Editor’s note: With Syracuse’s first exhibition coming up on Nov. 1, this is the second installment of a five-part series analyzing the most interesting questions surrounding the Orange entering the season. Read the rest of the series, here.

When Malachi Richardson closed the door on his college career, foregoing three years of eligibility to roll the dice on life in the NBA, he inadvertently opened new opportunities for Syracuse.

Andrew White bolted from Nebraska. In came John Gillon from Colorado State. A trio of dynamic freshmen already awaited the two fifth-year seniors, stacking SU’s deck at nine, or possibly even 10 players deep. Jim Boeheim made no secret about it: If Richardson stayed, White and Gillon wouldn’t be suiting up for their final seasons with the Orange.

But Richardson took the plunge, and now Syracuse is looking deeper than it has in years.

“Everybody brings something new to the table,” Tyler Roberson said at Atlantic Coast Conference media day on Wednesday. “I think when (the reserves) do get in it’ll throw teams off because we haven’t had this much depth in past years.”

Roberson would know. He and Dajuan Coleman are the only two seniors on the roster to spend their entire career with SU. Gillon and White are imports, sophomore Paschal Chukwu redshirted last season, Frank Howard played sparingly as a freshman and Tyus Battle, Matthew Moyer and Taurean Thompson are at the infancy of their collegiate careers. Tyler Lydon is the biggest holdover from last season’s rotation that will figure into this year’s.

He, along with Roberson and Coleman, comprised half of the Orange’s six-man rotation in 2015-16 that played 6,933 of the SU’s 7,475 minutes. That’s five starters and one bench player accounting for 93 percent of a Final Four team’s minutes, somewhat of a mind-boggling concept. But this year the lineup options are plentiful, and couldn’t read any more different than what Syracuse deployed six months ago.

“We’ve never put five new guys in one year … that actually played a lot, which will happen this year,” Boeheim said at SU’s media day on Oct. 21. “… We have people at every position, a couple guys at every position, which we haven’t had in a long time.”

Boeheim likely tries leaning on his key cogs from last year while slowly incorporating his new assets. Roberson, Lydon and Coleman are near-locks to start, while White, Howard, Gillon and Battle could shuffle in and out of the starting five. With the number of players receiving significant minutes this year, the starting lineup could be a moot point.

Boeheim has led on that SU’s depth will allow for “some more things” to happen on the floor. Topping that list is the press, which Syracuse has been reluctant to lean on. But the change of pace is what jolted the Orange past Gonzaga and Virginia in the NCAA Tournament, and now Boeheim has the personnel to afford supercharging his defense more often.

Someone like Gillon, for example, a 6-foot speedster who moves as quick as anyone on the team, could enter for a short period to spearhead the press and then be swapped out for Howard at point guard. The permutations, at least on paper, allow the Orange to have several situation-oriented lineups.

“You never know when you’re going to need (the press),” Boeheim said. “…We work on it every day for a reason, and sometimes it can be the difference in a game.”

Of course, it’s just as plausible things don’t pan out exactly how players, fans or coaches imagine they could before the season tips off. One of the freshmen, likely Moyer more so than Thompson or Battle, could redshirt this year. Chukwu might not dazzle immediately in his 7-foot-2 frame after sitting out for a year.

Gillon and White are no locks to perform the same as they did in their inferior conferences. In fact, Boeheim said he didn’t expect White to be the same player — one who led Nebraska in points and rebounds per game — with Syracuse.

The puzzle will fit together somehow, and there’s only one absolute truth about it: It has plenty of pieces.

Published on October 28, 2016 at 7:26 pm

Contact Connor: cgrossma@syr.edu | @connorgrossman