sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2011
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I will make my usual series of disjointed thoughts and observations. Read on if you dare.
I am going to be sitting otherwise for Senior Day Tuesday night, so this was a special day for me for a couple of reasons. Yes, it was really important to be there to honor the remarkable career of one James Arthur Boeheim. But I also realized that this was my last game sitting in my long time seats in section 310. I think I have been in these particular ones for about 10 years, which marked the end of a long migration with a number of stops that started up near the top of the southwest corner of the 300 level and ended in row D at center count in section 310.
I have been friends with the people on both sides of me, as well as the people behind me, for a number of years. We know each other’s names, the names of each other’s wives, some of the names of other friends and family that sometimes come to games. No one really understood exactly how the repeating process is going to work, We all expressed hope we would end up neighbors in our new seats but no one thought it was likely. We said our goodbyes after the JAB ceremony and left knowing we might never see each other again.
There are a lot of concerned people out there. Not a dig at SUAD, who has an impossible job reseating for hoops, where we lose 5000 seats and close to 20K of season ticket holders will be relocated. As far as I can see, they are doing a good job managing things. As good as is possible under the circumstances. I will be glad when it is all over.
If this team has a trademark, even late in the season, it is their inconsistency. The offense in the first half was sublime. Against a team everyone in the conference has had problems scoring against them. Until yesterday. Really liked one adjustment we made. Most games, Justin Taylor gets matched with a power forward on offense and defense. He is our strongest remaining forward so it is logical we would ask him to try and cover them. And lately, ACC schools have put JT’s defender in the paint, helping to make it harder to penetrate, instead of going out to cover JT, who is typically put way in the corner, with Chris Bell in the other corner, to better isolate our two slashing guards, with Maliq up top to get the center away from the basket to open things up further. We finally responded to the tactic of leaving JT open by having him run the baseline repeatedly, especially when Maliq got the ball, which forced a slow footed power forward to try and stay with JT. Ended up getting JT a bunch of easy baskets down low, thanks to some excellent passes by Brown. Good to see him scoring and gaining some confidence. We had good movement by.A number of players and Q was also effective passing it to the open guys, usually from the paint.
What the hell happened in the second half? As others have said, a big part of our offense are transition baskets and they almost all come off of turnovers. We aren’t good at getting guards to release early and aren’t good at getting long outlet passes out. And Judah gets the ball 95% of the time after we get a defensive rebound and he is clearly uncomfortably running the fast break from a half court situation. Though he seems very comfortable doing it after a turover. I guess getting a couple of steps ahead of the defenders makes all the difference for him.
Agree we played too much iso ball in the second half but it was largely successful. We scored plenty of points in that half. If our defense was even somewhat mediocre, we would have won by double digits. But that was not the case.
Props to ND for not giving up and finding ways to get back in the game. We got 2 PFs on their #3 early and had a chance to get him his 3rd and really change the game but couldn’t make that happen. Impressive for a young player to play a long time with 2 and not get that 3rd.
The game changed late in the first half. Made the last 3 minutes. I think Judah was already out and then I think Coach Autry got super cautious and pulled Maliq, who was playing great, out. I assume he wanted to prevent him from getting his 2nd PF. I would try and avoid situations where Judah and Maliq are both out together for an extended period. It is playing with fire and in this game, a big fire ensured. I think JJ felt he needed to kind of take over with the Big Two out and while he had been playing well up to that point, he had a rapid fire series of bad plays with helped ND put up a bunch of points late to get them some momentum going into halftime.
The second half, ND attacked the basket a lot more with #3, who was able to get into the paint whenever he wanted and made a lot of good decisions. Hit players, mostly #13 inside for easy baskets. And started to kick it out to #11 (Shrewsberry), who had been repeatedly abused on defense by Syracuse in the first half. Shewsberry is not very athletic but he can shoot it and he seemed to hit every open jumper he had in the second half. Until very late.
Thought Judah really got abused by #3. Thought Bell got targeted way too much. Bell was matched up against a power forward type and he got pushed around and big boyed repeatedly. JT had come out early and I was sure Coach Autry would adjust by bringing him in. But he didn’t. Not sure I understand why he didn’t even get a chance to help stop the Irish run.
Red perhaps panicked a bit and switched to zone for a while, where Shrewsberry turned white hot and threatened to explode all our defenders into grey oily smoke.
Cuffe was asked to come in and help stop the rally and he actually did contribute some decent minutes. But bottom line, we lost our poise, players stopped staying with their man and it seemed like just abourt everyone blew their assignments just about every time ND had the ball. It was amazing, and not in a good way.
For all the problems Bell had on defense in the second half, he again made some big plays late in the half. He hit yet another 3 with around 3:14 left, got a big rebound, hit a couple big FTs, and even improved his defense some. I think it is clear he is our best pressure player and it is time we start designing plays for him late in games.
Crowd was pretty loud in the first half. Mostly shocked and appalled in the second. Lots of murmuring. Props to the students, who showed up in force and made a lot of noise, though most did not appear to show until halftime (not good to miss that first half sleepy heads).
Thought the ceremony was very well done. One quibble. Wish they did a better job getting word out it was happening after the game. My wife was calling me at 2:30 wondering where I was because I hadn’t warned her I was going to be home late. I know it was on the Cuse.com web site but it just didn’t seem to be communicated really well.
Liked all the recorded videos. Thought Mike did a great job serving as the emcee. Thought JAB was excellent as usual on the mic. The only thing I noticed that was different from when he was the HC was the way he walked around. Seemed in pain and was more bent off than normal. I suspect he is having some back problems.
A couple more quibbles. Where was video from Calhoun? Where was the one from PJ? Where was the Bill Rafferty video?
That said, I thought overall SUAD did a great job with this. I know a lot of others who attended agree. Nice to send JAB off properly. Most of the crowd stayed for the ceremony, which was impressive. This town loves JAB almost as much as he loves us.
Congrats coach. Enjoy your retirement.
I am going to be sitting otherwise for Senior Day Tuesday night, so this was a special day for me for a couple of reasons. Yes, it was really important to be there to honor the remarkable career of one James Arthur Boeheim. But I also realized that this was my last game sitting in my long time seats in section 310. I think I have been in these particular ones for about 10 years, which marked the end of a long migration with a number of stops that started up near the top of the southwest corner of the 300 level and ended in row D at center count in section 310.
I have been friends with the people on both sides of me, as well as the people behind me, for a number of years. We know each other’s names, the names of each other’s wives, some of the names of other friends and family that sometimes come to games. No one really understood exactly how the repeating process is going to work, We all expressed hope we would end up neighbors in our new seats but no one thought it was likely. We said our goodbyes after the JAB ceremony and left knowing we might never see each other again.
There are a lot of concerned people out there. Not a dig at SUAD, who has an impossible job reseating for hoops, where we lose 5000 seats and close to 20K of season ticket holders will be relocated. As far as I can see, they are doing a good job managing things. As good as is possible under the circumstances. I will be glad when it is all over.
If this team has a trademark, even late in the season, it is their inconsistency. The offense in the first half was sublime. Against a team everyone in the conference has had problems scoring against them. Until yesterday. Really liked one adjustment we made. Most games, Justin Taylor gets matched with a power forward on offense and defense. He is our strongest remaining forward so it is logical we would ask him to try and cover them. And lately, ACC schools have put JT’s defender in the paint, helping to make it harder to penetrate, instead of going out to cover JT, who is typically put way in the corner, with Chris Bell in the other corner, to better isolate our two slashing guards, with Maliq up top to get the center away from the basket to open things up further. We finally responded to the tactic of leaving JT open by having him run the baseline repeatedly, especially when Maliq got the ball, which forced a slow footed power forward to try and stay with JT. Ended up getting JT a bunch of easy baskets down low, thanks to some excellent passes by Brown. Good to see him scoring and gaining some confidence. We had good movement by.A number of players and Q was also effective passing it to the open guys, usually from the paint.
What the hell happened in the second half? As others have said, a big part of our offense are transition baskets and they almost all come off of turnovers. We aren’t good at getting guards to release early and aren’t good at getting long outlet passes out. And Judah gets the ball 95% of the time after we get a defensive rebound and he is clearly uncomfortably running the fast break from a half court situation. Though he seems very comfortable doing it after a turover. I guess getting a couple of steps ahead of the defenders makes all the difference for him.
Agree we played too much iso ball in the second half but it was largely successful. We scored plenty of points in that half. If our defense was even somewhat mediocre, we would have won by double digits. But that was not the case.
Props to ND for not giving up and finding ways to get back in the game. We got 2 PFs on their #3 early and had a chance to get him his 3rd and really change the game but couldn’t make that happen. Impressive for a young player to play a long time with 2 and not get that 3rd.
The game changed late in the first half. Made the last 3 minutes. I think Judah was already out and then I think Coach Autry got super cautious and pulled Maliq, who was playing great, out. I assume he wanted to prevent him from getting his 2nd PF. I would try and avoid situations where Judah and Maliq are both out together for an extended period. It is playing with fire and in this game, a big fire ensured. I think JJ felt he needed to kind of take over with the Big Two out and while he had been playing well up to that point, he had a rapid fire series of bad plays with helped ND put up a bunch of points late to get them some momentum going into halftime.
The second half, ND attacked the basket a lot more with #3, who was able to get into the paint whenever he wanted and made a lot of good decisions. Hit players, mostly #13 inside for easy baskets. And started to kick it out to #11 (Shrewsberry), who had been repeatedly abused on defense by Syracuse in the first half. Shewsberry is not very athletic but he can shoot it and he seemed to hit every open jumper he had in the second half. Until very late.
Thought Judah really got abused by #3. Thought Bell got targeted way too much. Bell was matched up against a power forward type and he got pushed around and big boyed repeatedly. JT had come out early and I was sure Coach Autry would adjust by bringing him in. But he didn’t. Not sure I understand why he didn’t even get a chance to help stop the Irish run.
Red perhaps panicked a bit and switched to zone for a while, where Shrewsberry turned white hot and threatened to explode all our defenders into grey oily smoke.
Cuffe was asked to come in and help stop the rally and he actually did contribute some decent minutes. But bottom line, we lost our poise, players stopped staying with their man and it seemed like just abourt everyone blew their assignments just about every time ND had the ball. It was amazing, and not in a good way.
For all the problems Bell had on defense in the second half, he again made some big plays late in the half. He hit yet another 3 with around 3:14 left, got a big rebound, hit a couple big FTs, and even improved his defense some. I think it is clear he is our best pressure player and it is time we start designing plays for him late in games.
Crowd was pretty loud in the first half. Mostly shocked and appalled in the second. Lots of murmuring. Props to the students, who showed up in force and made a lot of noise, though most did not appear to show until halftime (not good to miss that first half sleepy heads).
Thought the ceremony was very well done. One quibble. Wish they did a better job getting word out it was happening after the game. My wife was calling me at 2:30 wondering where I was because I hadn’t warned her I was going to be home late. I know it was on the Cuse.com web site but it just didn’t seem to be communicated really well.
Liked all the recorded videos. Thought Mike did a great job serving as the emcee. Thought JAB was excellent as usual on the mic. The only thing I noticed that was different from when he was the HC was the way he walked around. Seemed in pain and was more bent off than normal. I suspect he is having some back problems.
A couple more quibbles. Where was video from Calhoun? Where was the one from PJ? Where was the Bill Rafferty video?
That said, I thought overall SUAD did a great job with this. I know a lot of others who attended agree. Nice to send JAB off properly. Most of the crowd stayed for the ceremony, which was impressive. This town loves JAB almost as much as he loves us.
Congrats coach. Enjoy your retirement.
