Syracuse Basketball: Michael Gbinije is Captain Consistency for the Orange

Perhaps this is begging for a jinx but there's something worth pointing out about Syracuse Orange guard Michael Gbinije's season so far.

#Syracuse’s Michael Gbinije is 7 points shy of 1,000
for his career. only player in ACC to score in double figures in every game this year

— John Kekis (@Greek1947) February 17, 2016

The 1,000 point mark is great and puts Gbinije in good company, but it's that second point that really caught my eye.

Sure enough, Gibinje's worst-scoring outputs of the season were two ten-point performances he had against Miami and UNC. More often than not, he's scoring in the mid-teens with a 22-point game or 24-point game peppered in there.

I went back and did a quick check of some of SU's best scorers in recent years to see if anyone else has gone a whole season scoring double-digits and, well, no. Rakeem Christmas came close last year but went under the mark twice. C.J. Fair finished under the threshhold three times as a senior. Kris Joseph was under seven times as a senior, including one goose-egg.

Without digging too deep into SU's scoring history, it's probably been accomplished before a few times. Carmelo Anthony did it in his one and only season. I wouldn't be surprised to find out GMac did it and some of those big scorers in the 80's and 90's as well.

But the lack of recent players with such consistency underscores the value of Gbinije, who might not put up amazing numbers every night, but is putting up consistent numbers. That shouldn't be taken for granted.

Some of this certainly has to do with the amount of time Gbinije is spending on the court. The graduate player is average 37.6 minutes per game, which is the third-most of any player in Division 1 (not to mention Trevor Cooney, who is ninth overall at 37.2). Boeheim is leaning heavily on his two guards and you only hope that while they might bend, neither or them breaks.

Last but not least, Gbinije's going into tonight's game vs the Louisville Cardinals with a 17.4 scoring average. That's just 0.1 off of Rakeem Christmas's numbers last year. His numbers have gone up in February as well as he's averaging 18.7 PPG since the month began (though his MPG are going up as well to 39/per).

If and when this Orange sqaud gets into the NCAA Tournament, you'll want to make sure you thanks Silent G first.