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Buddy Boeheim curled around a screen from Quincy Guerrier and inched his defender down toward the block. The potential for a 3-point shot had opened receiving the ball, but Buddy drove anyway. Syracuse’s chance for a win against Duke had all but evaporated by that point, the 13:30-mark in the second half, but just two days earlier, Buddy ignited a 20-point comeback against Notre Dame — hitting six of 10 3-pointers.

That resulted in a season-high point total, a return to the 3-point form that defined Buddy’s second collegiate season but had escaped him this year. His drive on Duke’s Jeremy Roach illustrated how much his offensive game had evolved, though, continuing to back him down before exploding to gain a step and bank a shot off the backboard.

Buddy’s path to this point in his Syracuse career has been defined by the 3-point shot, his accuracy shooting it and the threat it brings to the Orange’s offense. This season, though — one filled with Syracuse’s ups-and-downs that have paralleled Buddy’s — he’s been forced to find other ways to score. He’s had eight-point games mixed in with a 29-point one. Eight percent games mixed in with 50-plus ones. And games that reflected his new aggressiveness and instinct to attack the paint mixed in with ones where he resorted to deep or contested 3s.

“He’s a shooter, that’s what he is,” said former Syracuse guard Eric Devendorf, who has trained Buddy. “He’s a knockdown shooter. But his evolution, it’s a lot.”

But as SU’s season enters its final stretch, the reemergence of his complete offensive game is the lift it needs. Guerrier, SU’s leading scorer for most of the season, has sputtered on offense with just 16 combined points the past two games. Alan Griffin has, too. So it’s been Buddy, the junior averaging 19.8 points per game over Syracuse’s (13-7, 7-6 Atlantic Coast) last four contests heading into Saturday’s game against Georgia Tech (12-8, 8-6), that’s once again secured the role as the offense’s go-to shooter he briefly surrendered earlier this season.

“I’ve been here before,” Buddy said after Syracuse defeated NC State on Jan. 31. “I’ve struggled shooting, and I’ve had stretches where that happens. Even great shooters have struggles.”

For coaches and trainers who’ve worked Buddy in the past, those four games have brought the shot they once developed in Buddy back to the surface — the natural release and finish, the swish that always seemed to follow and the ability to replicate that from any spot.

After the coronavirus shut down Buddy’s sophomore season in the middle of the ACC tournament, Buddy and his brother, Jimmy, started working out with Devendorf at the Boeheim family house. Devendorf arrived in the morning, strolled into the gym and pieced together drills and sequences that were simple yet still presented windows for development.

One area was Buddy’s ability to create his own shot. Instead of straying out wide when he drove, Buddy practiced driving to the defender’s outside leg — taking the straight-line angle before the defender can recover and cut him off, just like Buddy did against Roach on Monday.

“That’s where you’ll be able to play through contact and get your body into the finish,” Devendorf said.

It helped complement the 3-point shot that Buddy had already developed and fine-tuned. Back at Jamesville-DeWitt High School, before he transferred to Brewster (N.H.) Academy for his senior season, head coach Jeff Ike ran Buddy through different stationary drills at the beginning of practice to sharpen his form. Sometimes, it was a two-man shooting drill, or a catch-and-shoot sequence from five mid-range spots and five 3-point spots. “Repetition after repetition,” Ike said, so that way, those shots were familiar by the league games and championships at the end of the season.

But four years later at Syracuse, those same results — the 3-pointer after 3-pointer rate — didn’t follow. Part of that was because teams started face-guarding Buddy more at the 3-point line, Boeheim said, and limited his opportunities for open shots. It created additional opportunities for players like Marek Dolezaj to have 20 feet of driving space, but mitigated the offensive explosiveness of Buddy.

“Even when they went zone, they face-guarded Buddy, but that left it wide open in the middle for the other guys,” Boeheim said after the Notre Dame game. “But again, if we can get him some open looks, we know he’s a good shooter.”

That’s what has happened the last four games. It’s also what happened in early December, when Buddy converted on 4-of-8 3-pointers and over 50% of his shots against Boston College in the first ACC game. But now, games like that have been repeatedly strung together, even as his role in the offense has primarily remained the same — with his percentage of shots taken only fluctuating from 26.4% to 26.5%, per KenPom.

With 2:30 left against the Blue Devils, Buddy took two dribbles on Henry Coleman III before turning his back to the defender and the basket. He flipped to his opposite hand, and shuffled his way across the paint before dropping a floater past a pair of Duke defenders and into the basket. “(I’m) just driving and knowing I can get good shots,” Buddy said days earlier, when he executed similar shots.

And on the next two Syracuse possessions, the ones where it scored the final points of the blowout, Buddy elevated twice from beyond the arc — just like he always had, and always tried to earlier this season even if the baskets didn’t follow. This time, though, he sunk them both.

Published on February 24, 2021 at 10:21 pm

Contact Andrew: arcrane@syr.edu | @CraneAndrew