This game really looks like a mismatch in Cuse favor. Duke has yet to beat any top 10 teams - best wins are Richmond and Michigan and they just squeaked thru those games. I'm looking for Cuse to really run up the score which is great - I really don't like Duke
It certainly looks like Duke should most likely beat UVA the week after and therefore get the final spot in the ACC tourney. Hard to believe, but it looks like UVA will miss the tourney and end their season in April.
Fair.
The only way to guarantee it is for both of us to have home games, or neither of us to. If Army doesn't win the Patriot League AQ they may not be in the NCAAT. Even if they do, their RPI may not be high enough to get a seed and a home game.
In their three game win streak against us, one was a close game where we had some golden opportunities to close it out, and the previous two were two cuse teams that had some serious flaws in general. I just think we do not have enough evidence there to say it is a bad matchup. Personally I am more scared of having to play Harvard again early.
I recommend anything Mr. Foy says about Syracuse be taken with a grain of salt (pun intended). If you look at his comments over the last few years he's generally not been a fan of our team. This year he went so far as to rate us #2 pre-season but when we stumbled against Maryland and Harvard he acted like a petulant child who didn't get his way and downgraded us to #13 for multiple weeks when IL's media poll had us about 7 or 8. I think the fear we have, and it isn't just about potentially playing Army, is that we don't know which team is going to come out of the locker room and play on any given game day. And if it's good (e.g., Notre Dame game) will it be for four quarters. I listened to a lot of the Cornell game on the radio feed and Kyle Fetterly consistently wondered where the effort was; that the Cornell team was out efforting us throughout the game. While the stats didn't show that, the stats don't show when we're beaten to the backup on our missed shot.
Some slightly off placements in the pols in a wide open year like this is whatever. I just hate the narrative that it is the outdoor conditions that explain these losses. Our worst game by far this season is still Harvard in the cozy 70 degree dome. Last year we lost two games in the cozy dome to MD and Army, and did not get a high quality win until we played Hopkins in the pouring rain. It is just total nonsense. Our two outdoor rainy games were against the #1 and #3 team in the nation. Isn't that a much better explanation for the losses than the fact that it was raining??
without listening to it: Ugh!
