sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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Today is a day for the fluffernutter, which is a sandwich consisting of peanut butter and marshmallow fluff, or creme, that is usually served on white bread. Sometimes foods such as bacon or bananas are added to the fluffernutter as well. Amory and Emma Curtis of Massachusetts came up with Snowflake Marshmallow Creme in 1913, and during World War I they published a recipe for the "Liberty Sandwich", which was a peanut butter and marshmallow creme sandwich. This is most likely the start of the sandwich. Meanwhile, also in Massachusetts, Archibald Query also invented a marshmallow creme in 1917, and sold it to the Durkee-Mower company. This company began selling it as Marshmallow Fluff, which still exists today. In an effort to better market the peanut butter and fluff sandwich, Durkee-Mower hired an advertising firm and they came up with the name Fluffernutter in 1960. Today other foods that contain peanut butter and fluff, such as bars, cookies, and cupcakes, also are associated with the name fluffernutter. The What the Fluff Festival? is also held each year in Somerville, Massachusetts.
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A look at Syracuse basketball's potential starting lineup - The Juice Online (the juice; McGlynn)
We are less than a month away from preseason college basketball and about seven weeks out from the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas.
There is a decent amount of talent returning or arriving in Central New York, but it is a bit unclear who will be in his starting lineup.
But that’s why we’re here, and below is our best shot at determining who will start in the 2021-22 Syracuse basketball season.
Shooting Guard
At least one starting spot should be set in stone. That belongs to Boeheim’s son. Er, the younger son that is.
Buddy Boeheim returns after a big junior campaign in which he led the Orange in scoring. He caught fire in the postseason, racking up at least 25 points in four straight games to lead SU to the Sweet 16.
Buddy will unquestionably be a top option in his dad’s starting lineup. His scoring ability and familiarity with the zone makes him a lock.
The only other player likely to see much time, if any, at this spot would be Symir Torrence. However, Buddy played 36 minutes per game a year ago and that isn’t likely to change.
Point Guard
Who starts next to him seems to be pretty straight forward as well. Joe Girard III started all 28 games last year.
There are some fans who felt that should not have been the case. Girard struggled with his shot, knocking down just 35.5 percent of his attempts from the field. He also does not offer a tremendous amount of length, which is crucial to success at the top of the zone.
Kadary Richmond, who transferred to Seton Hall after his freshman season with Syracuse, was a lot bigger at 6’5″ and could get by his defenders.
What he lacked was what Girard provides in spades. At any moment, New York’s all-time men’s high school basketball scorer could light it up from 3. He had six games with at least three 3s, including the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament.
All of this to say, Girard will likely start, especially with Richmond now in South Orange, New Jersey. He is reportedly slimmed down heading into his junior year, so perhaps we will see a stronger output from him.
Torrence could see some extended minutes if Girard goes cold, but the job is Girard’s to lose.
Small Forward
Speaking of transfers, that is the story at small forward for the Orange. Quincy Guerrier exited after two seasons in CNY, landing at Oregon. Two of the top candidates to replace him are both transfers themselves. Cole Swider arrives from Villanova and is apparently drawing rave reviews from Jim Boeheim himself.
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Syracuse Basketball: Exciting weekend ahead as 4-star commits visit Hill (itlh; Adler)
In recent weeks, Syracuse basketball has welcomed numerous 2022 targets to campus for official visits. Now the Orange is set to have a pair of commits in this cycle make trips to the Hill.
As first reported by Mike Waters of Syracuse.com, this weekend 2022 four-star commits Quadir Copeland and Justin Taylor are expected to take official visits to the ‘Cuse.
In June, both the 6-foot-6 Taylor and the 6-foot-6 Copeland traveled to Central New York for official visits, but those trips were technically during their junior years.
Since both are now seniors, they can once again come to the Hill for another round of official visits. As Waters pointed out, Copeland and Taylor can sit in on classes and meet professors, as well as check out Orange practice sessions.
Syracuse basketball will have two four-star commits on campus this weekend.
Syracuse football is suiting up against nationally ranked and undefeated Wake Forest inside the Carrier Dome this Saturday afternoon. I hope that the Orange prevails, and also that Copeland and Taylor get to watch the game in person.Taylor, a four-star wing and a top-65 prospect according to , gave a verbal commitment to the ‘Cuse in late June after having Syracuse basketball among his five finalists.
Copeland, a four-star point guard and No. 86 nationally in the 2022 class according to , picked the Orange over seven other finalists in August.
Taylor and Copeland are good friends. They’re each spending their senior season of high school suiting up for the post-grad team at the powerhouse IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla.
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Syracuse Basketball: Recruiting behemoths get into mix for 5-star target (itlh; Adler)
Syracuse basketball has interest in 2024 five-star power forward Derik Queen from Baltimore, although a bunch of big-time college teams is vying for his services.
In a recent tweet by college basketball insider Adam Zagoria, he mentioned several squads that have offered the 6-foot-8 Queen, and two groups that I hadn’t previously seen mentioned are Alabama and Illinois.
These are two huge offers, in my humble opinion. Both Alabama and Illinois were top-10 teams a season ago, and each has done well on the recruiting trail.
The Crimson Tide, for one, is led by former Buffalo head coach Nate Oats. Only a few days ago, Alabama picked up a verbal commitment from 2022 five-star point guard Jaden Bradley, who is a top-20 player in this cycle and attends the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla.
His IMG Academy teammate, 2022 five-star power forward Jarace Walker, has the Crimson Tide in his top seven. Walker, who holds an Orange offer, has gotten some buzz in the direction of Alabama from national analysts in recent months.
Syracuse basketball faces hefty competition for five-star forward Derik Queen.
...Syracuse basketball showing interest in elite sophomore point guard (itlh; Adler)
A stellar point guard in the 2024 class is receiving offers and interest from a range of big-time college teams, including Syracuse basketball, according to a recruiting service.
Curtis Givens III, a 6-foot-2 point guard, is a sophomore who attends the Memphis University School, a prep school located in Memphis, Tenn.
Some of the primary recruiting services haven’t come out with national rankings for the 2024 cycle, but based on his early offer sheet, Givens can flat-out play.
According to his bio on recruiting Web sites, Givens has scholarship offers from high-major programs including Memphis, Maryland, Georgetown, Illinois, St. John’s and Florida.
Syracuse basketball has interest in an excellent 2024 point guard.
According to Givens’ bio on the 247Sports Web site, among those squads displaying interest in him are the Orange, Kansas, Houston, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Oklahoma State and Vanderbilt.
That’s a pretty impressive range of suitors for Givens, who is only a sophomore and will earn many, many more offers throughout his recruiting process. Hopefully, one of those offers will arrive for Givens from Syracuse basketball.
Orange coaches are getting into a groove with their recruiting efforts in the 2024 cycle. In August, the ‘Cuse made its first offer within this class, to Donnie Freeman from the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.
Freeman is a 6-foot-9 wing in his sophomore year at St. John’s College High School in the District of Columbia. Syracuse basketball coaches offered him in August at the team’s annual Elite Camp.
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Syracuse native Dick Nagy, left, is shown during his days as an assistant coach at Illinois alongside Jimmy Collins, another Syracuse native and Illinois assistant, and Illinois head coach Lou Henson. Photo from The News-Gazette
Dick Nagy, Syracuse native and long-time assistant coach at Illinois, dies at age 78 (PS; Waters)
Dick Nagy, a standout basketball player at Syracuse’s Central High School in the 1960s who went onto a long career as a college assistant, died on Wednesday at the age of 78.
Nagy played for the legendary Ed Lukens at Central High School. After graduation, he was working as a milkman when Lou Henson, then the coach at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, called to offer him a scholarship.
“I didn’t see myself as the college type,” Nagy told the Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun in a 2016 interview. “But then I went and it changed my life.”
Nagy got his coaching start at Barton (Kansas) County Community College. In 1979, Henson called again. This time he offered Nagy a job as an assistant coach on his staff at the University of Illinois.
The Flyin’ Illini enjoyed an incredible amount of success during Henson’s tenure. In 1989, Illinois advanced to the NCAA’s Final Four, beating Syracuse in the Elite 8. Jimmy Collins, another Syracuse native, was also an assistant coach on that staff.
Current Illinois coach Brad Underwood put out a message on Twitter, acknowledging Nagy’s contributions to the school’s basketball program.
“Dick Nagy was the foundation of so many outstanding Illini teams and a rock for Coach Henson,’' Underwood said.
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Teel: Experienced and confident, Hokies again look like top-five ACC basketball team (richmond.com; Teel)
Virginia Tech played 20 games last basketball season without enduring consecutive defeats. Then the Hokies went one-and-done in the ACC and NCAA tournaments, falling to North Carolina and Florida.
As with many outcomes during the pandemic, this two-game slide merits closer inspection. Virus protocols sidelined Tech (15-7, 9-4 ACC) for nearly two weeks prior to the conference tournament and canceled seven of their final nine regular-season dates.
Indeed, a more game-ready group might well have summoned the legs to withstand the Tar Heels in the second half and survive the Gators in overtime. But pandemic notwithstanding, watching a season that included victories over No. 3 Villanova and No. 8 Virginia end with a two-game losing streak left scars.
“That stings a lot,” fifth-year senior forward Justyn Mutts said during the Hokies’ opening week of full-scale practices.
Relieving the sting is the return of veterans such as Mutts, Keve Aluma, Nahiem Alleyne and Hunter Cattoor, plus the arrival of newcomers such as freshman Sean Pedulla and Wofford graduate transfer Storm Murphy.
“We feel like we can go the distance,” Mutts said.
He meant winning the national championship, quite the aspiration for a program that’s never reached a Final Four or an ACC tournament title game. But Virginia Tech is absolutely capable of cracking the ACC’s top five for the third time in four years, and a top-five ACC team often equates to national contention.
“I try to temper those expectations,” said Mike Young, the Hokies’ third-year coach. “... [But] we’re going to be pretty good.”
They sure are, and the upbeat vibe starts with Aluma, the conference’s best returning player.
No, I haven’t forgotten about Syracuse’s Buddy Boeheim, who during a four-game postseason stretch scored 112 points and made 24 of 43 attempts beyond the 3-point arc. But Boeheim, it should be noted was not among the 23 players voted All-ACC last season — 16 on the three teams and seven honorable mention.
Nor am I dismissing Miami’s Isaiah Wong or North Carolina’s Armando Bacot, third-team all-league selections and their respective team’s leading scorer.
But the 6-foot-9, 235-pound Aluma, a Wofford transfer, finished sixth in All-ACC voting conducted by the conference’s media and coaches, four points behind Virginia’s Sam Hauser for the final first-team spot. He led Tech in scoring (15.2 points per game), rebounding (7.9 per game) and blocked shots (29) and was among three Hokies who made at least 35% of their 3-point attempts.
Aluma competed at the NBA G League Elite Camp in late June, where scouts told him to improve his conditioning and consistency. Resisting his sweet tooth and working religiously in the gym allowed Aluma to remake his body and elevate his game.
“It was really beneficial to hear what they had to say,” Aluma said.
“He’s there,” Young said. “He looks different. He is shooting the ball at a very, very high clip. Now he is shot faking and getting places. ... He’s still exploring and still expanding his game to this day.”
Team fifth-years Aluma, Mutts and Murphy with juniors Cattoor and Alleyne — the latter three on the perimeter — and the Hokies could start one of the nation’s most experienced and versatile lineups, one in which everyone is green-lighted to take 3-pointers.
Young thrives with such teams, witness his 2018-19 Wofford squad, which ranked second nationally in 3-point accuracy at 41.4%, finished 30-5, went undefeated in the Southern Conference and reached the second round of the NCAA tournament.
Aluma, Mutts and Young are scheduled to appear Tuesday at the ACC’s preseason gathering in Charlotte, N.C., where media will vote on a projected order of finish, all-conference team and player of the year. Since joining the league in 2004, Tech has been picked among the top four only once — second in 2011.
Duke, Florida State, North Carolina, Virginia Tech and Virginia, in that order, will be my top five, with preseason PoY Aluma joined by Boeheim, Bacot, Wong and Duke freshman Paolo Banchero on the all-conference squad.
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LAHAINA, HI - NOVEMBER 21: Josh Perkins #13 of the Gonzaga Bulldogs takes a foul shot during the finals of the Maui Invitational college basketball game against the Duke Blue Devils at the Lahaina Civic Center on November 21, 2018 in Lahaina Hawaii. They’ll get a rematch this year in Las Vegas. Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images
The Fine Art Of Non-Conference Scheduling (DBR; Jacobs)
Nonconference scheduling has evolved – or constricted — to the point games once sprinkled throughout a season are now isolated within the first two months.
Put another way, teams don’t stray outside the ACC in January and February. Or, for that matter, in early March until postseason play commences.
Crowded schedules, with 20 conference games squeezed into the first two months of the calendar year, cause the bunching of games that’s now universal.
Duke used to build in an annual late-season game with St. John’s, alternating venues between New York and Durham. Mike Krzyzewski claimed the matchup gave him a chance to see how a quality opponent scouted and tried to break down his team.
But that built-in test is gone now. The Red Storm last took on the Blue Devils in Feb. 2019, a game in which thick-set, 6-5 guard Mustapha Heron tried to punk Zion Williamson, quite unsuccessfully.
We included St. John’s, hardly the powerhouse of old, in the chart below listing big-time opponents on ACC schedules. The New York-area team hosts Pitt — a home game by our standards for St. John’s — at Madison Square Garden before Christmas.
No ACC team opens the season on the road. They rarely have for awhile, although this season Duke’s first game is against Kentucky at Madison Square Garden, a neutral court where a Blue Devil bias is apt to hold sway. The pair opened the 2018-19 season at Indianapolis, with Duke a 34-point winner.
Games like Duke-UK were once called major intersectional clashes. The “Champions Classic”, which mixes in Kansas and Michigan State as Duke rivals over the years, will of course be highly touted. The programs are quite accomplished, the rosters rich in talent, in the case of UK-DU the head coaches Hall of Famers.
Even better for the soap operatic nature of TV coverage, the commentators can be expected to play up any friction between Krzyzewski and Kentucky’s John Calipari, even as they play it down to mimic sobriety.
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Other
Syracuse University increases payments to the city in new 5-year deal to pay for services (PS; $; Craig)
Syracuse University will pay the city $11 million over five years and care for parts of some public parks under a proposed agreement, Mayor Ben Walsh said.
The university will incrementally increase its payments to the city from $1 million to $2 million per year over the first four years of the agreement to recognize the “critical services” the city provides for the university, Walsh said. That’s in addition to a $500,000 annual payment from SU that the city distributes to community organizations in the neighborhoods around campus.
The university is the only nonprofit that makes this kind of payment to the city for services it receives.
The agreement also calls for the university to perform services for the city, such as caring for city parks in the area. Those services are valued at $465,000.
In return, the city will hire a housing codes inspector specifically for the university area and add parts of campus into the training protocol for police cadets.
With the current, five-year services agreement coming to an end, Walsh said he and SU Chancellor Kent Syverud agreed on the higher service payment this time. Under the new five-year agreement, SU would pay $4 million more than it paid under the previous pact. It would also care for land in Thornden Park not covered by the current agreement.
“I had indicated to him my desire to look at an increase in the payment, and he indicated his desire to be a good partner and to try to be supportive of that,” Walsh said. “It’s really a win-win for the city and the university.”
Part of the agreement calls for the university to maintain the area of Thornden Park that lines the east side of campus along Ostrom Avenue. A provision that would allow SU to make unspecified improvements to the area with five days’ notice drew ire from neighbors who wanted more time to consider the proposed work.
Although the agreement was set to go before the common council next week, Councilor Michael Greene halted a vote until after a meeting with the volunteer-led Thornden Park Association is held later this month. Greene said he’s heard concerns from community members that the agreement gives SU too much power over a public park.
Walsh said he understands the concern.
“There’s a long history between the neighborhood and the university. Some of it is positive and some of it is negative,” Walsh said, adding that the Thornden Park Association and community members have put thousands of hours of work into keeping the historic park beautiful. “And so, understandably, any perceived changes or threat to the park or the neighborhood needs to be addressed.”
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