sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2011
- Messages
- 25,370
- Like
- 109,820
The roads were pretty bad driving to the game. When the temperature drops to a certain point, salt stops melting snow so you end up with hard packed snow and slippery slush, with maybe two ruts of asphalt exposed to drive on if you are lucky.
The 6 pm start was really weird, but actually kind of nice in that we got home in plenty of time to do other things.
The NA was sung by a local HS kid who went old school, singing the sung as it was written, with no embellishments or histrionics. She even kept in key the whole way. Bravo.
I really miss the Curley Howard haircut Buzz used to rock. His flamingo pink dress shirt only provide partial consolation. I bet he wanted to whip off his vest and do a calypso dance had the Hokies found a way to win.
I have always associated his teams with gritty blue collar defense. It was strange seeing VT trying to play a fast paced finesse offense and not showing much interest in defense at all. Kind of like we were playing like Buzz's Marquette teams and the Gobblers were playing like Syracuse circa 1982.
Really like that frosh on VT that is a good friend of Oshae. He had a hyphenated last name that had Alexander in it. We probably should be paying more attention to Canada. It is amazing how many quality players are coming out of there.
Thought the controversial trio of refs made some strange calls. Lots of calls away from the ball. One on Paschal was really bad; he was coming off a screen and the VT player extended slightly to make it harder to escape so Chukwu pushed off slightly. It is the kind of contact that happens every possession and something that should never be called. There were a lot of showy, extended foul calls (look at me and how good I am) and more trips to watch replays than I can ever remember. I thought Ted Valentine was banished to the Phantom Zone for life for his crimes against basketball? How did he escape?
As it turned out, the refs didn't affect the game much. Both teams' big.guys got in foul trouble and missed a lot of time, but Marek was much better on defense playing in the middle than earlier in the season and he gives us more on offense too, it helped VT didn't have good bigs.
It was pretty striking last night how quick the Syracuse defenders were and how well they anticipated things VT would try to do on offense. Our guards were outstanding at taking away the 3 from near the top of the key but also denying the ball into the paint near the ACC logo. The forwards are covering huge expanses of court as well and our centers were pretty terrific too. Is our defense really this good or is VT maybe not as good as everyone thought?
Whatever it is, this Syracuse team is more blue collar, more tough and hard working and resilient than any SU team in a long time. They win a ton of 50-50 balls, and hit the floor for loose balls extraordinarily well. Thry rebound like half starved dogs fighting for raw steak. They can be tough to watch on offense, especially in the first halves of most games, but they are a joy to watch play defense, rebound and play offense* (*= in the second half only). They have really bought into the notion that thry can only win by playing this way and it is pretty amazing to watch them continue to win despite the losses of TT, GT and now BS.
I will close out the post with a belated Happy Birthday to cto. Hope the win was a nice present and that the rest of the day was as enjoyable as the game!
The 6 pm start was really weird, but actually kind of nice in that we got home in plenty of time to do other things.
The NA was sung by a local HS kid who went old school, singing the sung as it was written, with no embellishments or histrionics. She even kept in key the whole way. Bravo.
I really miss the Curley Howard haircut Buzz used to rock. His flamingo pink dress shirt only provide partial consolation. I bet he wanted to whip off his vest and do a calypso dance had the Hokies found a way to win.
I have always associated his teams with gritty blue collar defense. It was strange seeing VT trying to play a fast paced finesse offense and not showing much interest in defense at all. Kind of like we were playing like Buzz's Marquette teams and the Gobblers were playing like Syracuse circa 1982.
Really like that frosh on VT that is a good friend of Oshae. He had a hyphenated last name that had Alexander in it. We probably should be paying more attention to Canada. It is amazing how many quality players are coming out of there.
Thought the controversial trio of refs made some strange calls. Lots of calls away from the ball. One on Paschal was really bad; he was coming off a screen and the VT player extended slightly to make it harder to escape so Chukwu pushed off slightly. It is the kind of contact that happens every possession and something that should never be called. There were a lot of showy, extended foul calls (look at me and how good I am) and more trips to watch replays than I can ever remember. I thought Ted Valentine was banished to the Phantom Zone for life for his crimes against basketball? How did he escape?
As it turned out, the refs didn't affect the game much. Both teams' big.guys got in foul trouble and missed a lot of time, but Marek was much better on defense playing in the middle than earlier in the season and he gives us more on offense too, it helped VT didn't have good bigs.
It was pretty striking last night how quick the Syracuse defenders were and how well they anticipated things VT would try to do on offense. Our guards were outstanding at taking away the 3 from near the top of the key but also denying the ball into the paint near the ACC logo. The forwards are covering huge expanses of court as well and our centers were pretty terrific too. Is our defense really this good or is VT maybe not as good as everyone thought?
Whatever it is, this Syracuse team is more blue collar, more tough and hard working and resilient than any SU team in a long time. They win a ton of 50-50 balls, and hit the floor for loose balls extraordinarily well. Thry rebound like half starved dogs fighting for raw steak. They can be tough to watch on offense, especially in the first halves of most games, but they are a joy to watch play defense, rebound and play offense* (*= in the second half only). They have really bought into the notion that thry can only win by playing this way and it is pretty amazing to watch them continue to win despite the losses of TT, GT and now BS.
I will close out the post with a belated Happy Birthday to cto. Hope the win was a nice present and that the rest of the day was as enjoyable as the game!
