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No. 11 seed Syracuse faces No. 6 seed San Diego State on Friday night in Indianapolis in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. The Aztecs won the Mountain West Tournament championship and 14 straight games, and they’re coming off a 30-2 season last year. The Orange (16-9, 9-7 Atlantic Coast), however, scraped into the postseason behind a surge at the end of regular-season conference play.

San Diego State (23-4, 14-3 Mountain West) head coach Brian Dutcher, along with top scorers Matt Mitchell and Jordan Schakel, addressed the media via Zoom on Wednesday, detailing their preparation and path to Hinkle Fieldhouse in their pre-tournament press conference. Here are three takeaways from the conference ahead of the Aztecs’ matchup against SU in Round of 64:

Attacking against the 2-3 zone

Throughout their season, the Aztecs faced a true zone defense only against Air Force — and they haven’t matched up against a 2-3 zone. SDSU will try to replicate what Syracuse might do with rotations in practice, but its scout team won’t be able to duplicate the length or athleticism that the Orange have within their system, Dutcher said.

“Syracuse’s zone is great because that is what they are committed to,” Dutcher said. “A lot of teams will try a possession or two of zone, but they don’t live with it. Anything we do offensively, any set we run, any freelance movement we have, they will have seen a thousand times.”

The last time Dutcher and the Aztecs faced Jim Boeheim and his 2-3 zone was in 2012, when they scored just 19 first-half points and shot 27% from the field — including 5.6% on 3-pointers. This year’s SDSU group has the 28th-best 3-point shooting percentage in the country, though, and Dutcher expects SU to extend its defense and try to take away those shots, forcing the Aztecs to attack inside and create shots off the dribble.

That could play into their advantage because it’s a “force of habit” for defenders to instinctively swing their heads inward and “fall asleep a little bit” after entry passes, Mitchell said. That opens up avenues to quickly swing the ball back out for shots beyond the arc. Other opportunities, such as transition breaks, will also be key to avoid allowing Syracuse to settle into its half-court defense and become complacent in its half-court offense.

San Diego State will look to cause miscommunications within the zone, and it just takes one small error, “one misstep,” to get an open shot.

“Every zone has holes, there’s no perfect zone,” Schakel said. “We got to attack where they give us openings and make the right decision from there.”

Living in the bubble

The Aztecs traveled to Indiana after defeating Utah State for the Mountain West Tournament championship, and they haven’t been outside since Sunday. Players, coaches and staff were tested for COVID-19 immediately upon arrival and woke up at 7 a.m. on Monday for a second test before SDSU cleared the NCAA’s quarantine protocols.

That allowed San Diego State to have its first practice on Monday at 2:30 p.m. and film preparation throughout the day. Meals are either delivered to individual rooms or centered in SDSU’s meeting room and distributed among players to take back to their room and eat.

But the difficult part, Dutcher said, is figuring out ways to ensure that players aren’t able to “lay in the rooms all day” outside of their designated practice time — finding “some kind of activity where they feel like they are accomplishing something throughout the day even if they can’t leave the hotel,” he said.

Dutcher told his players that maybe, contrary to past NCAA Tournaments, the team that emerges on that final Monday in April won’t be the one that played the best basketball. It’ll be the one who navigated the quarantine and bubble life the best.

Preparing for Buddy, Guerrier, Richmond

After Buddy Boeheim’s hot shooting stretch in March, most recently averaging 29 points per game in the ACC Tournament, defending him will be one of the Aztec’s top priorities. What makes Buddy so difficult to defend is his high release point, as he’s able to recognize that very few defenders guarding him can alter and disrupt a shot leaving from his 6-foot-6 frame, Schakel said.

But Dutcher said the balance of SU’s offense, with three starters averaging double-digit points per game and the other two less than five-tenths of a point away, will also present difficulties for the Aztecs. They allowed opponents to score 66 points or more just six times all season and finished the regular season and conference tournament ranked 11th nationally in defensive adjusted efficiency, per KenPom.

“They remind me of us. We have very balanced scoring, and so not one player has to have a huge night for us to be successful,” Dutcher said. “And the same would be said of Syracuse … We have to be there to support each other defensively so one guy doesn’t have a monster game against us.”

One of those players is Quincy Guerrier, who opened the season with seven double-doubles before Jan. 31 but has had just one since. Guerrier’s skill set allows him to score from multiple spots, and though he’s not a 3-pointer shooter, he can still connect on 3s when needed and score the “garbage points” off offensive rebounds, Dutcher said.

Dutcher also compared Kadary Richmond’s impact in the 2-3 zone to the BYU one the Aztecs used to play. Richmond’s instincts let him read the first pass, get an arm out, knock it away and, more often than not, race out in transition with a steal.

“We have to be careful, and we have to pass fake, and we can’t telegraph what we’re doing,” Dutcher said, “Or he’ll make us pay for that.”

Published on March 16, 2021 at 11:19 pm

Contact Andrew: arcrane@syr.edu | @CraneAndrew