Syracuse Basketball's Takeaways After Colgate Win?

What's up, Fizz Nation? Dan Schaam with you outside of the Mello Center here on the campus of Syracuse University, breaking down Syracuse men's basketball 74-72 win over Colgate last night

Lots for the Orange to be happy about. They improved a 2-0 on the year, undefeated on the season, have also now taken down Colgate and back-to-back seasons after falling to the Raiders in 2021 and in 2022

But like everything, there's always things to improve upon, especially when you only beat your opponent by two points

And for Coach Redd in last night's post-game press conference, the thing that he emphasized the most was cracking down on transition defense

Syracuse as a team led up 22 fast break points to Colgate while only scoring two

And you could see it throughout the game. Syracuse looked frazzled at points, seeming as if they were going too fast

But that's actually something that Coach Red and the rest of the staff want from the Orange

Obviously not giving up the transition points. But Syracuse this season is averaging around 20 to 25

more possessions on offense on a game by game basis than they did last year

Coach Redd really emphasized that they want to play faster. Syracuse as a team wants to be able to go eight, nine, ten guys deep in a game

And he's saying that this team is going to get there. It's the first two games of this season

The biggest thing that he wanted the media on the rest of the fan base to take away was last

year squad knew each other. They had played with each other before. They were young though

and it took them a while to get going. And he said it could be somewhat similar this year, obviously

hoping that they'll gel together and come together faster, but these group of guys have never played together before

All of these guys mostly transfers, three out of the five starters for Syracuse last year

hadn't played an orange before Monday against Le Moyne. So lots of change coming to this program

but that's what excites Autry. He thinks that this group has so much potential

and has a chance to make a deep run. That's just going to take them a long

little bit of time to get going with each other