Next year’s Syracuse men’s basketball team has big shoes to fill. The departing quartet of CJ Fair, Tyler Ennis, Jerami Grant and Baye Moussa Keita played 58 percent of the team’s minutes and scored 63 percent of its points last season.
The Syracuse Orange appeared poised to be one of a handful of teams to have a say in deciding millions of brackets across the country. Unfortunately for Orange Nation, that was not the case.
I’m not talking about Trevor Cooney finding his shooting stroke (although that would help more than anything). I’m talking about giving the ball to Rakeem Christmas.
Christmas had 14 points and set career highs with 12 rebounds and seven blocks as Syracuse earned its 10th single-digit win despite shooting 35.2 percent.
Syracuse will try for the second time this year to defeat a conference foe at home and then sweep them on the road when they travel to Pittsburgh to face the Panthers.
Christmas’s offensive stats are way up. He’s shooting an absurd 74% from the field compared to 53% last year. His rebounding and blocks are slightly down, but he’s more than making up for that with his efficiency at the offensive end.
Four games into the Syracuse basketball season, some of the preseason observations and predictions are starting to take shape. Others are falling by the wayside.