sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2011
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- 26,496
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I will start off, as is my wont, with food.
I have criticized the powers that be for the lack of food choices many times in the past. Want to give them props for adding pulled pork, hamburgers and now pizza rolls as new options (for basketball, I think the pulled pork was around last year, the burgers started this year and the pizza rolls are really new) . I am told the burgers are quite good and the pizza rolls got a solid thumbs up from my 8 year old niece. They looked like 4 under sized deep fried egg rolls filled with pizza goodness. FYI, the burgers and pizza rolls are sold in the northeast corner of the Dome, lower level, where chicken tenders, fries and Saranac are also sold. It is where the old Burger King was back in the day. I believe the pulled pork sandwiches are only available at the stand in the south east corner of the Dome, lower level. For my money, the chicken tenders are the best meal available in the Done. They are actually quite good. Good to get all that documented just as the home season has (hopefully) ended.
The n/a was sung by a junior at SU. Very soulful version with some interesting flourishes. Good job. While on the topic of music, wanted to note that it was announced that Justin Murtz, longtime director of the SUMB (and friend of the board) is leaving his position. He will be missed.
Just before the game started, the crowd on the upper level of the north side of the Dome extended to close to the goal line. On the south side, there was virtually no one sitting in the upper level above the lower level student section and beyond to the east. Looked like the university reserved a huge number of seats for students that didn't want to go. But 10 minutes into the game, those sections had filled up and it was clear we might have a chance for 30K.
Props to all the people who paid to sit up there. Awful seats. Hope they discounted them greatly, as they should. The students were able to buy tickets for whatever the temperature was at 8 am yesterday. Think it was 12. Pretty fair.
Anyway, the crowd was lively and attentive from the start. People made noise and I think they affected the GTech players. The GTech fans did a much better job shouting air ball than the SU fans did, but on Saturday, that was about the only advantage the Yellow Jackets had on Syracuse.
What changed? I thought the SU defense was far better yesterday than in the first meeting. GTech doesn't have many weapons on offense. They scored mostly on transition baskets by Jackson and shots from the high post by Lammers then. SU tried to take away the high post entry pass to Lammers yesterday and was largely successful. They also got back on defense well, limiting transition baskets quite severely. And they overplayed on the second pass when GTech got the ball in the paint to get a lot of steals. Thought it was one of the best displays of team defense all season, with only TT serving as a weak link.
On offense, GTech tried that 1-3-1 zone they used so successfully in the first game. This time, SU was prepared for it, attacking it with 3 point shots from the corners, where this defense has major weak spots. TB and AW3 did major damage, helped by excellent passing from JG and TL. Good to see marked improvement in some areas from a team that has tended to make the same mistakes a lot.
TL dominated the boards and intimidated GTech when they got into the paint. He could be scoring another 5 or 10 points a game but this team is exceptionally incompetent at throwing a lob pass down low.
Looked like Pastner switched defenses a few times, but AW3 glowed white hot in the 2nd half, TB continued his strong development the second half of the season (he is finishing a lot better now), and JG ran the offense really well. When this team is playing well, they are really tough to defend and that certainly was the case on Saturday.
Given the choice of UVa, VTech or Miami beforehand, I would have chosen Miami. Not going to be easy, but we match up pretty well with them. I like our chances Wednesday.
Strange team. They can look horrible, exceptional or anything in between. Not much consistency, but they are dangerous as hell to play when they are in the groove. If they play defense like they did yesterday, watch out.
I have criticized the powers that be for the lack of food choices many times in the past. Want to give them props for adding pulled pork, hamburgers and now pizza rolls as new options (for basketball, I think the pulled pork was around last year, the burgers started this year and the pizza rolls are really new) . I am told the burgers are quite good and the pizza rolls got a solid thumbs up from my 8 year old niece. They looked like 4 under sized deep fried egg rolls filled with pizza goodness. FYI, the burgers and pizza rolls are sold in the northeast corner of the Dome, lower level, where chicken tenders, fries and Saranac are also sold. It is where the old Burger King was back in the day. I believe the pulled pork sandwiches are only available at the stand in the south east corner of the Dome, lower level. For my money, the chicken tenders are the best meal available in the Done. They are actually quite good. Good to get all that documented just as the home season has (hopefully) ended.
The n/a was sung by a junior at SU. Very soulful version with some interesting flourishes. Good job. While on the topic of music, wanted to note that it was announced that Justin Murtz, longtime director of the SUMB (and friend of the board) is leaving his position. He will be missed.
Just before the game started, the crowd on the upper level of the north side of the Dome extended to close to the goal line. On the south side, there was virtually no one sitting in the upper level above the lower level student section and beyond to the east. Looked like the university reserved a huge number of seats for students that didn't want to go. But 10 minutes into the game, those sections had filled up and it was clear we might have a chance for 30K.
Props to all the people who paid to sit up there. Awful seats. Hope they discounted them greatly, as they should. The students were able to buy tickets for whatever the temperature was at 8 am yesterday. Think it was 12. Pretty fair.
Anyway, the crowd was lively and attentive from the start. People made noise and I think they affected the GTech players. The GTech fans did a much better job shouting air ball than the SU fans did, but on Saturday, that was about the only advantage the Yellow Jackets had on Syracuse.
What changed? I thought the SU defense was far better yesterday than in the first meeting. GTech doesn't have many weapons on offense. They scored mostly on transition baskets by Jackson and shots from the high post by Lammers then. SU tried to take away the high post entry pass to Lammers yesterday and was largely successful. They also got back on defense well, limiting transition baskets quite severely. And they overplayed on the second pass when GTech got the ball in the paint to get a lot of steals. Thought it was one of the best displays of team defense all season, with only TT serving as a weak link.
On offense, GTech tried that 1-3-1 zone they used so successfully in the first game. This time, SU was prepared for it, attacking it with 3 point shots from the corners, where this defense has major weak spots. TB and AW3 did major damage, helped by excellent passing from JG and TL. Good to see marked improvement in some areas from a team that has tended to make the same mistakes a lot.
TL dominated the boards and intimidated GTech when they got into the paint. He could be scoring another 5 or 10 points a game but this team is exceptionally incompetent at throwing a lob pass down low.
Looked like Pastner switched defenses a few times, but AW3 glowed white hot in the 2nd half, TB continued his strong development the second half of the season (he is finishing a lot better now), and JG ran the offense really well. When this team is playing well, they are really tough to defend and that certainly was the case on Saturday.
Given the choice of UVa, VTech or Miami beforehand, I would have chosen Miami. Not going to be easy, but we match up pretty well with them. I like our chances Wednesday.
Strange team. They can look horrible, exceptional or anything in between. Not much consistency, but they are dangerous as hell to play when they are in the groove. If they play defense like they did yesterday, watch out.
