All season long we’ve been searching for “leadership” and a leader on this Syracuse basketball team. A vacuum was created with two fifth year senior starters graduating, and seemingly nobody stepped up to fill the void. As if it weren’t obvious before as to which player would fill that void, Wednesday night it became abundantly clear.
Tyler Lydon is that leader Syracuse has been looking for.
Take this sequence in the second half…
The Orange lead had shrunk to just a single point. Lydon gets the ball around the free throw line, and makes a pretty move to the rim to extend it to three. Falling back into the zone, Lydon manned the paint. Seeing Lydon step up towards the free throw line, Miami’s guard threw an alley-oop pass. It was swatted away by Lydon in the middle. A Miami big gathered the loose ball and put up a layup, only for his shot to be blocked by Lydon. And guess who came up with the loose ball after the block? Yup, number 20.
Just one example, but when the Orange needed big plays on both ends of the court, Tyler Lydon stepped up and made those plays.
It goes further. In the first half, the Orange held a tight lead and was falling back into his spot in the paint in SU’s 2-3 zone, Lydon raised his arms trying to pump up the Carrier Dome crowd. It’s the little things, but with more time as the defensive anchor in the middle, it’s possible the leadership and communication is starting to shine through a bit more for Lydon.
With the game Wednesday, Lydon has scored in double figures in each of his last 7 games. In that span, he is averaging 20.7 points per game (if you start that stretch at the Georgetown game? The scoring average shoots up to 22.8 points per game over the 6 game stretch). That 7 game stretch includes three 20-point contests (his only three this season), and he hasn’t taken more than 13 shots in any of the 7 games. Imagine what those numbers could look like if the Orange actually looked for him more often?!
After a slow start, Lydon has turned out to be the player we all expected him to be. It just took until the last month for it to happen. There are a variety of reasons Lydon wasn’t all there at the beginning of the year, the most important seems to be that he was playing out of position at the “3.” Now that Lydon is back at the “5” where he played the majority of his time last season, he looks more comfortable on offense and defense and has really hit his stride.
Tyler Lydon is the best player on this team, that much is not up for debate. And after Wednesday night’s game, it is becoming clear he’s the leader as well.