The Orange basketball team has some unusual statistical oddities occurring this season. This is being driven by the reliance on three guys to do virtually all of the scoring: Tyus Battle, Oshae Brissett, and Frank Howard.
Hopefully Matthew Moyer continues to exploit the defensive coverage being given to him and he keeps improving his value as a fourth scorer. A tip of the hat to Howard who recognizes that Moyer is getting weak coverage and giving him the ball in those situations.
The Orange have a three headed offensive attack right now
with three guys averaged 15.4 ppg or more.
The 1993-94 team was the last team with three guys with 15+ ppg: Lawrence Mote 21.5, Adrian Autry 16.7, and
John Wallace 15.0. The 2012-13 team,
which made the Final Four had a leading scorer C.J. Fair with just 14.5
ppg, lower than all three scorers this year. The 2011-12 team's leading scorer
had 13.4 ppg (Kris Joseph), and 2010-11 had 14.3 ppg (again Joseph).
The downside is that the fourth leading scorer on this year's squad barely averaged
5.3 ppg (Pascal Chukwu). I have to go back to
2004-05 to find a team where the fourth leading scorer was even remotely close to
that low, and that was Terrence Roberts with 7.2 ppg. Fourth leading scorer on the 2001-02 team was
Hakim Warrick with 6.1 ppg. Fourth leading
scored on the 1989-90 team was Dave Johnson with 6.5 ppg. You would have to go all the way back to
1948-1949 to find a Syracuse team where the fourth leading scorer averaged 5.4 ppg
or less.
I'd expect Moyer and Marek Dolezaj's numbers to improve as the
year moves on, and for them to end up in the 6-7 ppg range; I'd also expect our
top three scorers numbers to start to dip as the others on the team start to
score more.
But it is interesting from an historical perspective how
unusual our point spread is right now.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment