{"id":329613,"date":"2025-10-24T17:06:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T17:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/329613\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T17:06:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T17:06:13","slug":"syracuse-mens-basketball-what-to-watch-vs-buffalo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/329613\/","title":{"rendered":"Syracuse men\u2019s basketball: what to watch vs Buffalo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Syracuse Orange head to Western New York for an exhibition game against the Buffalo Bulls at KeyBank Center. The game will tip at 7:00 pm and will be streaming on <a href=\"https:\/\/cuse.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">cuse.com.<\/a> Here\u2019s what we\u2019re watching for:<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">It\u2019s the first game, so the offense might be a bit sluggish, but will this group back up the talk and show effort on the defensive end? I\u2019m going to watch and see if perimeter players fight through screens. Are the players communicating with each other and avoiding the breakdowns that kept showing up last season?<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">With just JJ Starling and Donnie Freeman returning from last year\u2019s team, the 2025-26 roster features plenty of new faces. Since it\u2019s just an exhibition, I\u2019m particularly interested to see what are the different lineup combinations coach Adrian Autry opts to go to. Specifically, the forward spots remain fascinating to me. Who ends up starting at the three? Does Freeman see some time at the five? How much will Autry go to a three-guard look? It\u2019s a good time to experiment and see how it translates on the court.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">I\u2019ve been harping on it all offseason and throughout last season. Nothing that Syracuse did in half-court defense last year was acceptable, and thankfully, the staff realized that. With all new personnel (aside from Freeman and Starling), I\u2019m extremely excited to watch a more mobile Orange frontcourt try to defend ball screens. Given that Buffalo was 92nd percentile in ball screen frequency last year, and they added a talented former high-major point guard in Daniel Freitag out of the transfer portal, I expect we will see many opportunities for Syracuse to play aggressively, rotate, and protect the rim.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">***********************************************************************************************<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">What will you be watching for in this one?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Syracuse Orange head to Western New York for an exhibition game against the Buffalo Bulls at KeyBank&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":329614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,1317,1337,1338,62,107259,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-329613","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-syracuse-mens-basketball","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115430240057972068","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}