It’s a cool November night doubling as the start of the college basketball season. The defending national champs are in town and making life miserable for the home team. The locals got the first basket of the season, but the guests have pitched a shutout since that opening volley and are threatening to take a double-figure lead.
The home coach summons a freshman reserve, sending him to the scorer’s table to check into the game for the first time. Some people notice the player movement and a buzz begins to build in the arena. As more fans realize what is happening, the buzz grows.
A whistle eventually comes, sending the game to time out and causing the murmuring to subside. When play resumes, the reserve enters the game. The first time he touches the ball, you can feel the audience collectively hold their breath in anticipation from the overflow press area.
Who could possibly create this level of anticipation?
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No, he’s not the fourth-highest rated recruit in the nation, or even the 40th-highest. He’s the fourth-highest rated recruit on his team and ranked #202 in the national composite rankings.
Girard is not a high-flyer, a lightning quick ballhandler, or a towering player who dominates inside. Rather, he’s a 6’1” combo guard without elite athleticism or length. If you saw him at the mall and did not know who he was, you probably would not give him a second look.
But, almost everyone in that building knew well before that night who he was.
As a two-time state champion, his senior year escapades in football were relayed in the Syracuse media after he committed to the Orange basketball program. His basketball exploits were, too, as he entered his senior season as the all-time scoring leader in high school basketball for the state of New York and spent that final year piling up points in game after game, peaking with 69 in one effort and closing the season with 50 points in a state championship victory.
Heavy was the head that wore those crowns coming into Syracuse, as clearly expectations were high from day one. And the weight of a significant portion of the fanbase never got any lighter.
Both the Orange collectively and Girard individually were suffocated by Virginia’s defense that opening night, as the freshman finished with just three points and SU just 34 as a whole. Things did get better for both the team and Girard.
When starting point guard Jalen Carey went on the shelf with an injury shortly after, Girard asserted control over the spot in his first game in the lineup, missing just one of his six three-point shots while pouring in 24 points against Seattle, then never let it go.
Various portions of the fanbase have also never let it go, grousing about Girard for the majority of the next several seasons
He turns the ball over too much. He shoots too much. Girard led the team in assists for three straight seasons, which are pretty good results for being much more a square peg jammed into a round hole than a true point guard.
He shoots too many threes. Girard has shot 36.5 percent from three for his career, including over 38 percent in each of his last two seasons.
He’s out of shape. He’s a terrible defender. Girard had a higher steal rate than Buddy Boeheim in each of the three seasons they were on the roster together, just missing the same feat in defensive rebounding rate by one-tenth of a point last season. In one of those seasons, Girard more than doubled Boeheim’s efforts and, in another, he handily beat Boeheim and also surpassed Kadary Richmond’s rebounding rate despite significant shortcomings in both height and wingspan compared to those two.
Oh, wait. Some of those things are not complaints. It’s almost like Girard might be a very good player, particularly by making the most of what he’s got to offer.
His 30 points against North Carolina State is tied with Pearl Washington for the third-most in a game by a freshman, behind only Lawrence Moten’s 32 and Carmelo Anthony’s 33. Girard has the third-highest single season mark in free throw shooting behind a pair of Gerry McNamara seasons and is currently second in school history for a career in foul shot accuracy.
Of course, Girard has continued to climb the all-time leaderboard in three-pointers made this season. He passed Trevor Cooney and Andy Rautins for third place all-time in early February and is 17 treys behind Boeheim for second place.
Girard is 18th in school history in scoring with 1,616 points and Eric Devendorf’s 1,680 points in 15th place is a reasonable goal, barring injury. Catching Boeheim for 13th at 1,765 points is probably out of touch without the team making runs in both the ACC Tournament and NIT. Same goes for passing Boeheim in threes made unless he gets those extra games.
At the same time, it makes sense to compare Girard to Buddy Boeheim. They were teammates for the majority of their careers, so there is no need to adjust their stats for having played in different eras. So, here is one more comparison between the two:
19.0 points per game, 40.1% FG, 34.9% 3FG, 87.7% FT, 3.5 rebounds per game, 3.0 assists per game
17.8 points per game, 42.4% FG, 39.7% 3FG, 85.9% FT, 3.0 rebounds per game, 3.0 assists per game
The first stat line belongs to 2021-22 All-ACC First Team guard Buddy Boeheim, listing his production in conference games. The other belongs to 2022-23 Joe Girard, also in conference games while finally playing more at the two-guard than the point… but still playing a significant number of minutes with the ball in his hands.
Of course, Girard likely will not sniff anything higher than conference honorable mention honors, particularly if a recent poll of ACC beat reporters conducted by The Athletic is right.
That poll, which had its results released on February 14, listed six guards getting a collective 44 votes for being among the top five players in the conference. Girard was not one of them. This is not to say that Wake Forest’s Tyree Appleby, North Carolina State’s Terquavion Smith, Miami’s Isaiah Wong, Jamarius Burton of Pittsburgh, and both Reece Beekman and Kihei Clark of Virginia are not deserving.
It is just to say that this year’s ACC class is pretty deep in quality guards and Girard is absolutely one of them, especially when you compare his stat line in ACC play to a certain all-conference guard from last season.
It is also to say that he is a really, really good player. And when you look at the pressure he has been under from day one, particularly as someone playing out of position from almost the first moment he was on campus, he turned out pretty great.
