sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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Welcome to National Cocoa Day!
National Cocoa Day celebrates hot cocoa. The day fittingly takes place in December, as the drink is often associated with cold weather. Although the names "hot chocolate" and "hot cocoa" are often used interchangeably, there technically is a difference between the two. This difference is not legal, however, and the two are often mislabeled at stores, most often with hot cocoa being labeled as hot chocolate. The difference lies in that hot chocolate contains cocoa butter, and hot cocoa does not. Hot cocoa uses cocoa powder that is made by removing cocoa butter from ground cocoa beans. Hot chocolate is made from bar chocolate, which has cocoa powder, sugar, and cocoa butter in it. These differences give both their distinct flavor and texture. Hot cocoa is thinner and more chocolatey, but is less rich. The richness in hot chocolate comes from the higher fat content, which comes from the cocoa butter.
SU News
A breakdown of Syracuse’s 5-5 start: ‘We’re not playing good basketball’ (PS; $; Waters)
Not even a win would have made Jim Boeheim a happy man on Saturday.
But a 79-75 loss to arch-rival Georgetown on Saturday put the Syracuse coach in an even more dour mood.
“Even if we won, it wouldn’t have mattered,’’ Boeheim said. “We’re not playing good basketball.’’
The loss to Georgetown dropped Syracuse’s record to 5-5 on the season. It’s rare and, yet, uncomfortably familiar territory for the Orange.
It’s rare in that Syracuse hasn’t had a worse start to a season since the 1968-69 team lost seven of its first 10 games.
But there’s a familiar feeling, too. Syracuse got off to a 5-5 start just two years ago. Similarly to Saturday, it was a mid-December loss to Georgetown that left Syracuse at 5-5 in 2019.
And it was just five years ago, that the 2016-17 squad lost five non-conference games. Until Saturday, that was the only other team in Boeheim’s 46-year head coaching tenure to lose five non-conference games.
“I just don’t think we’re capable right now of playing the way we have to,’’ Boeheim said.
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Roundtable: Where does Syracuse stand after its first 10 games? (DO; Staff)
Syracuse’s 79-75 loss to Georgetown on Saturday was its fifth nonconference loss of the season, just the second time in program history the Orange have hit that mark. The last time came in 2016-17, when SU missed out on the NCAA Tournament and lost in the second round of the National Invitation Tournament.
With Syracuse now sitting at 5-5 a third into the regular season, our beat writers reflect on where SU stands heading into the heat of Atlantic Coast Conference play.
1. Have your expectations changed since the start of the season?
Andrew Crane: Yes. They absolutely have, and not in a good way. I think the ceiling of this Syracuse team remains the same — an NCAA Tournament team that could win a game, or two, but the potential floor of this SU season has lowered after losses to Colgate and Georgetown. I wasn’t overly concerned after the Orange left the Battle 4 Atlantis, especially because of how difficult VCU’s defense made it to attack, but the four games since have painted a different picture. According to ShotQuality data, Florida State wins that Dec. 4 game 90% of the time based on the shots taken by each team (a projected 81-67 SU loss).The Orange’s offense relies on a lot of mid-range jumpers when the 3-pointers don’t fall, while on defense, SU’s ShotQuality points per possession for catch-and-shoot 3-pointers sits at 1.12 and ranks 349th in the country. Those problems stem further than outliers, unfortunate bounces on shots and one-time issues.
Roshan Fernandez: I think Syracuse has underperformed through the first 10 games of the season. I knew there’d be growing pains for a team with three new starters, but I didn’t think they’d be this significant. True, Syracuse had a challenging nonconference schedule, but it shouldn’t have lost to Colgate, Georgetown and probably VCU. The Orange were very lucky to beat Florida State. The offense hasn’t found a consistent rhythm or played a complete game, and the defense is really struggling. Syracuse needs to find an answer to the plethora of open 3-pointers that opponents are going to put up.
Gaurav Shetty: I think my expectations have definitely changed. In the preseason I expected Syracuse to finish anywhere between fourth and seventh in the ACC. That’s probably still going to be true, but likely toward the latter half of the range around sixth or seventh. Likewise, I’d say the ceiling of this team has lowered. It might’ve been wishful thinking to predict a ceiling of the Elite Eight in preseason, whereas now it might be the Sweet 16 instead.
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Statistical Analysis: A Tale of Two Halves (SI; McAllister)
Syracuse basketball lost to Georgetown 79-75 despite holding a 10 point lead at halftime. Holding a halftime lead is not new for the Orange. Syracuse has done that in six of its 10 games. But of those six, it has lost three of those games. We took a deeper dive into the numbers to see if there were any trends. There is a trend. Syracuse basketball has a second half problem.
In Syracuse's 10 games, it has performed better in the second half only twice (Drexel and Florida State). The other eight, it performed worse. Better or worse how? Scoring margin, for one. But we also looked at Syracuse's shooting percentage as well as opponents' shooting percentage in each half. The numbers speak for themselves.
| Category | First Half | Second Half |
|---|---|---|
| Syracuse Points | 38.1 | 37.0 |
| Opponents' Points | 33.0 | 42.7 |
| Scoring Margin | +5.1 | -5.7 |
| Syracuse FG% | 43.8% | 45.0% |
| Syracuse 3PT% | 39.7% | 31.3% |
| Opponents' FG% | 37.6% | 47.2% |
| Opponents' 3PT% | 30.5% | 45.1% |
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As Syracuse basketball falls flat in Big East tour, apparently season is over (itlh; Adler)
Syracuse basketball has a 5-5 record at this point in the 2021-22 campaign, and some of my fellow Orange fans have already declared the current stanza a bust.
In all fairness, I totally get the frustration of ‘Cuse fans, and I myself feel their pain. The Orange, with two non-conference games to go, is 4-5 in these encounters, with an Atlantic Coast Conference win at Florida State leveling the ‘Cuse record at a less-than-stellar .500.
So it’s true that, assuming Syracuse basketball dispatches of Lehigh and Cornell in the near future, the best that the Orange can do is put forth a sub-par 6-5 overall performance during the non-conference portion of the 2021-22 calendar.
Given that the ‘Cuse has a vastly revamped roster and has also faced a challenging schedule to date, I figured that Syracuse basketball might endure a trio of setbacks in the non-conference docket. But five defeats? I didn’t foresee that at all.
Syracuse basketball has a lot of ground to make up in ACC competition.
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Syracuse Basketball: Who can be that Marek Dolezaj x-factor for Orange? (itlh; Fiello)
This Syracuse basketball season feels to me like there is still a lot of potential left for success. At moments, there are signs of excitement and at other moments frustration, such as falling to long-time rival Georgetown in a close game on Saturday.
There are likely various factors for the frustrating times involved including playing a tougher schedule, shooters finding cold streaks and also sometimes that’s sports whether we like it or not.
But there’s one thing that’s missing we’ve had lately, and that is the x-factor guy for Syracuse basketball.
One of the most beloved players in Syracuse basketball history is Slovakia’s own Marek Dolezaj. Marek’s known for his love of local pizza but for fans who watched him, it was also that ability to make a play where you just watched in awe and excitement.
Whether it was standing in there to take the charge from former Duke star Zion Williamson, who easily outweighed him, fighting for loose balls/rebounds and even breaking teeth, you believed Marek would find a way to make a play you’d remember.
With Marek gone, will someone else step up and be that often underrated player who keeps you in games with a crucial play? Is there someone on this roster who can match his level of skill, aggression and determination to make the play on BOTH sides of the ball?
Who is the x-factor for Syracuse basketball this season?
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Axe: SU basketball puts fans in familiar quandary: Are you in or out? (PS; $; Axe)
Picture it’s you seated across from Danny Ocean in one of the best scenes from the movie “Ocean’s 11.”
Ocean slams his palm on the table and makes a demand of young Linus Caldwell.
“You’re either in or you’re out. Right now.”
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a Duke Blue Devils community (DBR; King)
And a little child shall lead them.
Notre Dame pulled a major upset of Kentucky Saturday, winning 66-62. Hometown freshman Blake Wesley hit a shot in the lane to put the Irish up 64-62 with 11.7 left. Then he hit Dane Goodwin with a pass at the buzzer to make it a four point win.
In fairness to Kentucky, the Commonwealth suffered a huge blow Friday night when tornadoes killed dozens of people. Some of the kids on the roster are in-state and may have family they’re not sure are safe, or girlfriends. Something like that is hard to put out of your mind. It’d be totally understandable.
In Atlanta, Georgia Tech kept up with LSU until well into the second half but the Tigers just wore them down and won going away. but 24 turnovers? That’s awful.
In the old Big East, Syracuse vs. Georgetown was appointment viewing. Still a lot of fun when they play but both programs have fallen into mediocrity. Syracuse shot poorly and the zone gave up nearly 50 percent of Georgetown’s 26 three point attempts. The Hoyas also shot 18-21 from the line.
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Other
Density Inc. uses sensors to track in real time the number of people occupying a building and specific areas within a building. (Courtesy of Density)
How 5 coffee lovers grew their Syracuse people-counting company into a $1B ‘unicorn’ (PS; $; Moriarty)
Seven years ago, a group of impatient coffee lovers in Syracuse thought it would be cool to know when there was a line at their favorite downtown coffee shop, Cafe Kubal.
Even more, they wanted to know when the line wasn’t there.
“It was and continues to be one of our favorite places to get our caffeine fix and we would go there religiously,” said Steven VonDeak, one of the five founders of Density Inc. “And sometimes we would get there and we would be first in line and sometimes there’d be 10 people ahead of us. The whole idea at that point was really simple. We just wanted to know how busy the coffee shop was before we put on our winter gear and walked there.”
That impatience in line led VonDeak, Andrew Farah, Jordan Messina, Robert Grazioli and Ben Redfield to ultimately found Density at The Tech Garden, a downtown business incubator, in 2014. The idea, back then, was to design sensors that could track in real time the number of people going in and out of a retail business. Over time, they began to focus more on measuring how many people were in any space.
And seven years later, the rapidly growing startup is being valued by investors at $1 billion. That makes it the Tech Garden’s first Silicon Valley-like “unicorn,” a label shared by successful new economy businesses such as Airbnb.
Density offers companies an analytics platform for measuring and optimizing workplace usage. Last month, it secured $125 million in funding led by existing investor Kleiner Perkins.
Altogether, Density has secured more than $225 million in funding since its founding, bringing its present valuation to $1.05 billion, according to the company.
That makes it the Tech Garden’s first unicorn, a term coined by venture capitalist Aileen Lee in 2013 to describe what at that time was an exceedingly rare achievement -- a privately held startup valued at over $1 billion.
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