sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2011
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Left CNY for Beantown around 12:30 PM. It is an easy ride...just don't forget to get on I90 again when you get on I87 for 14 miles south of Albany. We got there in just under 4 hours, though getting to Boston and getting parked and on the streets are two very different things. There was heavy traffic the last few miles we were on I90 and I93N as we ran into some rush order traffic. We are so spoiled living in CNY. I have no idea how people tolerate dealing with that kind of bumper to bumper traffic on a daily basis. No wonder BC fans are so crazy.
Parking was another adventure as we entered a parking garage near the arena, drove slowly through the first floor of a valet parking type place and finally paid, were given a receipt and told to leave the garage, drive around it and park on the roof. Took maybe 25 minutes.
I am sure others have commented on the dominance of orange on the streets and in the arena. We had a good turnout. My estimate is that we had 60-65% of the fans there. Loud, proud and usually with a buzz on, as usual.
We went to West Side Johnnies?, whatever the designated place was for SU fans to meet. There was a line of maybe 80 people there waiting to get in. They said it was moving extremely slowly. So we headed up the street towards a lively bar with people wearing orange outside, and were spotted by Lurker Maureen, who told us a bunch of syracusefan.comers were in there. We got in too and hung with some elite posters for a while (tol, Jake, Lurker Maureen, orange79, saw Marsh, RF and NRF briefly as well. The pizza wasn't great but the converation was and thanks to orange79 for the excellent ginger ale. I buy the next round.
I like the setup here. There are a lot of bars and restaurants nearby, lots of good choices. It is also right next to mass transit, always important in a city as congested as Boston.
Finally got into the arena. Got and dropped off the good mojo program for cto, got a good mojo hug as well. Really like the arena. The entrance from North Station is kind of messed up...I think they only have 2 stairways to get in and it can be a bottleneck (though it was not close to being as bad as it was in 2003, when we were just at war and security was ultra high and the scanning process to get entry was really really slow).
Love the big concourses. Love the many open areas where you can stand, talk with others and generally relax. Love the many food choices. They had, among other choices, a roast beef carving station (sandwiches $10, they were $14.50 in NYC), italian sausage with peppers and onions (tried one, very good), chorizo sausage, a couple kinds of pizza, a bunch of sandwich choices, a lobster station, extreme nachos, etc., etc. Visiting these arenas, you realize just how bad the situation is in the Dome, where you have 30K squeezed into a small area and the concourses are closed, narrow, packed with people and movement or space are at a premium. Maybe they could knock some holes in the exterior walls on the west side of the Dome on the 1st and 2nd levels to build big open areas to hold an extended food court, with areas to stand and sit and enjoy your food and drink. Even if you had to get to them using a revolving door, I think it would be great. But best of all, I like attending games at other venues because no of them have an egomanic PA guy who insists on making rhymes with everything he says. No deuces for the Cuses. Thank God.
I digress.
Thought the game was really interesting. Wisconsin has, for me anyway, a really strange and unique way of playing defense and offense. They almost never take contested shots, even close to the basket. They refused to try open shots in the paint almost routinely, preferring to work the ball around to get an uncontested 3. Even the early Pitino PC and UK teams that were built on the 3 would take short shots when available, and strove really hard to get transition baskets. Not these guys.
Similar thing with the way they play defense. They didn't pressure the ball much, didn't try for steals much, didn't use their bodies to try and thwart drives. Didn't help much either...seemed reluctant to leave their man to help. It was a soft defense that looked designed to prevent wide open looks and to try and contest each shot, even if falling off the ball away from the guy with the ball. They tried to get charges but with their slow feet and lack of agility, we were able to get around them pretty easily, pretty much at will.
The ball thus became a battle of the SU half court driving offense, where we got a layup or easy short jumper at will, pitted against a UW offense where they worked the clock for 30 seconds to eventually get a 3. To their credit, they made a bunch, but it might have been somewhat counterproductive, as their success from the 3 seemed to stop them from even trying to score inside the paint. Our physical defense and length appeared to intimidate them in the paint too. A few blocks can go a long way, even if called for fouls.
If you have one team getting layup after layup and the other getting mostly uncontested 3s, in my opinion, the team getting the layups is going to win. All we needed to do we get a couple of stops, and wait for them to miss a couple of 3s and we would pull away. To their credit, WU played really hard, were able to distract some of our shots late in the game and force misses to get the game close.
Thought that was at least partly due to fatigue from our guys, as JB did not substitute in the 2nd half once again almost at all. Dion and Scoop in particular looked like their legs were gone late in the game.
Great to see BT play well again. His kind of a game where they were willing to give him short jumpers whenever he wanted one. Great to see Keita play well. I think he played more because the UW man called for getting a big guy up high to set screens and open the low post for drives. Rak is playing well but in a game like this one, it was better to have Keita out there. The pick and roll he and Scoop executed was a beauty. And Keita's rebound and follow late was one of the bigger plays of the game.
But of all the revelations from the game, I thought the reemergence of CJ as a force was the biggest. He has been lost for a long time now, his confidence was gone and he was struggling to hit the rim from 5 feet. But last night, in a situation where he had a huge mismatch every time down the court, he really took advantage and just flat out embarrassed whoever was trying to guard him. Great to see him drive well and shoot the mid range jumper well again. Welcome back.
Props also to Dion for making a variety of nice scoring plays. This was his kind of game...man to man, no shot blockers around, not much quickness on defense. Thought Scoop was up and down as usual. Had some really ghastly turnovers but he hit some big 3s and to his credit, made a couple of big FTs down the stretch when we really needed them. Thought FTs were important all game, as we, against all odds, seemed to to shoot better from the stripe than UW. The late miss by Kris being a really prominent and unfortunate exeception to that. That should have been a good matchup game for Kris, was a little disappointed in his inability to beat his man off the dribble. Was great to see him hit a 3 though. Seems like his first one in a very long time.
I am really impressed with OSU. They have some excellent players, as every bit as athletic as we are and they have the bull in the middle that we have no answer for. I suspect they will go to him almost every half court possession. I hope we are able to get a few charges called against him, or get him in foul trouble playing defense. This could be Jack Cooley Goes Crazy II. Or maybe not. You have to be impressed with the ability of this team to make adjustments and find a way, often a new way, to get wins in this trying and demanding season. Maybe their will to win will make the difference again on Saturday. I hope so. It will be a great challenge to beat the Buckeyes without Fab in the lineup.
Parking was another adventure as we entered a parking garage near the arena, drove slowly through the first floor of a valet parking type place and finally paid, were given a receipt and told to leave the garage, drive around it and park on the roof. Took maybe 25 minutes.
I am sure others have commented on the dominance of orange on the streets and in the arena. We had a good turnout. My estimate is that we had 60-65% of the fans there. Loud, proud and usually with a buzz on, as usual.
We went to West Side Johnnies?, whatever the designated place was for SU fans to meet. There was a line of maybe 80 people there waiting to get in. They said it was moving extremely slowly. So we headed up the street towards a lively bar with people wearing orange outside, and were spotted by Lurker Maureen, who told us a bunch of syracusefan.comers were in there. We got in too and hung with some elite posters for a while (tol, Jake, Lurker Maureen, orange79, saw Marsh, RF and NRF briefly as well. The pizza wasn't great but the converation was and thanks to orange79 for the excellent ginger ale. I buy the next round.
I like the setup here. There are a lot of bars and restaurants nearby, lots of good choices. It is also right next to mass transit, always important in a city as congested as Boston.
Finally got into the arena. Got and dropped off the good mojo program for cto, got a good mojo hug as well. Really like the arena. The entrance from North Station is kind of messed up...I think they only have 2 stairways to get in and it can be a bottleneck (though it was not close to being as bad as it was in 2003, when we were just at war and security was ultra high and the scanning process to get entry was really really slow).
Love the big concourses. Love the many open areas where you can stand, talk with others and generally relax. Love the many food choices. They had, among other choices, a roast beef carving station (sandwiches $10, they were $14.50 in NYC), italian sausage with peppers and onions (tried one, very good), chorizo sausage, a couple kinds of pizza, a bunch of sandwich choices, a lobster station, extreme nachos, etc., etc. Visiting these arenas, you realize just how bad the situation is in the Dome, where you have 30K squeezed into a small area and the concourses are closed, narrow, packed with people and movement or space are at a premium. Maybe they could knock some holes in the exterior walls on the west side of the Dome on the 1st and 2nd levels to build big open areas to hold an extended food court, with areas to stand and sit and enjoy your food and drink. Even if you had to get to them using a revolving door, I think it would be great. But best of all, I like attending games at other venues because no of them have an egomanic PA guy who insists on making rhymes with everything he says. No deuces for the Cuses. Thank God.
I digress.
Thought the game was really interesting. Wisconsin has, for me anyway, a really strange and unique way of playing defense and offense. They almost never take contested shots, even close to the basket. They refused to try open shots in the paint almost routinely, preferring to work the ball around to get an uncontested 3. Even the early Pitino PC and UK teams that were built on the 3 would take short shots when available, and strove really hard to get transition baskets. Not these guys.
Similar thing with the way they play defense. They didn't pressure the ball much, didn't try for steals much, didn't use their bodies to try and thwart drives. Didn't help much either...seemed reluctant to leave their man to help. It was a soft defense that looked designed to prevent wide open looks and to try and contest each shot, even if falling off the ball away from the guy with the ball. They tried to get charges but with their slow feet and lack of agility, we were able to get around them pretty easily, pretty much at will.
The ball thus became a battle of the SU half court driving offense, where we got a layup or easy short jumper at will, pitted against a UW offense where they worked the clock for 30 seconds to eventually get a 3. To their credit, they made a bunch, but it might have been somewhat counterproductive, as their success from the 3 seemed to stop them from even trying to score inside the paint. Our physical defense and length appeared to intimidate them in the paint too. A few blocks can go a long way, even if called for fouls.
If you have one team getting layup after layup and the other getting mostly uncontested 3s, in my opinion, the team getting the layups is going to win. All we needed to do we get a couple of stops, and wait for them to miss a couple of 3s and we would pull away. To their credit, WU played really hard, were able to distract some of our shots late in the game and force misses to get the game close.
Thought that was at least partly due to fatigue from our guys, as JB did not substitute in the 2nd half once again almost at all. Dion and Scoop in particular looked like their legs were gone late in the game.
Great to see BT play well again. His kind of a game where they were willing to give him short jumpers whenever he wanted one. Great to see Keita play well. I think he played more because the UW man called for getting a big guy up high to set screens and open the low post for drives. Rak is playing well but in a game like this one, it was better to have Keita out there. The pick and roll he and Scoop executed was a beauty. And Keita's rebound and follow late was one of the bigger plays of the game.
But of all the revelations from the game, I thought the reemergence of CJ as a force was the biggest. He has been lost for a long time now, his confidence was gone and he was struggling to hit the rim from 5 feet. But last night, in a situation where he had a huge mismatch every time down the court, he really took advantage and just flat out embarrassed whoever was trying to guard him. Great to see him drive well and shoot the mid range jumper well again. Welcome back.
Props also to Dion for making a variety of nice scoring plays. This was his kind of game...man to man, no shot blockers around, not much quickness on defense. Thought Scoop was up and down as usual. Had some really ghastly turnovers but he hit some big 3s and to his credit, made a couple of big FTs down the stretch when we really needed them. Thought FTs were important all game, as we, against all odds, seemed to to shoot better from the stripe than UW. The late miss by Kris being a really prominent and unfortunate exeception to that. That should have been a good matchup game for Kris, was a little disappointed in his inability to beat his man off the dribble. Was great to see him hit a 3 though. Seems like his first one in a very long time.
I am really impressed with OSU. They have some excellent players, as every bit as athletic as we are and they have the bull in the middle that we have no answer for. I suspect they will go to him almost every half court possession. I hope we are able to get a few charges called against him, or get him in foul trouble playing defense. This could be Jack Cooley Goes Crazy II. Or maybe not. You have to be impressed with the ability of this team to make adjustments and find a way, often a new way, to get wins in this trying and demanding season. Maybe their will to win will make the difference again on Saturday. I hope so. It will be a great challenge to beat the Buckeyes without Fab in the lineup.
