sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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- Aug 15, 2011
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Welcome to Near Miss Day!
Near Miss Day commemorates the day a huge Asteroid nearly missed hitting the earth.
On March 23, 1989, an asteroid the size of a mountain, came within 500,000 miles of a collision with Earth. In interstellar terms, it was a near miss. Had it collided with the Earth, it would have left a devastating crater the size of Washington, D.C. It's affect on the planet would have been catastrophic. Since then, there have been other near misses.
...Whew!!
Near misses with large, potentially life threatening galactic objects happens on an infrequent basis. It is believed a large asteroid collided with the earth and caused the extinction of dinosaurs. Scientists believe it is only a matter of time before another catastrophic collision with Earth. But, don't worry. The odds are it will not happen for a long, long time.
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SU News
How Did SU Basketball Get to the Sweet 16? (the juice; Stechschulte)
It certainly was a pleasant surprise that Syracuse flipped their entire season on its ear in the span of 56 hours. Last week, I called the Orange winning a single NCAA Tournament game a bonus. Now, an Elite Eight bid is a possibility.
In their first two NCAA Tournament games, the Orange put together two second halves of basketball the likes of which have not been in a very long time.
First, in the tourney opener, SU dropped a 40-23 second half on Dayton, completely hammering the Flyers on the boards and snuffing out their offense. Then, on Sunday evening, Syracuse backed that up by outscoring Middle Tennessee State 44-17 over the final 18:30 of the game and the Blue Raiders tallied the last three points of the game to make that stat look just a little better for themselves.
Like they often do, the Orange have turned into a dominant defensive outfit in the NCAA Tournament. Jim Boeheim’s 2-3 zone is simply too hard for teams who are almost completely unfamiliar with it to prepare for on short notice. Conference foes who tangle with it once or twice a season year after year know how to attack it. Teams with a couple days to get ready can put together a solid plan for the zone, but lack both the practice time to properly implement said plan and the players who play it like SU does to accurately simulate it.
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Your (Pictorial) Guide to Chicago in Advance of Syracuse's Sweet 16 Matchup (DO; Simms)
An Open Letter of Apology to America From Syracuse Basketball (TNIAAM; Keeley)
Dear America,
We did not intend for our run to the Sweet Sixteen in the 2016 NCAA Tournament to cause harm or insult to anyone and if you have been offended by our wins over the seven-seeded Dayton Flyers or 15-seeded Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders, we apologize from the bottom of our hearts.
We made a mistake and put ourselves in an environment that does not reflect who we are as people. We regret this lapse in judgment.
Specifically, we want to apologize to certain people, schools and organizations.
To Joe Lunardi, who was very upset that the NCAA committee let us into the tournament despite being a team that he felt was lacking in bona fides. All we've done since is make you look like you really don't know what you're talking about, which must be painful and hard. We did not intend for this to happen and we hope we can make it up to you one day.
To Tulsa and Vanderbilt, who we've made look terrible by winning and, in the eyes of a few, justifying our existence in the NCAA Tournament, while you both lost in your first games and didn't, making it seem as though we were the team the committee got right. That's on us to fix.
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Other
Attendance Down Slightly at NCAA Women's Tournament (trib.com; Feinberg)
There is reason for optimism despite attendance being slightly down at the first two rounds of the women's basketball NCAA Tournament.
The 16 sites drew an average of 4,464 fans, about 250 less than the previous year.
"While overall attendance numbers for the first and second rounds were similar to last year, we were encouraged by 10 sessions that exceeded 5,000 fans," NCAA senior vice president for women's basketball Anucha Browne said. "We have had a very competitive championship so far with increased parity and are looking forward to four great regional sites this weekend that should be rocking."
While Syracuse was below the mark, drawing an average of 3,200 fans over the three sessions, it's way above their season attendance. The Orange only averaged 752 fans during the regular season. They had 3,842 show up on Sunday to see them beat Albany and advance to their first Sweet 16.
"Obviously, we are very happy with the win, but we are mostly happy with the great women's basketball environment that we had here," Syracuse coach Quentin Hillsman said. "The key to winning two games is definitely hosting. To do it here and in front of this home crowd, nothing can be more gratifying than that."
On the other end of the spectrum was South Carolina. The Gamecocks led the nation in attendance and the first two rounds were no different. They averaged just over 10,000 fans.
"It's quite incredible. Other coaches around the country when they see all of us on the recruiting trails, they ask us, what are we doing. They're some marketing behind it, but it is word of mouth," Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley said. "It is our fans enjoy the atmosphere that they create in our arena and the people that can't make the games they give their tickets to their friends to make sure there are people sitting in those seats in that arena. And they cheer extremely loud.
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