sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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Welcome to National Avocado Day!
Today we celebrate avocados! A fruit that grows on trees, avocados have a tough skin with a greenish or yellowish flesh inside, as well as a large seed. They can range in size from that of a hen's egg to up to about four pounds, depending on their variety. Some major varieties are Hass, Fuerte, Bacon, Zutano, Rincon, Mexican, Guatemalan, Booth 8, Booth 7, Lula, and Waldin. They are native to Mexico and to the area south of there down to the Andes Mountains.
The Aztecs are known to have eaten avocados. For a long period of time, avocados were only eaten in Central and South America and in the Caribbean, where they gained the name "alligator pear." In 1833, horticulturist Henry Perrine became the first to plant avocados in Florida. They were first planted in California in the 1880s. By the turn of the century, orchards were established, and avocados first gained commercial importance.
SU News
Syracuse fan survey results: On Jim Boeheim, Dino Babers and the future of Cuse (theathletic.com; $ Gutierrez)
This month we polled the Orange fan base, and 352 of you responded. The answers that poured in were illuminating and highly informative, indicative of where the fans stand on all things Syracuse athletics, from the game-day experience to the nuts and bolts of how the football and men’s basketball programs are run. Along the way, there were fun surprises, as well as obvious wishes: better facilities and recruiting. There’s no question about your rabid obsession with the Cuse. So thank you for taking the time to fill out the survey. The responses will inform our coverage moving forward. We hear you.
(Note: If you’re having trouble reading the questions or responses, click on the chart and it’ll enlarge.)
The average length of your fandom varies. It’s evenly distributed. One thing we know: Winning has been a constant for half a century, and the Orange have appeared in a Final Four in each decade since the 1970s.
ESPN’s Dave McMenamin – An SU Grad – Talks Basketball With Steve Infanti (localsyr.com; video; Infanti)
Dave McMenamin covers the NBA for ESPN and is currently in the Orlando “bubble” where the first games following the COVID-19 shutdown are scheduled to be played Thurday, July 30th. While attending Syracuse University, McMenamin was a student manager for the 2003 national championship team at with Carmelo Anthony.
Duke Had Some Devilish Shooting Last Season (DBR; Jacobs)
A young Duke team (is there any other kind these days?) finished the 2020 season as the ACC leader in field goal percentage.
Encouraged by their coach to try, even if they missed, rather than not to try at all, the aggressive Blue Devils made more shots than any other team in the league, and attempted more than all but three others that played more games. The Devils were also one of the ACC’s best 3-point shooting teams at .352 – a year after being painfully bad at .308.
Perhaps equally significant, they were notably sparing in trying threes, ranking tenth in bonusphere launches.
Other key factors in Duke’s field goal efficiency were its high rate of offensive rebounds per game (12.7, second in the league), setting up shorter shots against unsettled defenses, and its 15.5-assist average, reflecting fruitful passing. That also was the second-best rate in the ACC.
Good as it was, Duke’s shooting wasn’t all that gaudy. Since the conference’s earliest days, when field goal shooting was profligate and inaccurate, Duke’s .470 shooting from the floor was among the worst among leaders in modern league history.
North Carolina converted field goals at a .471 rate in 1967. Not until 2003 did another league leader in accuracy, Maryland at .464, dip below that level. Since then five other squads hit at or less than .471 from the floor yet still ranked as the sharpshooting class of the conference: Maryland and Duke in 2010 and 2011, respectively, at .471; North Carolina in 2012 at .457; Florida State at .466 in 2014; and Duke in 2020.
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'Odd Man Rush' trailer (2020) Hockey movie filmed at Colgate and Hamilton colleges
