sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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*=aka A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to a Blowout 900th Win
Another small quiet crowd. Around 15K actually in the seats. No students, no SU cheerleaders, no SSS, no SU dance team. Just Otto. The Oneida HS Dance Team and the Baldwinsville HS Band filled in ably for the SU students on winter break.
A girl in middle school sang the NA last night. She looked really nervous...I believe I could see her shaking from the upper deck. Never looked up...just stared at the floor the whole time. Not the best rendition ever but she did a better job than I would have. So props to her for that.
Someone told me I should inform everyone that the Dome has had a policy change regarding beer. You can buy cans now. No worries Dome Foam fans, you can still buy it in a cup as well. My beer drinking friends are happy about this development. Still no ginger ale on tap though. Sigh.
Detroit was led by AA candidate Ray McCallum, an outstanding PG who will probably play in the NBA. As is his wont, JB tilted the zone towards Ray and basically took him out of the game, which made for some mismatches when Detroit was able to get the ball to Ray, let the defense converge on him and then reverse it quickly.
Detroit has some talent. Anderson is a terrific athlete inside, has great hops and is very aggressive. I think he had 3 or 4 dunks...might be a record for a visiting player in the Dome playing against the Orangemen. He dunked right over Rak one time...for a wee bit, I was worried this would cancel Christmas but he was resilient and the crisis passed.
Juwan Howard Jr looks and plays like his dad. A little smaller (6'6?) but he was effective inside. I liked Minnerath too. Smart player who was in the right place at the right time a lot. But my favorite was a 6'10 guy. He didn't play much but he had one of the greatest names ever. Ugochukwu Njoku (had to look it up). A native of Lagos, Nigeria. I think Mr Excitement pronounced it
O goo chew wu Jue Coo
Awesome.
Anyway, Detroit tried to play man to start. We had some success against it and perhaps more importantly, started to get their bigs in foul trouble, so they switched to a 2-3 zone. That threw gasoline on the fire, as Dirty was in white hot mode in the first half. Seemed like the ball was falling through the hoop before it even touched his hands; Fayetteville Arkansas II. Don't know what scouting Detroit did because by the point, everyone should know that JS hits his 3s in the first 3 seconds of a half court possession most of the time. You have to get in his face early or he will kill you.
And James almost killed Detroit. The lead got up to 20 or so in the first half and it stayed in that range all the way to around the 5 minute mark.
I think the thing that changed the game and got them back into it was their man defense. When they went back to it in the 2nd half, they played it very hard, and it really bothered our ability to execute the half court offense. McCallum didn't have a great game offensively, but he did a terrific job on MCW, made him look young and out of control and forced him into what was probably his worst game of the season.
When they played man, it took JS largely out of the game, completely took Cooney out and made it harder for DCII, RC and BMK to get the ball inside. We aren't a great team in the half court against a good man defense and we were exposed again here last night. Couple in losing for much of the last part of the game with foul trouble/fouling out, and a near disaster ensued.
I think we ultimately won the game by going inside, drawing a lot of fouls and getting a lot of free throws. 31 FTs attempted is good, I like to see the focus on getting to the hoop like that. Liked the offensive rebounding we did, which made up some for all the turnovers. Did not like our defensive rebounding...Detroit had 13 offensive rebounds, which is way too many for an undersized team like the Titans.
Hope this game serves as a lesson the team, especially MCW, who put too much on his shoulders and tried to do too much himself. Glad he was able to knock down his FTs in crunch time. Hope he learns from it.
They gave out JB faces to some sections and 900 placards to other sections. Nice ceremony after the game. Amazing achievement for the gangly kid from Lyons, NY.
Another small quiet crowd. Around 15K actually in the seats. No students, no SU cheerleaders, no SSS, no SU dance team. Just Otto. The Oneida HS Dance Team and the Baldwinsville HS Band filled in ably for the SU students on winter break.
A girl in middle school sang the NA last night. She looked really nervous...I believe I could see her shaking from the upper deck. Never looked up...just stared at the floor the whole time. Not the best rendition ever but she did a better job than I would have. So props to her for that.
Someone told me I should inform everyone that the Dome has had a policy change regarding beer. You can buy cans now. No worries Dome Foam fans, you can still buy it in a cup as well. My beer drinking friends are happy about this development. Still no ginger ale on tap though. Sigh.
Detroit was led by AA candidate Ray McCallum, an outstanding PG who will probably play in the NBA. As is his wont, JB tilted the zone towards Ray and basically took him out of the game, which made for some mismatches when Detroit was able to get the ball to Ray, let the defense converge on him and then reverse it quickly.
Detroit has some talent. Anderson is a terrific athlete inside, has great hops and is very aggressive. I think he had 3 or 4 dunks...might be a record for a visiting player in the Dome playing against the Orangemen. He dunked right over Rak one time...for a wee bit, I was worried this would cancel Christmas but he was resilient and the crisis passed.
Juwan Howard Jr looks and plays like his dad. A little smaller (6'6?) but he was effective inside. I liked Minnerath too. Smart player who was in the right place at the right time a lot. But my favorite was a 6'10 guy. He didn't play much but he had one of the greatest names ever. Ugochukwu Njoku (had to look it up). A native of Lagos, Nigeria. I think Mr Excitement pronounced it
O goo chew wu Jue Coo
Awesome.
Anyway, Detroit tried to play man to start. We had some success against it and perhaps more importantly, started to get their bigs in foul trouble, so they switched to a 2-3 zone. That threw gasoline on the fire, as Dirty was in white hot mode in the first half. Seemed like the ball was falling through the hoop before it even touched his hands; Fayetteville Arkansas II. Don't know what scouting Detroit did because by the point, everyone should know that JS hits his 3s in the first 3 seconds of a half court possession most of the time. You have to get in his face early or he will kill you.
And James almost killed Detroit. The lead got up to 20 or so in the first half and it stayed in that range all the way to around the 5 minute mark.
I think the thing that changed the game and got them back into it was their man defense. When they went back to it in the 2nd half, they played it very hard, and it really bothered our ability to execute the half court offense. McCallum didn't have a great game offensively, but he did a terrific job on MCW, made him look young and out of control and forced him into what was probably his worst game of the season.
When they played man, it took JS largely out of the game, completely took Cooney out and made it harder for DCII, RC and BMK to get the ball inside. We aren't a great team in the half court against a good man defense and we were exposed again here last night. Couple in losing for much of the last part of the game with foul trouble/fouling out, and a near disaster ensued.
I think we ultimately won the game by going inside, drawing a lot of fouls and getting a lot of free throws. 31 FTs attempted is good, I like to see the focus on getting to the hoop like that. Liked the offensive rebounding we did, which made up some for all the turnovers. Did not like our defensive rebounding...Detroit had 13 offensive rebounds, which is way too many for an undersized team like the Titans.
Hope this game serves as a lesson the team, especially MCW, who put too much on his shoulders and tried to do too much himself. Glad he was able to knock down his FTs in crunch time. Hope he learns from it.
They gave out JB faces to some sections and 900 placards to other sections. Nice ceremony after the game. Amazing achievement for the gangly kid from Lyons, NY.
