The kid was on the left wing, dribbling and shifting as the clock moved to less than 10 seconds. Tie score, crowd on its feet. And considering the Syracuse freshman had not made a shot all game, it was no surprise when his much more experienced teammate stepped towards him and asked for the ball, idea being a veteran would either make a play to precipitate the potential game-winning shot or just take the damn thing himself.
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| You can expect Flynn to get a lot more mysterious pats on the head. (AP) |
He shooed him like he was paparazzi, just raised his left arm and told him to move. What came next was four bounces towards the top of the key and a pull-up jumper that fell through with 5.3 seconds remaining to give Syracuse a 72-69 victory over Saint Joseph's last Tuesday night.
And that's when I decided I like Jonny Flynn.
Not because he made the shot.
Admittedly, that was a nice touch.
But what I really liked was that he wanted -- no, needed -- to take that shot, that he didn't care how the previous 39 minutes and 50 seconds had unfolded. Yeah, he had missed all five of his field goal attempts to that point, but so what? Despite the slump, Flynn seemed positively insulted that somebody -- including a junior like Eric Devendorf with 54 career starts to date -- would even think about taking the ball out of his hands in such a crucial moment, and that's pretty impressive for an 18-year-old in just his second career game, one that was on national television and for the right to play in Madison Square Garden.
"Jonny has a lot of confidence in himself, and that's a good thing," Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said Monday by phone. "That's a tough shot for a freshman in his second game of his career to take, but he wanted to take it."
I'm writing this column now because the Orange are heading to New York City for a Wednesday night showdown with Ohio State, and Flynn's name should come up often if you're spending Thanksgiving Eve watching college basketball. The folks at ESPN will replay that shot against Saint Joseph's, probably about 73 times, and then they'll call Flynn one of the great freshman point guards in the country before comparing him to the freshman point guard his opponent rode to the Final Four last season, namely Ohio State's Mike Conley.
Which is fine with Flynn, actually.
Because Conley has been a source of inspiration.
"Watching Mike last season gave me a lot of confidence, because that's all I heard before, that I was too small because we were coming into an era where big point guards are taking over," Flynn said Monday night by cell phone just before a late practice. "There's Deron Williams, Chauncey Billups, Baron Davis. All big point guards. But when Mike Conley came out and had the season he had and took Ohio State all the way to the national championship game, it just made me that much more eager to come to Syracuse and see what I can do."
So yeah, the Conley-Flynn comparisons are unavoidable, if only because they are both small point guards leading elite programs. Conley is listed at 6-1, 180 pounds. Flynn is listed at 6-0, 186 pounds. So there's not much difference there or in their statistics, at least at this moment.
