plan is over.
Posted: Nathan Dickinson
