EX-UNLV GRADUATE/ASSISTANT KEY CATALYST

FOLLOW@CIMINI

As Jim Boeheim parades the Cuse’ bench motioning and yelling at his players there is a calmness of his assistants and team staff. The ACC shift and facing coaches that haven’t played Syracuse twice in a year for their coaching tenure, has heightened team confidence amongst the staff and players. Syracuse University has resurged to dominance in college basketball by doing it a bit differently than others. The course of one and dones and high amount of transfers has reigned heavily on college basketball. For Syracuse they’ve created their own system where pieces can come and go, with a plan in-waiting.

The last non-Syracuse team that didn’t have matched personnel to Boeheim’s system was in 2009. A team loaded with talent just did not have the tenacity on defense to handle the zone appropriately. Eric Devendorf, Johnny Flynn, Paul Harris, etc. were great in stretches but never committed to Boeheim’s zone defense. To be honest I always sensed something weird about the early departures of all three. Devendorf and Harris clearly weren’t ready to jump to the NBA. Maybe Boeheim was ready for an overhaul. Since then the team has blossomed four consecutive years. All with key pieces shifting and departing due to graduation or leaving early for the draft.

It’s fair to say each of the last four years Syracuse has lost a stud sophomore and an upperclassmen that has stayed his course.
09- Flynn, sophomore, early departures Paul Harris and Eric Devendorf, 10′ Wes Johnson-Junior (Only One Year at Cuse) Rautins, 12′ Waiters-soph, Fab Melo, Jardine, Kris Joseph 13′ MCW-soph, Triche, Southerland

The testament and detest the media has on Syracuse’s zone defense year in and year out is as cycled as it comes. When they’re coasting and winning, the ESPN analysts are wooing the Cuse’s zone. A loss and breakout the telestrator and the analyst that is suddenly non-mystified by the ease of beating the zone.

Like in any sport with any team a poor night is going to happen. On a poor night execution falters. Execution is the sole reason why the zone gets beat time and time again on a poor night. A team can hit three pointers at a 50% rate and shift the ball inside/out by using the free throw line and ten different other ways Jim Boeheim has seen over the last forty years. It’s been done.

What’s never discussed is the amount of wins Syracuse gets from adjustments. Over the last four years Syracuse has been in more than their fair share of close games–against small schools and big name schools. Boeheim’s shifting and manuevering of the zone to take away scouted advantages has easily propelled Syracuse to a high teens wins to loss shift over the last four years. An area fans of all sorts and the media misses out on.

The balance in Syracuse basketball is at an all time high. Recruiting stellar athletes has not been the case. They may get two to three top 100 recruits each year, but rarely is that player considered a top ten to twenty player. Those that have been in Fab Melo and DaJuan Coleman were big men that haven’t met expectations—yet in Coleman’s case. What Syracuse has done is recruit to their system and develop.

Not very many schools are doing the secondary part of the last sentence. College basketball seems to be so heavily in influx and roster changes that development is being missed out on. With Syracuse its stayed constant.

Boeheim has kept the school and his staff as in-house as any school in the country. It starts with him and his nest of assistants are all former players of his. Adrian Autry, Mike Hopkins, Gerry McNamara, and Nick Resavy. All have been integral in boosting Syracuse’s on-court performance, especially McNamara who has developed the shots on plenty of current and past shooters at Syracuse.

A great coaching staff can be found amongst several top tier programs, but the key piece to Syracuse’s leap and transformation has been strength and conditioning coach Ryan Cabiles.

He has been at Syracuse since 2007, but what good is a strength and conditioning coach without the proper facilities?

Take a guess on what year the Melo Center was completed? That’s correct, 2009. The correlation is not a coincidence.

Right around that time is when you started to see extreme differences in Syracuse basketball players strength, quickness, leaping abilities, and body fat percentage. At the start of the 2010 season Syracuse was not even ranked in the top 25. That changed quickly with big upsets to start the season. With everyone praising the addition of Wes Johnson and Syracuse, I was stunned to see the transformation of Arinze Onuaku and Scoop Jardine. Both had adapted to Cabiles workouts and were in the best shapes of their Syracuse careers.

A year later Rick Jackson followed suit and had a complete slimmed down body for his senior season. Jackson was the epitome of a blue chip recruit who became one of the best big men in college basketball. The same body transformation occurred with Fab Melo a year later, and DaJaun Coleman a year later.

One of the necessities of the Syracuse zone defense is reacting quickly and blocking shots as a help defender. Syracuse has continued to be one of the NCAA leaders in blocks because they swarm and fly to the ball. The zone may have smaller athletes but the quickness has not dropped one bit. Jerami Grant is this years obvious example. Not only is he much bigger but he is quicker and has added noticeable inches to his vertical leap.

Getting players into shape and advancing all the other variables just mentioned is impressive. But the other factor for Syracuse that has been underrated is the lack of injuries. The one key injury over the last five years was to Arinze Onuaku on a freak play underneath the basket against Georgetown in the Big East quarterfinals.

Fans have had to be more worried about an academic suspension than a player injury over the last five years. Another pad to the back to Ryan Cabiles.

UNLV has to be kicking themselves. Cabiles was a UNLV graduate and on their staff as a strength and conditioning assistant upon graduation. From there he worked his way up the ladder at a few different positions before landing at Syracuse.

To me Cabiles is the main catalyst for Syracuse’s continued success over the last four years. The coaching staff is great but the coup de grace to the rest of the NCAA is Cabiles.

With parity reigning more than ever this year, Syracuse will once again be in great shape to make another run at cutting down the nets.