sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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Welcome to New Year's Eve!
New Year's Eve takes place on the last day of the Gregorian calendar. The first New Year's Eve festivities date back approximately 4,000 years, to the time of ancient Babylon; Babylonians celebrated the new year during the first new moon after the vernal equinox, in late March. During antiquity, the first days of the new year were celebrated at different times around the world, and the day was usually tied to an agricultural or astronomical event. For example, Egyptians celebrated their new year as the Nile flooded, and the Chinese New Year has long begun with the second new moon after the winter solstice.
SU News
ACC Power Rankings: Syracuse basketball rises ahead of ACC opener (PS; Carlson)
The ACC had a limited schedule this week with four teams having the entire week of due to winter break. Louisville's rivalry game loss to Kentucky was the only high-profile contest, leading to limited movement. It was enough, however, to provide Syracuse the opportunity to climb heading into ACC play.
Here's a look at how the conference stacks up with league games set to begin this week.
15. Wake Forest
Record: 6-5 (0-0)
Last week's ranking: 15
Last week's result: Loss 73-69 vs. Gardner-Webb
This week's schedule: Wednesday vs. Cornell; Saturday at Georgia Tech
What's to like: Gardner-Webb has now beaten Wake Forest and Georgia Tech. Maybe the Runnin' Bulldogs are the 14th-best team in the ACC.
What's not to like: Wake Forest has already lost four games to teams ranked outside Ken Pomeroy's Top 100. Cornell is the only team outside of that mark that the Demon Deacons face the rest of the season. It's going to be a long season in Winston-Salem for the young Demon Deacons.
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Syracuse basketball's offense groove returns at right time - The Juice Online (the juice; Blehar)
Syracuse had its second straight solid offensive showing, handling St. Bonaventure, 81-47, on Saturday afternoon.
The Orange shot 58 percent from the field and 6-17 from downtown, scoring a season best 46 points in the first half.
“It was just a good overall game,” Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said. “I just feel we had more of a complete game than we had. We had good practices which helped and I think it showed today that we just played better.”
SU has now averaged 81.5 in its last two games after averaging an anemic 65.6 points in the five games prior. During that stretch, Syracuse dropped games at home to Old Dominion and Buffalo.
Those woes seems to be behind the Orange, for now, in part because of Syracuse’s stingy 2-3 zone. SU forced a season-high 25 turnovers, who then cashed in with 32 points off of the Bonnies blunders.
The Orange raced out to an early 17-2 lead with guard Tyus Battle getting four quick points, including the first and second steals of the game. He had 10 of Syracuse’s first 12 points and finished the day a perfect 8 for 8 for a game-high 21 points.
“I just wanted to be aggressive and make something happen,” Battle said. “Start the game aggressive early and see where it takes me for the rest of the game.”
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For Marek Dolezaj and his sister, Monika, athleticism runs in the family (PS; Ditota)
She sat in the front row Saturday, next to her brother’s girlfriend. Around her, a sea of Syracuse basketball fans watched the Orange dominate St. Bonaventure.
All of this was new to Monika Dolezaj. Her brother plays basketball for the Orange and Monika, 23, is here for a few days over the holidays to offer support from home and to experience for herself what her brother has been telling her about college basketball in the United States.
Marek and Monika are from Slovakia and are the only children of Milos and Ladislava Dolezaj. Slovakia, located 4,230 miles from Syracuse, made a quick Christmas excursion impossible for Marek. So Monika arrived in Syracuse on Dec. 23 and will stay until Jan. 1 to keep her brother company.
The siblings spent a couple days exploring New York City over SU’s brief basketball break.
“We went to New York for Christmas. Just to look at the city. We went to the Empire State Building. The World Trade Center. Brooklyn Bridge. Typical tourist (spots),” Marek said.
“Now we are just recovering a little bit and just chilling and just enjoying all of this, which for me is totally new because I’m just for the first time in the States,” Monika said. “I am so happy that I can be here and I can visit him and we are just spending time.”
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Noie: Can Notre Dame make tighter hoops rotation work in ACC? (ndinsider.com; Noie)
Could less in some weird way be more?
The Notre Dame men’s basketball team hopes so as it opens Atlantic Coast Conference play Tuesday — Happy New Year! — on the road against No. 10 Virginia Tech. Less being more likely is the only way the Irish (10-3) make any push toward getting back to the NCAA tournament while dealing with the same situation this year — injuries to key contributors — that surfaced for coach Mike Brey’s team around this time last season.
Brey admitted an epiphany during one game last month when he looked down his bench and saw a seemingly endless line of potential contributors. So many guys. So many lineup combinations. It often left the veteran coach thinking about hoops morning, noon and night. Even during games.
It consumed Brey to the point that he actually forgot to sub in sharp-shooting freshman Nate Laszewski during the closing minutes of the home loss to Radford because his mind was too preoccupied with who was on the floor.
Oof!
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https://slapthesign.com/2018/12/30/breaking-down-notre-dames-acc-schedule/(slapthesign.com; Hunter)
A tough road lies ahead for Notre Dame in ACC play.
Mike Brey’s Notre Dame squad recently had a nine day layoff and looked quite rusty on Saturday against an 0-14 Coppin State team. They were, however, able to come together and pull out the win.
Our Irish performed pretty much as expected in non-conference play. They finished at 10-3 and No. 53 in KenPom. They were able to land a quality win over Purdue, though the value of that win is shaky as the Boilermakers have failed to meet expectations. The UCLA loss looks worse and worse with each passing week, but for a young team traveling for their first true road game, it was expected. Oklahoma was a missed opportunity and I believe the Radford loss will look less terrible as the season progresses.
The next real test is Tuesday, when ACC league play begins. Big boy basketball. The road to the NCAA tournament is littered with both land mines and opportunities.
The first opportunity is the first game while also being a huge test. The Irish travel to Blacksburg to take on a top 10 Virginia Tech team that can really scorch the nets. The Hokies currently rank fourth in the country at 43.5% from deep and love to get out and run. According to the new NET metric, which will be used to determine tournament births, road wins are far more valuable than home and neutral site victories.
Currently, Kenpom favors Virginia Tech by eleven, 76-65. In fact, Notre Dame is currently only favored in two of its first ten ACC contests. Those two games are contests 2 and 3, against Boston College and Syracuse, both of which will be played at Purcell Pavilion. The Boston College game should be a win, however, predicting a Syracuse game would be an act of futility. One thing is for sure, if the Irish are going to win, they will have to be able to should it well from deep.
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Other
Verizon FiOS reaches deal to keep ESPN, Disney; Spectrum still facing blackouts (PS; Herbert)
Verizon FiOS customers are no longer in danger of losing ESPN or any other Disney TV stations after the two companies renewed their carriage deal.
“Verizon and The Walt Disney Company have reached a broad-based distribution agreement,” Verizon and The Walt Disney Company said in a joint statement Sunday.
Verizon FiOS had previously warned customers that they may lose ESPN, the Disney Channel, and some local ABC stations when a carriage contract was set to expire Dec. 31. If a deal wasn’t reached, it could have prevented subscribers from seeing college football bowl games on New Year’s Day and other sports programming.
According to USA Today, Verizon had previously accused Disney of wanting “hundreds of millions of dollars more for its programming, despite the fact that many of its key networks are experiencing declining viewership," plus allegedly forcing Verizon TV subscribers to pay additional money for the new ACC Network. Disney-owned channels, meanwhile, ran ads urging FiOS customers to call Verizon “to keep the networks you are paying for!”
Details of the new agreement have not been announced.
Meanwhile, 6 million Spectrum customers are still facing possible blackouts of Tribune Media programming in 24 markets across the U.S. if a contract dispute isn’t resolved before Jan. 1. Upstate New York isn’t home to any of the local news or sports networks affected, but Tribune-owned cable networks like WGN America could be dropped from 16 million Spectrum subscribers nationwide.
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