Predaction!!! (LeMoyne reaction and Richmond prediction)

Went to the LeMoyne game Sunday courtesy of my STUDENT TICKETS!! It was an interesting feeling to be sitting back in the student section after a 4-year hiatus. Neat.

Difficult to draw a lot of conclusions watching the Orange against a D-II opponent, but here are a couple thoughts:

• Kris Joseph (Frs., G) has a good look to him. He's got that lean, rawness that is so typical of the 21st century forward. Think Nichols, D-Brown... dare I say... Hak? No, I don't yet dare.
• Onuaku looks like a different person. Maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me, but I'm buying into the whole "Onuaku is in uber-good shape" claims that have been swirling since he got back to campus this fall. He looks smaller... but not. Apparently he's got his body fat down to 7%, but kept the same weight. In a league with some scary-good centers, I'm confident going to battle with him
• Look at how balanced our scoring was. That's good, but only to a point. Basketball seasons are built on teams, but basketball games are won by individuals. As much as I buy into the whole "addition by subtraction" theory with Donte Greene, he was clearly the alpha dog on offense last year. Now, I would argue that he was not a good alpha dog, in that he didn't carry the team on his shoulders in those brutal collapses. But still, the team needs one player who everyone expects to step up his game at the key moment. Any one of those five guys who scored in double-figures can carry the team offensively for a game. But ultimately Jonny Flynn's ceiling is Syracuse's ceiling. (Note: Devendorf might be confused about this. Luckily, Flynn is the PG.)
  
• High hopes from Syracuse residents this year. Lot's of excitement. I'm buying in, but I'm also buying into the ridiculousness of the Big East, which I feel like Syracuse folks aren't yet thinking about. Good teams are going to miss the NCAAs again this year from this conference.

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I'm secretly worried about Richmond. Primarily, I think I'm just scared of them because of their NCAA tournament success (particularly, this infamous debacle). That aside, this is an A-10 team. This is a very early season game. There is much to lose and very little for SU to gain here, unless Richmond makes an unlikely surge into the NCAAs.

Luckily, Richmond doesn't matchup well with the Orange. They're inexperienced, short, bad rebounders, poor shooters, and run a Princeton-style offense against which the Syracuse 2-3 has proven to be more than effective (See: recent Georgetown victories).

Syracuse should be thinking of this as their real home opener, and come out strong from the start. The home crowd was pretty solid for the LeMoyne game, and should be about as good tonight, even though earlier today I was reminding some SU students that there was, indeed, a game tonight. (There's a danger that everone will think that the game starts at 7, when it actually starts at 6.)

Trying to think logically, I see Syracuse controlling this game with a double-digit lead the whole way, but never putting the Spiders away until the final 10 minutes.

Illogically, I fear Syracuse trailing early, leading at half, then Richmond getting the lead back around the 10 minute mark, making for a frightening conclusion.

(I like that logical-illogical prediction style. I'm gonna try to use that from henceforth.)