Chapter 1: What are the key themes of the upcoming game between Duke and Syracuse?
Hey there, Blue Devil fans. Welcome to the latest edition of DBR Bytes. We probably won't go a long time in this one because in the interest of full transparency, we are recording this moments after we recorded the recap of the Clemson game. We didn't want you to have an hour and a half podcast in your feed, so we break it up into an hour here, 30 minutes there. You know, that's how it works.
uh this is jason evans with you i am in durham sitting in a hotel room very close to the duke campus i'm joined by my buddy donald wine donald how you been in the past 30 seconds since we wrapped up the last podcast i told everybody at the end of the last episode that we were going to catch our breath and i did that so here we are we are here to preview the game against the syracuse orange uh a a team that and i'll get to this a little later a team that i think
They're the anti-Clemson, Donald. So Clemson is a team where the sum of the parts is bigger than the individuals. Syracuse is a team where the individuals look really, really good. But the sum of the parts hasn't really resulted in a lot of big wins for them. Tell us about the season so far for the Orange.
It's been not great if you're a Syracuse fan. 15-11 on the season, 6-7 in the ACC. They're tied for ninth in the conference. They do have some decent top 100 wins. Tennessee, of course, Jason, we saw them in the preseason. They beat Florida State, Notre Dame. They beat Cal in two OTs, and they beat Stanford. So those two games as well. But they have a couple of bad losses. They lost to Hofstra.
Again, not a terrible loss in Hofstra. They're 103rd in Kempom. Losing to Boston College in overtime is probably the one that will haunt them. 151st in Kempom is Boston College. They do have other pretty good losses against some really tough teams. Houston, Kansas, Iowa State. Clemson, Virginia Tech, Miami, NC State, UNC, and UVA.
So basically they've lost to everybody in the top half of the ACC and the top third of the Big 12. That's basically how they've gotten to 15-11 at this point. They are on a two-game winning streak after losing 6-7. And when you look at the numbers here, Jason, they're 69th in Ken Palm, 69th in the net. This is still barely a quad two game since this is at home. And...
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Chapter 2: How has Syracuse performed this season compared to expectations?
Evan Mia has them at 65. Bart Torvik is the one that has them rated the highest at 61st.
So as you go into the metrics, it's, it's interesting to kind of note how this team has had their struggles on both offense and defense, but also their biggest struggle is if you follow them, it's almost guaranteed that they're not going to get any points on the RDO because they're one of the worst teams in division one at shooting free throws.
Yeah. Yeah. We'll get into that. You know, I wanted to, you mentioned some of their losses, uh, They lost to Houston in overtime. It was a game they absolutely could have won against a really, really good Houston team. And probably should have won that game.
They were ahead late.
Yeah. The game they lost to Kansas just a couple days later was a 50-50, you know, very, very close game with five minutes to go. Kansas went on a run to, you know, go ahead and wrap that one up and win by nine. But it was a very, very tight contest in the final minutes. So this is a Syracuse team that has shown it can play with anybody. I mean, like, they only lost to Clemson by three games.
A lot of their losses have been very, very competitive. And as you mentioned, two-game winning streak, they beat two of the ACC bubble teams. They beat California and SMU this week. Now, both those games were at home, but still those are both really, really nice wins for Syracuse. The SMU game, they literally won, you know, functionally on a buzzer beater.
Syracuse is not a team that you should take lightly. Because they're capable, clearly, of playing with anybody. You mentioned that... They're, you know, in like the 60s, 70s in most of the advanced metrics. Pomeroy projects that this is a game that Duke wins by 19 points, 81 to 62. Bart Torvik says Duke wins by 18 points, 81 to 63.
You know, I don't know if the margin is going to be quite that large because I think Syracuse is very capable. Unlike Duke's recent opponents, Clemson and Pittsburgh, Syracuse is not going to play really slow. That's just not their MO. I doubt we see nearly as many of those shots coming at the very end of the shot clock the way we have in the past couple games.
On offense for Clemson, the first thing that jumps out is that this is a poor shooting team. They hit just 33% of their threes, which isn't terrible, but it's not great. But they are, like you said, really awful at the free throw line. They're hitting less than 64% of their free throws. They're one of the five poorest free throw shooting teams in all of college basketball.
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Chapter 3: What advantages does Duke have over Syracuse in this matchup?
His pull-up is really solid. He'll take a few threes per game, but he's not like a great outside shooter. I think it's a very, very intriguing matchup with Cameron Boozer. I would say that Donnie Freeman has a really good argument to be the third best power forward in the ACC, which is a third best, but when you have Cam Boozer and Caleb Wilson in the conference...
Who are both probably all Americans. There's no shame in being the third best power forward. He's just a really good player. One thing to watch about Freeman is sometimes he tries to force things a little bit too much. Especially he tries to make spectacular passes that probably aren't there. So he'll turn the ball over sometimes at inopportune moments. Their second leading scorer is J.J.
Starling. Duke fans, you should remember that name. We've been talking about J.J. Starling for a long, long time on this podcast. Yep. Duke once recruited J.J. Starling. He ended up going to Notre Dame. He then moved on to Syracuse. He's now a senior. He's in his third year at Syracuse after spending a year at Notre Dame. J.J.
Starling is going to finish his career with well over 1,500 points scored in an ACC uniform. That's pretty darn impressive. His usage rate, by the way, is down a little bit as a senior. But that's partially because he's taking better shots this year and he's being more efficient.
He was a kind of a wild mid-range creator, like just everything was off the dribble, contested, like not good shots, to be honest, earlier in his career. But he's gotten a lot better about that. And he's not committing as many foolish turnovers either. Syracuse has a new point guard as well. Another name that you'll recognize.
Their point guard is Nathan George, who came over after a couple years at Georgia Tech. He's one of the best assist guys in the ACC. 5.6 assists per game. Not a great outside shooter is Nathan George, but he's a very creative player. He has a solid frame. He can get to where he wants to be on the floor. He has a really good eye for angles.
Syracuse offense, to some extent, is put the ball in George's hands. and let him figure out where the angles are to attack the opposing defense. And he's absolutely capable. This guy's had multiple double-digit assist games in his career, and since he's gotten to Syracuse, he does have to look out a little bit
turnovers as creative as he is he sometimes will make a bad turnover for them so that's one of the things about nathan george um i have to mention donald a very very high profile freshman uh kyan anthony is carmelo anthony's son um kyan's role at syracuse let's just say it's been chaotic that's the that's the best word i could come up for Yesterday against SMU, he had 13 points.
He took 10 shots, played a key role in that victory for them. Just a few days earlier on Wednesday, they played Cal, a double overtime game. He only played 14 minutes. He took one shot from the field. That's been the story on him. It's like, oh, Kyan Anthony's like not there. Oh, wait, Kyan Anthony's playing a big role. Like up, down, up, down.
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