The NCAA Tournament begins specifically for Syracuse (20-13, 8-10 Atlantic Coast) on Wednesday at 9:10 p.m. in Dayton, Ohio. Arizona State (20-11, 8-10 Pacific-12) will be the opponent. Our beat writers discuss the matchup, the tournament and more in this roundtable.

1. What does Syracuse need to do to beat Arizona State in the First Four?

Sam Fortier: Control the offensive glass. Arizona State is very susceptible to teams who crash the offensive glass well (like Syracuse). For Arizona State, in the five losses in its last six games, it has been out-rebounded by a significant number and fallen. The Orange ranks 12th in the nation, grabbing over 35 percent of all available o-board rebounds, according to Kenpom.com. Syracuse has two 6-foot-10 and taller rim-protectors matching up with quick ASU guards and wings who can push the ball and supplement defense in other ways. If Syracuse is able to garner itself extra possessions against a smaller but talented offensive team, that could generate the extra shots it needs.

Matthew Gutierrez: Given Arizona State’s struggles against zone defenses this season, there is no secret that Syracuse has to score. The Sun Devils don’t have a defense anything like SU’s last opponent, North Carolina, which could help the offense gain some traction. Let’s see how Frank Howard, the pilot of the offense, initiates in the halfcourt — how he involves Tyus Battle, how he calls for screens from bigs, and whether he limits turnovers. Howard needs to play smart. Marek Dolezaj needs to be that fourth scorer. And for this offense to really click to win a game or two this Tournament, the big three needs to create off the dribble. Settling for 3s late in the shot clock won’t be the formula.

Tomer Langer: I mentioned this in the opponent preview, but Syracuse needs to control the tempo. This is a matchup between two polar opposites. The Sun Devils are an offensive juggernaut that likes to shoot early and often. The Orange is a lockdown defensive team that sometimes struggles to get into its sets on offense. The last time Syracuse had so many days off, it exploded for 81 points against Boston College, but that’s not fair to expect now. SU should play into its strengths and slow down the ASU attack.

2. If Syracuse loses on Wednesday night, can this season be considered a success?

Sam Fortier: Yes. It’s not a fist-pumping, jumping-up-and-down success because this team easily could’ve missed the Tournament for the third time in the last four years — even Jim Boeheim knows it — but probably everything that could’ve gone wrong did. Syracuse sent its core to the NBA Draft, lost another player to transfer, watched a replacement quit the team and then the freshman learning to replace him suffer a season-ending ACL injury. It’s one of Boeheim’s best coaching jobs to mold one of the youngest teams in the country, entering the season without hardly any continuity and a proven alpha, into a team that skirted into the NCAA Tournament. Just the acrobatics alone of weaving this team through disaster and back to eek into the NCAA Tournament should be enough to rubber-stamp approval on this season.

Matthew Gutierrez: As Tomer alludes below, that Syracuse has sweated out three consecutive Selection Sundays reflects the state of the program. In fact, this would have been SU’s fourth-straight stressful Selection Sunday had there not been a postseason ban in 2015. What this means is, in the grand scheme, SU’s bottom-of-the-ACC seasons are not successes. Which brings us to this year’s team. Say what you want about what Syracuse has had to “overcome” this season — injuries, players leaving, lack of talented newcomers, whatever. A lot of teams face similar obstacles. Maybe not to the same extent, but SU hasn’t played well with any regularity. Barring a run in the Big Dance, this season has not been a success.

Tomer Langer: Yes, with a caveat. This team was in the NIT one year ago and lost three of those starters to the NBA/G-League, before losing Taurean Thompson in August. The team then started hot in nonconference, but given what SU went through after that — Geno Thorpe’s abrupt and unexpected departure, Howard Washington’s season-ending injury, Matt Moyer and Bourama Sidibe’s injuries that have nagged them all year — it’s remarkable that Syracuse is in this position. Then comes the caveat: Two years ago, when Syracuse was a No. 10 seed, and that was the first time in program history that the Orange had a double-digit seed in the NCAA Tournament. That team did end up making the Final Four, masking its average regular season. Now, this year’s team is a No. 11 seed. Within the scope of this season, it’s already a success that SU made it here. But from a program-wide standpoint, Syracuse does need to eventually get back to being a team that knows it’s going to earn a high seed in the Tournament, not one that’s happy after sweating out Selection Sunday.

3. After being the last at-large team to make the field, did SU even deserve to be in this game?

Sam Fortier: It doesn’t matter. When the First Four games tip in Dayton, Syracuse will be in it. But to answer the question: Yes, Syracuse deserves to be here. The Orange won the games it needed to, fewer than I’d expected it’d need but apparently the ones it needed to anyway, and it had as much merit as any other bubble team. I’m sure it helped that some of those teams — Louisville, Oklahoma State, USC — were under the cloud of the FBI investigation. Syracuse should send the FBI a fruit basket this week. The only team possibly worthy of stealing Syracuse’s last at-large bid was Notre Dame. Without its two biggest stars, UND beat Syracuse on its home floor. With its two best stars, it’s one of the league’s top teams. Both those stars were getting healthy and ready to roll come Tournament time. But it didn’t work out that way. Notre Dame is out. Syracuse is in.

Matthew Gutierrez: No. Any team that, as fellow beat writer Sam Fortier observantly pointed out last week, doesn’t pay full attention during a team huddle probably doesn’t deserve to be in the NCAA Tournament. I don’t think it’s as far as “laughable” that SU is in, as analyst Doug Gottlieb said, but he makes a point. Syracuse’s losses to Georgia Tech, Boston College and Wake Forest ain’t pretty, and neither is a poor resume against ranked teams. I hesitate to give the Louisville win all that much credit, too, considering the Cardinals played iffy in conference play and will host an NIT game Tuesday night.

Tomer Langer: This one’s tricky. From a pure metrics standpoint, you can make the argument either way. Syracuse had a higher RPI than in past years, but still not one as a high as Southern California, St. Mary’s or Middle Tennessee State, all teams that missed the Tournament. And I don’t fully agree with the fact that SU didn’t have any bad losses — in my mind, losing on your own home court to a Notre Dame team without Matt Farrell or Bonzie Colson is pretty egregious. On the flip side, I thought Syracuse’s resume didn’t have as many flaws as a team like Oklahoma, but the Orange is stuck in a First Four game while the Sooners are in outright. Overall, I think the one team that maybe could have a claim is Notre Dame. When Farrell and Colson were both healthy, UND was just a better team than SU. In the end the committee decided against Notre Dame, but that’s the one team I thought maybe could have deserved SU’s spot without much of an issue.

Published on March 13, 2018 at 7:40 am