St. John's Preview

St. John's storms into the Dome Wednesday, looking to blow Syracuse out by raining down some threes, slamming some thunderous dunks. Okay, okay, I know stop with the weather puns, but it's so much fun to flood you with puns in the first preview of 2008.

Who St. John's has played: The Red Storm so far doesn't have any marquee wins or bad losses. Their best win came against Louis McCroskey's Marist Red Foxes (83rd in RPI) and worst loss came against number 77 in the RPI-Virginia Tech. St. John's stands at 6-5 on the year.

Who They Are: St. John's is a very young team. They are a deep team, running usually 10 players a game, six of which are freshmen. Four of their six top players in term of minutes are freshmen. What this means:

• S.U. should come out in the 2-3 zone and stick to it. This team will not tear the zone to pieces. Most of the Red Storm probably haven't played against an active 2-3 zone like Jim Boeheim's in their career.
• The Orange will need the 2-3 zone to conserve energy. St. John's is solid defensively and is going to make Syracuse expend a lot of energy to score.
• St. John's does not shoot the three often. Their 3PA/FGA ratio is 29.0% which is about 70th lowest in the ratio. They also shoot just 34.5% from three.

What Syracuse May Have Problems With: This will be the age old classic matchup of a great offense vs. a great defense. Syracuse may have one of the best offenses in the country, but St. John's boasts a solid D. No team has scored more than 80 points against the Johnnies. There's a very solid chance Syracuse will break that streak as they've scored 80 in but four games this year and over 90 five times. St. John's is in the top 15% of the country in six defensive categories. Teams shoot just 30.5% against them from three and 44% from two which is 33rd and 63rd best in the country which are very solid numbers for St. John's.

What Syracuse Needs To Do To Win: Go inside early and often. St. John's two tallest players they play are 6'10 and 6'11, but between them they only play about 23 minutes a game. 57% of St. John's minutes come from players that are under 6'6''. St. John's isn't a great rebounding team so hit the glass.

What Should Happen: Paul Harris, Arinze Onuaku, and Donte Green all finish with around ten rebounds with someone up around 14 or 15. Syracuse uses their significant size advantage to pound St. John's on the inside to get a lot of easy baskets. S.U. won't shoot more than 10 threes all game unless Donte Green gets hot early. Arinze Onuaku will pain us again from the free throw line by missing about 7 free throws. Hopefully he won't pull a T-rob and miss eight in a row and cost Syracuse the game.

My final prediction: Syracuse 83, St. John's 68.