sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2011
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Welcome to National Chocolate Covered Anything Day!
Chocolaholics rejoice! Today is National Chocolate Covered Anything Day.
Its a great day to indulge, binge, "pig out", and otherwise consume to excess, your favorite food...chocolate. We believe the timing of this day, during the holiday season, couldn't be better.
Today, we get to enjoy our beloved chocolate by covering something...just about anything... in a generous amount of chocolate. Pour, spread, or drizzle chocolate over cakes, cupcakes, pies, pancakes or waffles, nuts, raisins, even ants (yes, some people actually eat chocolate covered ants!). We will let you decide what is too extreme, and how much is too much, if any.
As chocoloaholics, we shouldn't need any added incentive to enjoy our chocolate. In the giving spirit of the holiday season, make sure to give or share some of your favorite chocolate covered treats today.
SU News
Syracuse, More Than Most Teams, Can't Afford to Fall Behind (DO; Dougherty)
In 10 games, Syracuse has shot the lights out and shot itself in the foot. It’s struggled to rebound against mid-major opponents then been sturdier in the paint against Power-Five frontcourts. It was a Top 25 team after the Battle 4 Atlantis and then anything but in Madison Square Garden on Sunday.
And inside of its mercurial start is a big-picture problem that looks hard to fix. One that, uncharacteristic of the young season, has stretched across two recent games.
As Syracuse.com’s Mike Waters noted Tuesday, Syracuse has trailed by eight or more points in the first half of six of its 10 games this season. This was a key factor in the Orange’s last two losses — on the road at Georgetown and St. John’s, respectively — in which the Hoyas and Red Storm jumped out to early leads that held to the finish. And while SU shot itself out of both these games, going a combined 6-for-26 from 3 in the two second halves, there’s a more troubling trend at hand.
Naturally, Syracuse’s (7-3) first-half deficits turn into second-half deficits. Georgetown built its biggest lead of the game, 21 points, with 16:12 remaining. St. John’s’, 13, came with 7:29 on the game clock. This has forced the Orange to use its most effective offensive lineup, which is smaller and does not include starting center Dajuan Coleman, down the stretch. That group is supposed to space the floor, get in transition, force turnovers with an extended 2-3 zone and, ultimately, score enough to forge a comeback.
But that group also struggles mightily to defend the paint, leaving Syracuse without a late-game lineup that can both score and stop opponents.
“If we weren’t digging ourselves in deficits, maybe we could play a little bit bigger,” SU interim head coach Mike Hopkins said after the loss to the Red Storm, whose 44 second-half points were the most an Orange opponent has scored in a half this season.
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Syracuse Basketball Needs Richardson and Cooney To Regain Their Shooting Touches (thejuice; Goodman)
Basketball is a beautiful game: five athletes trying to move as one, using a multitude of strategies and schemes on both offense and defense. It can be complicated as a battle of wills and a battle of wits at the same time. But, it is also wonderfully simplistic at it’s core objective; put the ball in the hole.
If you want to know why Syracuse is 7-3, it’s because the two of Syracuse’s shooters—Trevor Cooney and Malachi Richardson—simply can’t accomplish that core objective of the sport they play.
I’m not saying Richardson and Cooney are the only reasons Syracuse is 7-3, and fell from the top 25 just as quickly as they ascending to No. 14, but the numbers, well, they speak for themselves.
The brick brothers have each shot 33 percent from the field on the season. Cooney plays 38 minutes and Richardson plays 32 minutes per game. They take 40 percent of the team’s shots. If the rest of the team made 60 percent of its shots, the team as a whole would still be shooting under 50 percent from the floor.
Hang on, it gets worse. In the three losses thus far, they’ve shot 17 for 73 combined. Simple math tells us that’s 23.3 percent.
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Other
Audio Recording Discovered of James Naismith Describing First Basketball Game (PS; AP)
A University of Kansas researcher has discovered what is believed to be the only audio recording of basketball inventor James Naismith, during which he describes the first game he organized 124 years ago this month as a bit of a disaster.
Michael J. Zogry, an associate professor of religious studies, obtained the nearly 3-minute audio in November from the Library of Congress. It was part of a radio show from New York station WOR-AM called "We the People." During the Jan. 31, 1939, program, Naismith explained how he set up the game with two peach baskets at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, in December 1891.
Naismith said he had been given two weeks to devise a new indoor activity for his gym class. The work was hurried along by what he described as a "real New England blizzard" that had the youngsters climbing the walls with little to do.
"We tried everything to keep them quiet," Naismith said on the recording, but the students were bored with a "modified" form of football tried in the gym. Naismith figured it was time to try his new idea using an "old soccer ball" and two teams of nine players each.
» Listen to the audio
"I told them the idea was to throw the ball into the opposing team's peach basket," he said. "I blew a whistle and the first game of basketball began."
It didn't go smoothly. Naismith said the players almost immediately started tackling each other — and worse. Two young men suffered black eyes while another was knocked out, and he had to pull players apart, he said.
"I didn't have enough (rules), and that's where I made my big mistake," Naismith said.
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