sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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Welcome to Dress Like a Dork Day!
Dorks are social misfits, similar to nerds or geeks, who are out-of-touch, which leads to them looking or acting odd around others. Maybe you were a dork when you were growing up, or maybe you were one of the meanies who beat them up. Nonetheless, today is a day to dress like a dork.
Dress Like a Dork Day is being observed today! It has always been observed annually on October 19th.
SU News
Free T-shirts, ice cream highlight Fan Appreciation Weekend )DO; Gutierrez)
Students will receive free food, including chicken tenders, if they attend the Syracuse men’s basketball intrasquad scrimmage Friday night in the Carrier Dome, SU Athletics announced Wednesday.
The first 2,000 students to arrive will receive a free T-shirt, and students with a season pass elite will get wristbands and sit courtside. There will be contests during breaks of the scrimmage, which tips off at 7:30 p.m. There will be two, 30-minute running halves.
“Our hope is to get students to attend,” said Anthony Di Fino, SU’s associate athletics director for business development. “This event is for them. Their energy is going to drive that scrimmage.”
The SU women’s team will host its third annual Hoops-n-Scoops event Sunday at 11:30 a.m. Fans can watch a practice then eat free ice cream and meet the team at 1 p.m. SU Athletics asks fans who plan to attend the women’s event to email teamsu by Thursday. Admission and parking is free for both events.
The men finished 19-15 a year ago and advanced to the second round of the NIT, while the women advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament for the fourth-straight season, one of 15 programs in the country to accomplish the feat.
Last year, SU averaged 21,181 fans per game, second in the country to Kentucky. Syracuse has finished first in average home attendance 14 times in program history and has placed fourth or better each season since the Carrier Dome opened in 1980.
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Husky basketball team learning new coach's 2-3 zone defense (kitaspun.com; Miles)
New Washington Huskies men’s basketball coach Mike Hopkins joked that if you cut him open, Syracuse’s vaunted 2-3 zone defense would “come out in my blood.”
And he is hoping to install one of college basketball’s most successful defenses as the lifeline for the Huskies in the Pac-12.
Not surprisingly, Hopkins, 48, said the UW will shift away from the man-to-man defense typically employed under former coach Lorenzo Romar and utilize the 2-3 zone as its base defense moving forward.
“People think the defense is like Little League baseball,” Hopkins said. “But, for the most part, there’s a lot of little intricacies. There’s a lot of thought process. It’s good in a lot of ways because it’s against the grain.”
As a player and longtime assistant under coach Jim Boeheim at Syracuse, Hopkins has spent the better part of 25 years understanding why that program’s 2-3 zone has been so ingenious.
On the surface, compared to high-energy man-to-man defense, the 2-3 zone almost seems like a working contradiction: An inert attack designed to fluster ball-handlers.
But Hopkins warns it is much more forceful than that, with so many more variations to it.
“The ball gets into the high post, and a lot of teams collapse,” Hopkins said “We go out.”
At Syracuse, the 2-3 zone was run to near-perfection. At the UW, it is still a novelty, at least with the players.
“I’ve never really played for a zone-heavy team,” Huskies forward Matisse Thybulle said. “And especially with this zone, a lot of it is backward from what you learned with a traditional zone. Everything I had learned up to this, I had to throw out the window to take this new stuff on.”
What made players more willing to accept this new style, and change, was the fact the Huskies were one of the worst defenses in the conference last season.
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Fastbreaks
Hopkins continues to rave about the four incoming freshmen — Nahziah Carter, Michael Carter III, Jaylen Nowell and Hameir Wright — who all could make an immediate impact. The one to really watch out for is Nahziah Carter, the newphew of Jay Z, who has explosive athleticism. He dunked for the first time in eighth grade. “I was 12 or 13,” he said. ... The Huskies got another oral commitment Tuesday from an East Coast product for the 2018 recruiting class — 6-11 power forward Nate Roberts, who chose the UW over Syracuse and Nebraska. Roberts is at the Brewster Academy.
Hurricanes basketball coach Jim Larrañaga receives subpoena in FBI basketball probe (sun-sentinel.com; Chirinos)
Hurricanes men’s basketball coach Jim Larrañaga has already turned over a series of documents to government officials, but on Wednesday, his attorney confirmed Larrañaga has also received a federal grand jury subpoena in the large-scale investigation of corruption in college basketball.
Coral Gables attorney Stuart Z. Grossman, one of the attorneys representing Larrañaga, said the coach will continue cooperating in the probe and he remains confident that as the government continues its investigation, the Miami coach and basketball program will be exonerated.
“We want the government to have any and everything that they ask for by way of emails and phone records,” Grossman said. “We are cooperating fully. This will only prove his innocence.”
Last month, federal corruption and bribery charges were filed against 10 people tied to college basketball nationwide, including four assistant coaches.
DOJ alleges that an unnamed “Coach-3” was involved with trying to funnel approximately $150,000 to “Player-12,” an unnamed high school basketball player expected to graduate in 2018.
Miami president Julio Frenk later confirmed the DOJ was investigating the potential ties between a member of the men’s basketball coaching staff and a potential recruit. When asked Wednesday if any other members of Miami’s athletic department had received subpoenas in the matter, Hurricanes spokesman Carter Toole said the school “is not commenting on any aspects of the ongoing DOJ probe at this time.”
Meanwhile, late last week, five-star prospect Nassir Little, who was recruited by Miami and Arizona — two schools tied to the FBI probe — signed a sworn affidavit denying that neither he nor his father, Harold, had solicited any kind of payment to play basketball at Miami or any other school.
University of Miami or at any other school,” the signed affidavit reads.
“No corporate official or employee or AAU official or representative ever offered or so much as discussed any form of improper payment to myself or to any member of my family. Neither I, nor to my knowledge, my father, ever spoke with James Gatto, Merl Code, Christian Dawkins, Jonathan Brad Augustine or Munish Sood or AAU coach Darryl Hardin about improper payments or any payment at all. And certainly no coach or representative of the University of Miami or any university had such discussions with us.”
Harold Little signed a similar affidavit, and on Oct. 5, Nassir Little verbally committed to play basketball at North Carolina.
While the FBI’s probe is ongoing, Larrañaga is not the only coach to receive a subpoena in the case. According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, former Cardinals coach Rick Pitino has also been subpoenaed and the Los Angeles Times reported that personnel at Auburn, Arizona, Oklahoma State and USC have been subpoenaed, as well.
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ACC Preview: Who can take on Duke's young guns? (si.com; Geary)
Sports Illustrated’s 2017–18 preview is guided by data from our College Basketball Projection System, a collaboration between economist Dan Hanner and SI’s Chris Johnson and Jeremy Fuchs. We project teams on a player-by-player, lineup-based level and then simulate the season 10,000 times to generate our 1–351 national rankings and conference forecasts.
These are the model’s projections for the ACC, including individual awards, the teams’ order of finish and (advanced and raw) stats for the top seven players in each school’s rotation.
THE BIG PICTURE
Can the ACC win a third national title in four years? There’s no reason to doubt the possibility, with Duke entering the season as the conference’s best chance at producing another champion. The Blue Devils will have their hands full in league play, however, as four other ACC teams land in the top 20 of our yet-to-be-released national rankings (no other conference has more than three). Despite the FBI investigation the program is currently embroiled in, Louisville likely stands as Duke’s toughest challenger, followed closely by Miami.
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9. SYRACUSE (8–10)
Sophomore point guard Tyus Battle should be one of the ACC’s top guards, but the Orange have a lot to replace around him after losing six of their top seven scorers. There’s definite talent on this Syracuse roster if Jim Boeheim can harness it, including four other former top-100 recruits after Battle. South Florida grad transfer Geno Thorpe was a bright spot for the lowly Bulls in the AAC and should do well in orange as well.
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Joel Berry, Bonzie Colson headline ACCSports.com All-Analytics First Team - ACCSports.com (accsports.com; Geisinger)
After the conclusion of the 2016-17 ACC regular season, I published a story on my ACC All-Analytics team. It featured a statistical approach to all-league roster selection.
Same thing, different part of the calendar year: With the 2017-18 basketball season right around the corner, here’s my preseason ACC All-Analytics first team.
I have no doubt that several star freshmen will crack All-ACC rosters this season; however, for this particular roster, I need data to work off of. So I’m only working with returning players. With that said, let’s jump right in.
(Note: Make sure to check back later in the day for our ACC All-Analytics second team)
Bonzie Colson, Notre Dame
Everyone, say hello to your college basketball overlord and patron saint of the ACC Analytics tab. Bonzie Colson is back for his senior season in South Bend, a possible Final Four run and perhaps even some individual hardware. Before that, though, we get one more season of Colson slapping up double-doubles and schooling fools with an endless supply of Old Man At The YMCA game.
Colson is hands down one one of the best bucket-getters in college basketball; he’s coming off a special junior season, too. According to Sports Reference, Colson was the only player in America to average at least 15 points, 10 rebounds and post a player efficiency rating (PER) above 30.
Dating back to the 2009-10 season, Colson is one of only five ACC players to play at least 1,000 minutes in a season and post a PER north of 30. The other four guys: T.J. Warren, Erick Green, Brice Johnson and Jahlil Okafor. For reference, that’s three ACC Players of the Year and three top-25 picks.
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Other
Syracuse University’s 24-hour fundraiser exceeded its goal by 190 percent (DO; Muller)
Boost the ‘Cuse, Syracuse University’s first 24-hour fundraising campaign, brought in more than $1,765,000 in gifts from about 3,560 donors, exceeding its donor goal by 190 percent.
The event, which began at midnight Tuesday and ran through the day, aimed to raise money for SU initiatives and programs, including Invest Syracuse.
University officials said the numbers from the fundraiser were higher than they expected.
“The goal we set was 1,870 donors,” said Sean Scanlon, vice president for development.
That number was met early in the day, Scanlon said, so the team set a new goal of 3,044 individual donors. The new goal was also exceeded by the end of the day.
Just under 50 percent of donors who gave money to the university were alumni, according to the Boost the ‘Cuse website. About 20 percent were faculty, 7 percent were SU parents, 6 percent were SU board members, 3 percent were students and 2 percent were “friends.”
Others donors, including students, contributed to the fundraiser on the Quad, in Schine Student Center and in Bird Library, said David Wishart, assistant vice president for philanthropic engagement.
“The reason we want students to participate is because we’re all trying to build that greater brand of what Syracuse is,” Scanlon said. One part of building the brand is contributing, he added.
Different units — which included schools, colleges and departments, such as SU Athletics and the Institute for Veterans and Military Families — each received various amounts of money through different fundraising “challenges” throughout the day. Units received awards for challenges such as “most gifts ending in 44,” “most faculty and staff gifts” and “most parent gifts.”
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