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Message: [QUOTE="sutomcat, post: 182737, member: 27"] Nice crowd, nowhere near 30K. Maybe 26.5K actually there. It was a pretty loud group. The students turned out big time again, filling the lower student section and 2 sections up top. Props to them for that on a weekday. Very rare. Some woman sang the NA and did a beautiful job. Even the students appeared somewhat impressed. Saw a couple of high fade wigs in the student section from my perch up in 310. Nice. Did not see Nerlens or Ennis, I assume they were there. The refs allowed both teams to play, there was a lot of hacking, pushing and contact that went uncalled. I think Cougherty (sp?) was the head ref. Not a good ref...thought the other 2 were better. The whistle swallowing helped GTown, a scrawny, undersized team that must scratch and bite all game long to compete with a big team like Syracuse. And compete they did, completely destroying us on the boards. We didn't get much in the way of offensive rebounds and gave up way too many offensive rebounds to a bunch of skinny little kids. Part of it was the poor shooting by the Hoyas, whose rock like attempts often hit the rim and kicked out to the nether regions, where GTown guards scooped them up with abandon. Thought CJ did a decent job battling for rebounds on a night when there were a ton of missed shots and there was an opportunity to get a lot of rebounds. KJ and Melo not so much. The guards got beaten to long rebounds by the Hoya guards all night long. Looked like JB and Scoop had some pointed arguments on the bench in the 1st half, where Scoop again played poorly and looked all out of sorts. Interestingly, this appeared if anything to lead to increased playing time. A little mystified by the substitution pattern in the 2nd half (and overtime), or rather the lack thereof. could understand better if all the players were playing well, but they weren't. All I can think is that Scoop and Dion are giant head cases and if JB sits them, he feels he might lose them (Scoop got the bench treatment recently and is apparently still recovering from it). Thought Triche was our best guard tonight and that we missed him when he basically sat out the whole second half. Especially with GTown playing the 2-3 so much down the stretch. No offense to Dion or Scoop but if we are getting zoned, Triche should be in the game. Everytime Triche left the game, Thompson switched to the 2-3 zone. I don't think it was a coincidence. Thought we had the game in hand and only needed to keep getting the ball to Fab and Kris, who was the only players finishing plays, but suddenly, Scoop and Dion forgot about this and a series of disastrous possessions ensued. Great to see Kris emerging as the go to guy. He is doing what seniors are supposed to do, and he basically won the game almost by himself tonight. But he can't do it alone...he needs players to set screens, penetrate and kick out, etc. At least Scoop hit Kris a couple of times late and gave him good looks. Props also to Scoop for great defense on the last real possession, when he got the steal/turnover to ice the game. But we can't go 4 or 5 possessions in a row down the stretch without our best players even touching the ball. On the way home, heard the following on the post game radio show: Syracuse has won 22 of the last 26 overtime games they have played and in the history of the Carrier Dome, Syracuse is now 19-2 in overtime games. I quibble with JB on a few things but wow, what a statement of coaching well in tight games. Incredible. Also incredible is JB officially passing Dean Smith in all time coaching wins. 24-1. 11-1 in league play, another win over a top ten team is not so bad. Was impressed by the Hoyas, who did a fine job attacking the 2-3 and would have won the game easily if Sims had any stones. Wow, he was trembling whenever he got near Melo. Could not hit a 2 footer to save his life. Clark stepped up a couple of times, we did a nice job taking Holllis? out of the game and Gtown was forced to rely on kids to score. Otto does not pass the eye test but the kid can really play. Kind of reminds me of Louis Orr. Going to be all conference some day I think. The UConn game on Saturday will be a happening. Another chance to possibly say goodbye to an old rival. I hope we get up close to the alltime record for this game. And I hope Calhoun is able to coach in the Dome one more time. It would not be the same without him there. [/QUOTE]

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