If you remember: After Saturday's loss against Hofstra, I wrote that it was abundantly clear that the Syracuse men's basketball team is not built to play in the half-court, at least not right now without star Donnie Freeman in the lineup.

And those same thoughts surfaced on Wednesday night, even despite the Orange beating Mercyhurst 76-62 at the JMA Wireless Dome. Despite playing against an inferior opponent -- at home -- the Orange were unable to impose their will, especially in the half-court. Without Freeman, the best move for this team is to clearly use its athleticism, force turnovers and get out in transition. 

However, head coach Adrian Autry disagrees about the state of his offense, and he delivered an impassioned answer in the post-game press conference.

Let's examine a bit of what's going on - at least with the eye test - and look at Autry's thoughts.

SU is not a good three-point shooting team

When a team is a good three-point shooting team, it's easy to fall into a lull. Players will just float around the perimeter and wait for a pass to find them beyond-the-arc. That can work, if three-point shooting is your strength, but it's not for this group.

Entering play on Wednesday, Syracuse was 305th in the nation in three-point shooting percentage at 30.5 percent. The Orange went just 4-of-17 on Wednesday in that regard.

Also entering play? They were 228th in three-pointers attempted per game. They certainly don't rely on the three-point shot, but given how poorly they've shot the ball, they need to force the ball inside even more.

SU's big man are not perimeter players

I'm not knocking this at all. William Kyle III is the heartbeat of this team, and his energy is unmatched. Sadiq White has excellent athleticism and provides a lot for this team as well. That said, those players have a combined eight three-point attempts between them this season. They don't really stretch the floor, and as a result, they are near the basket quite a bit.

On the positive side of things, they are there to get rebounds. On the negative, the lane is somewhat clogged, making it difficult to drive and penetrate. If we're asking SU to attack the rim more often, it can be hard to do that when your bigs are constantly by the hoop.

Young and new players are still learning

We are 11 games into the season and clearly some guys are still figuring out how they fit and what can they do in this offense. Kiyan Anthony, White and Tyler Betsey are all freshmen learning how to play at the collegiate level, while Nate Kingz and Naithan George are transfers.

As they get more comfortable, the hope is that they'll be able to step up in an aggressive way, which can lead to more production offensively.

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What Adrian Autry had to say after the game

You can hear his full comments in the video player above, but Autry said multiple times that nothing is wrong with this team's offense.

"Oh, yeah, I’ve seen a lot of growth. You know, there’s nothing wrong with our offense.

We shoot 46, 47% from a two-point. Right. From the three? Right around 31, 32, maybe a little bit better. Right. We have a great balance offensively. All right?

The one thing, the place that we have had some issues and struggles with has been a free-throw line. Right? That’s improving, right? That’s improving. But we’re getting the shots that we want. You know, we’re putting pressure on the rim. We get to the free throw line about 22 times a game because we got guys that can put pressure on the rim.

We left some points out there because of our free-throw shooting. If we didn’t leave those points out there, do you know what we’d be doing? We’d be averaging almost 80 points. That’s what we’d be doing...

So there’s nothing wrong with our offense. And by the way, we played against four of the top 10 defenses in the country, and we’re able to score enough to keep us right there. All right, so let’s stop that. There’s nothing wrong with our offense."

Is he right?

We'll examine Autry's comments in our next post at Syracuse Roundtable.

Need to know

The Orange are now 7-4 and they'll be back in action on Saturday afternoon at the JMA Wireless Dome. Tip-off is 4 p.m. ET.

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