At 7 p.m. last Friday night, Syracuse men’s basketball held its first practice. Justin Thomas and Jake Presutti were both on the court. Ross DiLiegro was a student assistant. All are or had once been walk-ons.

At 10 p.m. last Friday night, the men’s basketball team held tryouts. Jonathan Cherry-Woode, Gregory Frias and Freddy Lopez were all on the court. All tried to become walk-ons. None made the team.

Depending on whom you ask, the value of the basketball tryouts mean different things.

‘We kind of know what we’re looking for,’ Syracuse associate head coach Bernie Fine said. ‘There was no one we felt was better than what we already have.’

‘It’s not organized or anything, but what do you expect?’ Cherry-Woode said. ‘I don’t think it makes a difference whatever you do.’

The walk-on situation must be looked at rationally. Syracuse simply doesn’t have the roster spots. Last year, the Orange carried 15 players at the beginning of the season, not including Ryan Cahak, who was academically ineligible. When Mike Jones transferred, the Orange carried 14 players.

This year, Syracuse already has 15 players, including guard Andy Rautins, who is lost for the season with a torn ACL. There are whispers that football receiver Mike Williams still might join the team, too.

But the tryouts are as much about covering the bases as they are for offering a spot. It’s to see who is out there. DiLiegro began as a freshman for SU in 2003-04 and the coaches knew who he was when he arrived. Todd Burach, a walk-on who graduated last season with DiLiegro, was spotted by Fine at Flanagan Gym one day. Presutti attended SU basketball camp and was a manager his freshman year. Thomas tried out one year, didn’t make it, but made the team the next year.

In fact, DiLiegro said most of the walk-ons during his four years on the team didn’t come from the tryout mix but were able to build the necessary connections and provide what the coaches sought.

‘Going to tryouts, a lot of the guys think it is the be-all, end-all,’ DiLiegro said. ‘If you’re really serious, you have to do more than tryouts, if you’re serious about being a walk-on. You have to be pro-active, talk to people, talk to other coaches, talk to other guys on the team.’

If it is the case that the odds were against players trying out that SU would even find a player, Frias wanted to know why they even held tryouts.

‘I doubt they were going to pick somebody up, so why can’t they tell us that before the tryouts?’ he said.

The answer would be Thomas. He’s a junior on SU’s team who tried out his freshman year and did not make it. But last season Syracuse was looking for guards, and they liked Thomas from the year before. He made the team in his second go-around.

This season, Syracuse is loaded at the guard spot. Fine said he went into the tryouts looking for size.

‘If there was a 6-8, 6-9 kid, we can use a big guy to bang inside,’ Fine said. ‘There were only two kids (with good size).’

To this end, Fine was correct. There were two players with good size, and even those players – about 6-foot-5 and 6-foot-6 – don’t offer the type of big man Fine said they were looking for this season.

The tryout lasted 47 minutes. There were few differences between the scrimmages in Manley last Friday night and pick-up games at Archbold every day – both in talent on the court and organization of the event.

There were 21 students who attended tryouts, which are run by Fine. Fine said it was the lowest turnout in years. The players were split into teams of five and scrimmaged.

‘You really don’t know who makes the decision,’ Frias said. ‘You see (Boeheim) here, and it seems like he doesn’t want to be here. He’s not really watching what you’re doing. It’s kind of a waste of my time and a waste of his time.’

Boeheim was there for part of the time, and Fine said Boeheim observed every player.

A source of frustration from a few of the students who attended was the structure of the tryouts. There were no specific skill drills. Fine said scrimmages provide enough of a look to make an evaluation.

‘You can tell,’ Fine said. ‘They’re playing full court, everybody got the ball and made some type of offensive shot.’

When removed from the situation, neither side is wrong. The numbers simply do not work out in favor of players making the team this season. Last year, there were four walk-ons. Scholarship players filled those spots this season.

The students who tried out have a right to be frustrated. They didn’t make a team – any competitive person might be disappointed after the process. And anyone who’s played pickup basketball knows that talent often begets talent. Good players make other players look better.

When it comes to walk-ons, there is a very specific need the coaches try to address. It isn’t simply the best player or best athlete. Walk-ons seldom play in games, so their main purpose is to help out in practice and be the type of people that can be a positive light for the program.

DiLiegro had both tangible and intangible benefits for the team. At 6-foot-8, he provided the size to play against Terrence Roberts and Darryl Watkins at practice every day. He was also a sound student whom the program did not have to worry about academically.

‘One thing I always knew, to be a walk-on it’s not just being able to deal with it physically,’ DiLiegro said. ‘It’s very mental. You have to have mentality that you’re going to work hard in practice, go hard every day in practice, sit there the whole time (during games).’

Cherry-Woode insisted ‘politics’ were involved in roster decisions. This was a notion Lopez held, too.

‘There are some players out there that can compete and thrive in the D-I level but the only reason they aren’t playing on this level is because of all the biases relevant through the college recruiting scene, which is an utter shame of how far basketball has come in this country,’ Lopez wrote in an e-mail the day after he was interviewed after tryouts.

There is some truth to this. There are no doubt players who slip through the cracks every season. There might be many high school players who go unrecruited either by virtue of the team they play for or system they play in. And it isn’t a stretch to think a scholarship player every few years might have less talent than one of those students who didn’t get recruited.

But if there is one thing you can be assured about college sports, the coaches are in the talent business. If a player is good enough, a coach will find him.

Ultimately, it was the talent and space that was the difference Friday night. The team at 7 p.m. was almost full, and it left the players at 10 p.m. with 47 minutes and no luck.

Zach Berman is the sports columnist for The Daily Orange, where his column appears every Wednesday and select days throughout the semester. He can be reached at zberman@syr.edu.

Published on October 16, 2007 at 12:00 pm