Jim Boeheim shouted to Bourama Sidibe the same demand he’s made all season long. “Hands up!” he yelled to his center, miming the ideal defensive position. But this game, Boeheim felt Sidibe needed more instruction. It was Nov. 29 in Syracuse’s NIT Season Tip-Off consolation matchup with Penn State and a sick Sidibe’s chest burned. 

The rebounding battle was lost. The momentum had vanished, and SU trailed 57-51 in the second half. Boeheim simply wanted Sidibe to jump. Sidibe picked up a guard who cut in from the free throw line. He slid his feet and made a flat-footed swipe at the ball, only to once again freeze at the sound of the whistle. 

“It’s not like I didn’t jump or something like that. I wasn’t able to jump,” Sidibe said. 

Sidibe loitered behind for a short conversation with the referee who credited Sidibe’s fifth and final foul. Just 17 game minutes after he entered, Sidibe shook his head and shunned his coach as he sauntered toward the bench. 

“Bourama’s got to be able to contribute out there,” Boeheim said after the game. “He was out of the game almost without a whimper.”

For Sidibe, Syracuse’s (4-4, 0-1 Atlantic Coast) starting center and a junior playing extended minutes for the first time in his career, fouls have been a consistent issue all season. His foul-out against Penn State was his first through eight games, but that doesn’t indicate his proneness to fouls. Sidibe has accounted for 28 of the Orange’s 121 fouls this season (23.1%), and his foul rate of 6.15 per 40 minutes is the worst in the ACC per KenPom. 

Sidibe’s tendency to foul has slowed the Orange’s process to tighten its rotation. Three games ago, SU thought it might have found something by utilizing Sidibe with Marek Dolezaj together on the floor in a high-low game. But foul trouble limited Sidibe to just 19 minutes per contest in the next two games. Frequent fouling teamwide has forced Boeheim to dig into his bench, giving extended minutes to Jesse Edwards, Brycen Goodine, Robert Braswell and Quincy Guerrier — players Boeheim has deemed “not ready.”

“Sometimes (it’s) kind of frustrating,” Sidibe said on Nov. 23. “I don’t want to blame it all on the ref, but sometimes it’s what it is … You have to some way find a way to stay on the court.”

Fouls have long been a problem for Syracuse bigs playing in the 2-3 zone. Last year, 7-foot-2 center Paschal Chukwu ranked near the bottom of the ACC in fouls per 40 minutes with a less-involved Dolezaj right behind him. In Sidibe’s freshman year in 2017, he seemed to be the outlier in this constant struggle to find an elite rim protector. He averaged over a block per game in the early part of the season despite seeing under 20 minutes a contest, a result of superior timing he credited to a habit of catching pigeons midair.

Knee tendinitis has limited Sidibe’s explosiveness, but not his affinity for attempting swats. In practice, Sidibe said Buddy Boeheim, Elijah Hughes and Howard Washington have all warned Sidibe of his tendency to swing his arms down to contest a shot, rather than jumping straight in the air and maintaining legal verticality. He said the reaction often occurs when he is picking up a man out of position, a common occurrence in the 2-3 zone. When a guard swoops into the paint toward his body, Sidibe tilts his torso back for a blow to his chest, yet swings his arms forward noticing the opportunity against a smaller player. 

“When you’re out of position, you can take charges, you can block shots or you could just stay up,” Sidibe said. “Sometimes, (I) just come down (with my hands).”

Sidibe’s shown he can impact the game with extended minutes. He missed just one of his 13 shot attempts in the first four games of the season and recorded a 12-point, 14-rebound double-double in 27 minutes against Colgate. Despite the Orange only playing Sidibe 19 minutes against Bucknell, his two fouls prevented ball stoppages and allowed the 6-foot-10 Sidibe to get out in front of defenses in transition. 

He knows that if he limits his fouls, better results will follow. When Sidibe checked into Syracuse’s matchup with Seattle on Nov. 16, he immediately grabbed his second rebound of the game. To that point the Orange — and despite a large lead — had struggled to hold onto the initial rebounding opportunities. The 6-foot-9 Myles Carter boxed out on every possession, grabbing and tipping rebounds away. Sidibe had done his job, the job he knows he can do: He won possession for SU.

But the next time down the floor, a similar battle for the ball ended with a Sidibe foul. Just 42 seconds after he checked back into the game, the buzzer sounded, Sidibe shook his head and slugged toward his seat on the bench with another mistake to redeem in the young season, and another wait before he could adjust.

Published on December 7, 2019 at 10:05 am

Contact Michael: mmcclear@syr.edu | @MikeJMcCleary