Texas Would be a Tough Matchup for Syracuse

ifs, ands, & buts… ridiculous

Texas’ poor passing, handling, and sporadic shooting would really hurt against Cuse…

Justin Mason would shoot them out of that zone in about two minutes.

The ’cuse would roll us. A tall zone against our half court sets? No thanks.

Inshallah, Scipio.

That Kevin Berger guy fellates farm animals.

good to know i’m not the only one taking bong rips on their friday lunch hour…

He overrates our ball handling and size in the front court.

Trust me I get that Cuse would beat us, I even think I included it in the article somewhere. But one of the premises of the article was about big upsets and you’ll have a tough time finding a team outside of the top 15 that could beat the Orangemen to begin with. Texas and Baylor happen to be two of the teams that fit the big upset constraint. Hell Ohio State would give the Orange fits. So would Kansas. But those are top 5 teams, so I didn’t bother to include them.

As for Syracuse’s zone, it’s not a traditional zone that tries to force perimeter jump shots. Quite the contrary. They play a lot of denial on the perimeter and try to force you into the paint. Hell Pittman can catch the ball in the paint whenever he wants by simply showing. So can Damion and GJ. It’s what they do with the ball when they get it.

Brown, Bradley, and Hamilton can get into the lane whenever they’d like for the most part. Rautins and Jardine don’t really care to prevent you from getting in the lane they just want to chase you off of jumpers, trap you, and then attack from behind for a cheap steal.

It’s far from the perimeter shell scheme that a lot of teams use against Texas putting a premium on screening and cutting and moving without the ball. If you have big athletes that can attack the rim and shoot it a little bit, you have a chance.

On the other hand, if you’re like ‘Nova and have the best collection of guards in college basketball you still don’t have a prayer. Remember, Nova shoots it pretty damn well, and have the best ball handling guards of any team in the top 10. It didn’t do them a lot of good when they played Syracuse.

I agree that Baylor would be a good upset team for Syracuse. Especially after reading
your take on what it would take to beat the Cuse, I think Syracuse would be a nightmare matchupfor UT. Heck, UT can’t even beat the crappy zones the B12 teams try on them during stretches of games, how the heck are they gonna beat a team that actually knows what
it is doing in the zone?

I think MU might be an ideal team to upset a big dog in the tourney. I’d love to see MU’s pressure against UK.

“He overrates our ball handling and size in the front court.”

My wife underrates ball handling and size in the bedroom.

Seriously? Is there a worse matchup for Texas right now than Syracuse?

This is the team that just destroyed No. 6 Villanova and they have way better guard play than we do right now.

Hamilton would have to channel his inner Scottie Pippen and handle the rock for us to challenge them at all. Dont see it.

But the point is that the Horns have several players who can move to the paint and make the defense react because they can make 15-footers, and Syracuse would know that.

Things that likely will help the horns vs Baylor:

Guard Tweety Carter, he had 27 points last game vs the horns.

Play Jordan at least 30 minutes; last BU game he only played 2 minutes.

Damion shooting normally; last BU game he went went 6 for 17.

Baylor barely beat UT last game so UT should not have to improve that much to beat Baylor. If either Bradley or Brown has a good game, the horns probably win (I’m also guessing that the horns will defend Tweety better, Jordan will play a bunch, and Damion shoots OK).