It's not about skillset when it comes to the Syracuse freshman, it's about the physicality needed to succeed at the highest level.
The Syracuse University men's basketball lost 78-74 in overtime against No. 3 Houston in the opening game of the Players Era Championship on Monday night.
The game featured a lot of positives for Adrian Autry's team, but it also featured a great learning experience for Orange freshman Kiyan Anthony, who finished with 10 points on 3-of-8 shooting in 24 minutes of play.
The son of Carmelo Anthony was 4-of-9 at the free-throw line, had one rebound, one assist, one turnover and two steals.
The learning experience
As noted, per the video above:
Now I thought on Monday, it was the first time that Kiyan Anthony looked, overwhelmed is not the right word, but where you could see the difference between of where he is and where the top players and the top teams in college basketball are. And it's really, it's less about skill or feel for the game, as it is just physicality. Now, Kiyan Anthony tried multiple times to get to the basket but had a hard time doing so. He had the ball ripped away from him once. Life was made tough for him. He did draw a foul going to the hoop, but you could just see the physicality.
Houston was able to kind of body him up a little bit in a way that we haven't seen in the first four games. Again, it's a learning experience. Kiyan Anthony is a young player, he is a thin player, he is a lanky player. It is going to be hard at times to get to the basket or get your shot off against guys who are 21, 22 in some cases probably even 23 years old. So I don't really think anything that Kaiyan Anthony did was poor in Monday's loss. Now the 4-of-9 at the free-throw line certainly needs to be improved upon, but in terms of like what he was doing with the ball in his hands, I'm not really that disappointed by it.
I do think it was an eye-opening lesson though about the physicality it takes to succeed at the next level, and against teams who are at the highest level of that next level. So Kiyan Anthony, 10 points, but again 0-of-5 from three. In part, I think he had to settle for three-point shots, and tough ones, because he knew it was a difficult task for him to get to the basket. All part of a learning experience and we'll see how he comes out on Tuesday afternoon against Kansas.
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