I had some fun last week comparing our guards to a selection of Big East guards. Then I tried it with our center... only there aren't many true centers in the conference so I had to bring in a ringer and he, frankly, made the rest of the group look silly.
But the premise seemed fundamentally flawed. With rare exception, today's current crop of Big East players do not create the stir of emotions (rage, disgust, very rarely envy) as those of years past. I get no particular satisfaction from seeing that Scoop Jardine compares favorably to Peyton Siva and Jason Clark. So this week we'll take a look at the leaders on this year's roster versus some of legends of Syracuse past.
Some of these players are more legendary than others. They might have had one facet of their game that they truly excelled at, they may have been a cog in a Final Four team, they may even be sitting on the bench right now.
My methodology: As the starting point for this exercise, I chose the player that, in my opinion, marked the turning point in SU basketball . For better or worse, no one that played before Dwayne "Pearl" Washington will appear. My apologies to Dave Bing, and Louie and Bouie, and Vinnie Cohen, and player-Jim Boeheim, and all the others, but SU Basketball changed once Pearl took the court.
We'll start off by seeing how Scoop compares to some of the finest floor generals in SU history.
Also unfortunately, tempo free stats are hard to find prior to '96. I could have calculated possessions for each of the 25 seasons that are represented here, but I do have a life, so I went with per game stats. And because we're using current players at a variety of points in their careers, current players will be represented solely by this season's stats.
(Updated with correct ApG for PG-B)
All identities, for every position, will be revealed on Saturday, March 10. Special thanks to orangehoops.org for their career stats.