sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Liberia. It began as a day of giving thanks and sacrifice for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year. Similarly named festival holidays occur in Germany and Japan. Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States and around the same part of the year in other places. Although Thanksgiving has historical roots in religious and cultural traditions, it has long been celebrated as a secular holiday as well.
SU News
Syracuse Orange center Jesse Edwards (14) takes the inbounds pass from Syracuse Orange guard Buddy Boeheim (35). The Syracuse Orange basketball takes the Colgate Red Raides at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse N.Y. Nov. 20, 2021.Dennis Nett | dnett@syracuse.com
Syracuse basketball vs. VCU in Battle 4 Atlantis: What to know (PS; Waters)
The matchup of Syracuse and Virginia Commonwealth in the first round of the Battle 4 Atlantis on Wednesday will pit a potent offense against a stout defense.
Syracuse (2-1) has averaged 85.7 points in its first three games. Virginia Commonwealth, on the other hand, is scoring just 50.8 points per game.
The Rams, though, have held their first four opponents to just 51.2 points per game.
“Our defense is elite,’' VCU coach Mike Rhoades said Tuesday, “and our offense isn’t.’'
Rhoades later described the Rams’ offense as “anemic.’'
But that Virginia Commonwealth defense, including a fullcourt defense that harkens back to former VCU coach Shaka Smart’s “Havoc,” will provide a huge test for Syracuse on Wednesday.
The game airs at 5 p.m. on ESPN2.
Here are five key things to know about the SU-VCU matchup:
A Ram-tough defense
Under fifth-year coach Mike Rhoades, Virginia Commonwealth has built a reputation of being one of the toughest defensive teams in the country.
Last year, VCU ranked 14th in the nation in adjusted defensive efficiency. The Rams’ fullcourt defense was a big reason why VCU wound up ranked ninth in the country in defensive turnover rate.
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Five Things to Know About VCU (SI; McAllister)
Syracuse's first opponent in the Battle 4 Atlantis is the VCU Rams. Here is what you need to know about VCU heading into the matchup.
SEASON TO DATE
VCU is 2-2 on the season with wins over Saint Peter's (57-54) and Vanderbilt (48-37) and losses to Wagner (58-44) and Chattanooga (56-54). Both losses came at home. The combined records of the the teams that have beaten VCU is 7-0.
SIZE & REBOUNDING
VCU has some size along the perimeter. Starting guards Marcus Tsohonis and KeShawn Curry are 6-3 and 6-4. Nick Kern and Jayden Nunn, the primary reserve guards, are 6-6 and 6-4. On the front court, there are wings with length but are lacking a ton in the middle. The starting front court features 6-6, 205 pound Vince Williams, 6-9 215 pound Hason Ward and 6-8, 240 pound Levi Stockard. Despite his stocky stature, Stockard only averages three rebounds per game. Ward leads the team at 6.5 rebounds per game.
Front court players off the bench include 6-8, 220 pound Mikeal Brown-Jones and 6-9 215 pound Jalen DeLoach. There is not a lot of interior strength. That has been part of the reason why VCU is 318th in the nation in rebounding margin. Syracuse is 194th for a comparison.
VINCE WILLIAMS
Williams is VCU's best player and best outside shooter at 43.5% from three point range. He leads the team in scoring (12.2 points per game), is second in rebounding (4.8 per game) and is second in assists (2.0 per game). Williams is a three level scorer, has a pure shooting stroke and is good in transition.
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Donna Ditota "On The Block" 11-23 (ESPN; radio; On the Block)
Syracuse.com’s Donna Ditota joins Brent to talk Syracuse men’s basketball and preview the Battle 4 Atlantis.
Breakdown of every team playing in Battle 4 Atlantis men’s tournament in Bahamas (PS; Ditota)
While you’re celebrating Thanksgiving this week, Syracuse’s men’s basketball team will be sampling a buffet of college basketball opponents, all of them sequestered at the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas.
The Orange opens play with Virginia Commonwealth, or VCU as it is more commonly known, on Wednesday. Depending on how the bracket shakes out, there are several possibilities for the rest of the week. Every team will play three games in the Bahamas.
Here’s a look at the Atlantis teams (aside from Syracuse):
VCU: The Rams have yet to score more than 60 points in a game and rank 236 in Kenpom.com in offensive efficiency. They lost to Wagner and Chattanooga at home. Then they scored 48 points and beat Vanderbilt on the road. VCU’s defense, always tenacious, has been good this season. But the Rams are missing two crucial players because of injuries and have struggled in basically every offensive category. They also don’t rebound.
Arizona State: The Bobby Hurley-led Sun Devils have lost two games (UC Riverside, San Diego State) by a total of three points. San Diego State has established itself as a potent mid-major, but UC Riverside is not, and Arizona State lost to that team at home. DJ Horne, the Illinois State transfer, is the main threat from the 3-point line, though Marcus Bagley has had success there, too. The Sun Devils, though, don’t take (or make) a lot of 3s and have struggled thus far to make free throws.
Auburn: The Tigers play UConn first, and that game will feature two teams that prefer to get up and down the court. Auburn rarely turns it over, shoots plenty of 3-point shots and will get its first true test of the season against the Huskies. Wendell Green, a 5-foot-11 guard, makes things happen on offense, while Jabari Smith and KD Johnson provide the perimeter firepower.
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Syracuse Basketball: Joe Girard III leads entire country in 3-point shooting (itlh; Adler)
Following a disappointing 15-point home loss to Colgate over the weekend, it’s clear that the entire Syracuse basketball roster, including junior point guard Joe Girard III, has to improve in the 2-3 zone and on the glass.
But despite that setback, let’s not discount what the 6-foot-1 Girard has done on the offensive end of the floor for the Orange (2-1), particularly after he had some ups and downs a stanza ago during his sophomore stint.
In the team’s 100-85 defeat at the hands of the Raiders this past Saturday evening on the Hill, Girard poured in a team-high 27 points, as well as eight assists and an impressive seven rebounds.
Once again, he was perfect from the charity stripe. He shot 57.1 percent from the field and 62.5 percent from beyond the arc, according to ESPN statistics.
Syracuse basketball point guard Joe Girard III has started this term off quite well.
I can already imagine what some of my fellow ‘Cuse fans will say if they read this article or see it on social media. They’ll respond that Girard has only played three games so far, and versus so-so competition.
Well, both of those things might be true, although I would counter that Colgate and another prior Orange foe, Drexel, are both really good squads.
In any event, if it’s fair game for a contingent of Syracuse basketball fans to proclaim that the team’s defense is awful at this point in the season, then it’s fair game for me to opine that Girard has proven stellar on offense so far in the current stanza.
Through those three non-conference clashes, Girard is producing some kind of numbers. He’s second on the ‘Cuse in scoring, at 19.3 points a game, which only trails senior shooting guard Buddy Boeheim, and not by much.
According to his ESPN bio, Girard is tallying 6.7 assists against just 2.3 turnovers per contest, to go along with 3.7 rebounds and 1.7 steals.
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SU’s Final Non-Con Games Now Look Like Important Tests – Orange Fizz – Daily Syracuse Recruiting News & Team Coverage (orangefizz.net; Bainbridge)
The first loss of Syracuse men’s basketball’s 2021-22 season came as a surprising thud. Jim Boeheim’s first-ever career loss to Colgate was a true shocker and threw cold water on the teams’ early-season honeymoon period. All of a sudden, a team the Fizz picked to make strides after last year looked vulnerable.
We wrote pretty extensively about why that loss happened. The Orange saw bad games from some of its usual starters, didn’t get much off the bench, and fell victim to a barrage of three-pointers. That’s a good recipe for the 2-3 zone to topple against any team. It’s incredibly early in the season, and ‘Cuse isn’t the only team to lose so-called gimme games – but it’d better hope to get things straightened out before a daunting 11-day stretch coming up in its schedule.
From November 30th to December 11th, Syracuse plays four games. All four are tough matchups and will go quite a way in telling us what type of SU team this truly is.
Indiana comes first on November 30th when first-year head coach Mike Woodson and company trek up to the Dome. The former Knick has been walking on water down in Bloomington ever since convincing star forward Trayce Jackson-Davis to stay at IU. It’s a litmus test game for both teams mostly because Indiana isn’t great at shooting threes – the Hoosiers were dreadful from deep last year and have still been mediocre this year against teams like Northern Illinois and UL Lafayette. Meanwhile, SU gave up a veritable three-point air raid to Colgate. Mark this one on your calendars. It’s a fascinating matchup and should tell us quite a bit about both squads.
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THE SCORER'S TABLE: Syracuse Basketball Legend Sherman Douglas on Old Big East, Jim Boeheim & More
Syracuse Basketball: Recruiting giant into mix for 5-star target from Philly (itlh; Adler)
Elite junior Justin Edwards is the latest Syracuse basketball recruiting target to get offered a scholarship by Kentucky, a Southeastern Conference member and one of the recruiting powerhouses in collegiate hoops.
The 6-foot-7 wing, who recently took an official visit to the Wildcats, disclosed his Kentucky offer via Twitter. Edwards, a 2023 five-star small forward, already had a boatload of high-major offers, but the Wildcats and their head coach, ace recruiter John Calipari, figure to be a significant contender for the Philadelphia high-school prospect.
In fact, two months ago, a recruiting insider on logged a prediction for Edwards in the direction of Kentucky, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if other national analysts follow suit.
Edwards is a junior at the Imhotep Institute Charter High School in Philadelphia, and he’s also a consensus top-20 player across the country within the 2023 cycle.
Syracuse basketball faces an uphill battle for five-star Justin Edwards.
Orange coaches offered Edwards over the summer. In recent months, based on media reports and interviews given by Edwards, several college teams have apparently had some buzz with him, including Kentucky, Connecticut and Penn State.
Of course, since Edwards is just starting up in his junior season of high school, his recruiting process could have a long way to go. I’d love to see him eventually take an official visit to the Hill.
By the way, as we detailed in another recent column, Kentucky recently offered another Syracuse basketball 2023 five-star target, 6-foot-9 forward Kwame Evans Jr. from Baltimore.
Evans, deemed by some recruiting services as the No. 2 overall prospect in this class, is a junior at the Montverde Academy in Montverde, Fla., and landed a ‘Cuse scholarship offer in October, according to media reports.
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Other
McMahon: No need for Covid-19 mandates in Onondaga County -- yet (PS; Coin)
Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon said today he will not impose mandates such as mask-wearing in public unless Covid-19 cases rise substantially.
McMahon set a threshold of 70 new cases a day per 100,00 population before he would consider the first level of mandates, which would be mask-wearing and testing at large gatherings. Onondaga County is now at about 52 cases per 100,000, well below that threshold.
“We would start with certainly large gatherings, either (vaccinations) or tests,” he said. “We will provide testing, just like we’re doing now.”
New restrictions could also kick in if hospitals start to get overwhelmed, he said. The county will meet with hospital officials next week to talk about what that threshold might be in light of Covid-19, a resurgence of the flu and pandemic-related staffing shortages.
Erie County, the largest in Upstate New York, today began to once again require everyone 2 years or older to wear masks in public places. McMahon noted that Erie has 68 cases per 100,000, just beneath his threshold.
Those numbers represent the average number of cases per day over the past seven days.
McMahon said he is reluctant to force a pandemic-weary public to endure new restrictions unless necessary.
“We are almost two years into this thing, and fatigue is not even the right word anymore,” he said. “Some people have just tuned it out and to get these people reengaged we need not to be reactive or else they’ll tune us out.”
McMahon noted that daily Covid-19 hospitalizations peaked at over 300 during the winter, about three times higher than they are now, but he doesn’t have a specific number in mind now that would trigger new restrictions. He said that hospitals are struggling with shortages of staff, particularly nurses, as many move to better jobs and others quit or get fired because they would not get vaccinated.
“We will come up with a hospitalization number that will trigger potential mitigation,” he said. “This is about being able to treat all of our sick in the community.”
McMahon did offer encouraging news on Covid-19 data. The number of people in the hospital “took a steep dive” from 123 to 103, he said.
The county confirmed 140 new cases today, the lowest since Nov. 10. Onondaga County would have to average 334 cases a day to meet McMahon’s threshold of 70 daily cases per 100,000 people.
The county population was 476,516 in the 2020 census.
One Covid-19 patient died in the past 24 hours, McMahon said. That was a man in his 70s.
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