My Take | Syracusefan.com
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My Take

sutomcat

2024 Iggy Award (ACC Tournament Record)
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Let me start by complementing the student section ,who turned out in astonishing numbers. The rest of the stands were also noticeably more flow. One can see the impact of the new season ticket holders immediately.

As I posted earlier today, I did not have high expectations from the Cornell team. Cornell lost all five starters from last season, and they were only voted to finish sixth in the preseason poll for the Ivy League. But much to my surprise, they were good. Really good.

Number five and number three did a terrific job attacking Verizon. They had a lot of outside shots and also got some penetration. Cornell works the ball very patiently on offense, and their patients was often rewarded with an open shot from the outside or a quality look in the paint.

I have no idea who the coaches, but he's doing all the job. They also played excellent defense in the first half. Used a mix of zone and man to really bother Syracuse. And they rebounded the ball extremely well.

To be sure, Syracuse was bothered by the absence of Jeremy Grant. I number of search uses best players also had four games. Notably Tyler Ennis.

For whatever reason, Tyler did not have it tonight. He missed the number of shots and the paint. He had some bad turnovers. And even struggled on defense. He just is not himself. I would not be surprised if he's feeling under the weather.

As much is Tyler struggled, Trevor Cooney excelled. Trevor had a traffic outing in midnight madness, and he went off like that again tonight. When he gets hot, he gets Whitehat. As hot as any player in college basketball. It was really fun to watch.

Remember that movie freaky Friday, a mom and a daughter had their bodies switched and they had to deal with living in a different body. That just might've happened tonight with Tyler Ennis and Silent G. Tyler struggled to do the most simple of Tass; very uncharacteristic for him. Silent G, who has struggled throughout the preseason, could do no wrong tonight. He distributed the ball well, shot it well, ran the offense nicely, and played very good defense. No word on whether an old Chinese woman hung out with the team before the game.

Was very hard to see RC play uber aggressively again. It was only against Cornell, but this is too game Center all that rack has played well. Maybe a light has turned on. I sure hope so.

Baye didn't play a ton of minutes, but he did well in the time he had. He continues to rebound very well. And he did some nice things on offense, including a wonderful follow/dunk that might have been an accident.

Roberson had a great opportunity tonight with JG being out, but he failed to take advantage. Look nervous and uncomfortable with the ball, stepped out of bounds twice. He has nice form on his jumper, rebounds well and is clearly a fine athlete. But right now, he continues to struggle. It happens to freshman. A lot.

DC also didn't get a lot of playing time, but I thought he played quite well while he was in. At one point, he was uncharacteristically soft on the boards, and let a Cornell player get inside for a rebound and follow. This earned him the wrath of JB.

I was really disappointed with the defense in the first half. His own plus the Fatcheric and they were open people everywhere. Worst of all, we were not able to adjust the number three went off and scored on seemingly every play. We played poorly on offense as well, but a lot of that was the loss of Jeremy, and the complete failure of Tyler Ennis to show up.

Good to see the much improved defense in the second half. Suddenly is on tilted toward number three whenever he was given the ball. He stopped getting good looks and became a virtual nonentity. This is the way should be. We were much more aggressive attacking the open the second half. And we rebounded the bonfire better in the second half.

One awful half, one excellent half. It happened so young teams. I think Cornell is going to win a lot of games in the Ivy League. I hope they do. I like your style play I think they're very well coached and I think they have a lot of talent.

As for me, it's time to go to bed. I have a long drive to Maryland tomorrow morning and I need to good nights sleep. War damn Otto!
 
With all due respect, (your My Takes are one of the must reads of the board), I suggest scrapping the voice thing.
 
They make the rockin' world go 'round.

Great unintentional transcription humor here. Thanks as always for the recaps, Tom.
But what about the old Chinese woman?
 
With all due respect, (your My Takes are one of the must reads of the board), I suggest scrapping the voice thing.

I disagree.. I think its great. I have the voicemail reader thing on my phone and truly enjoy the horrible translation when the I.T. guys leave me a message. We can still clearly get what he is saying while chuckling through some tech bloopers.
 
"When he gets hot, he gets Whitehat." Nice little plug for Whitehat Brewing Co.
 
Wrap up was great. The errors from the voice input made it incredible. Almost ruined iPad spitting coffee at it
 
THANKS TOM...I think Cornell was playing like a mid-season team in the first half and their coach had them ready to play right out the gate, but we wore them down. I think that coach is going places
 
Right on about the lack of defensive intensity in the first half. When we picked it up in the second half, everyone played better. Ennis played like a freshman playing his first real game. I bet he was pretty nervous...he'll be fine.

In his presser, JB tried to temper expectations, saying that this team isn't nearly as good as last year. He's right, at this time they aren't. But I think they can be! It's going to fun watching...Let's Go Orange...
 
Right on about the lack of defensive intensity in the first half. When we picked it up in the second half, everyone played better. Ennis played like a freshman playing his first real game. I bet he was pretty nervous...he'll be fine.

In his presser, JB tried to temper expectations, saying that this team isn't nearly as good as last year. He's right, at this time they aren't. But I think they can be! It's going to fun watching...Let's Go Orange...

Honestly, at this stage I like this team better than last year's.

Last year's team wasn't last year's team until the second week of March - before that, it was a 23-8 group that couldn't do anything on offense. I didn't love our continued reluctance to feed the post last night, but we have a lot of talent and potentially a much more complete team.
 
Tomcat's post gets my (early) vote for post of the year.

Whitehat... LOL.
 
This needs to be frozen and pinned before he can correct anything!
 
I am usually a glass-half-full kinda guy, but I am concerned about a developing trend of allowing teams that shoot the 3's well to shoot too many from the top of the zone; this may come back to bite us in the you know what. Also, many have pointed out how the the perimeter defense has gotten better in stretches of the game, but have not pointed to the obvious reason it has. In the Canada game against Carleson, the perimeter defense gave up a bunch of 3's early in the game that got the team behind, but the defense got better and number of 3's taken and made from the top of the zone dropped when Gbinije was inserted in the game. I saw the same yesterday against Cornell.

I hope this doesn't become a trend because we may not be able to recover against better teams that shoot a bunch of 3's like Puke.
 
I am usually a glass-half-full kinda guy, but I am concerned about a developing trend of allowing teams that shoot the 3's well to shoot too many from the top of the zone; this may come back to bite us in the you know what. Also, many have pointed out how the the perimeter defense has gotten better in stretches of the game, but have not pointed to the obvious reason it has. In the Canada game against Carleson, the perimeter defense gave up a bunch of 3's early in the game that got the team behind, but the defense got better and number of 3's taken and made from the top of the zone dropped when Gbinije was inserted in the game. I saw the same yesterday against Cornell.

I hope this doesn't become a trend because we may not be able to recover against better teams that shoot a bunch of 3's like Puke.

We clearly don't have as much size back there as last year without G in there.
 
As much as Ennis DIDN'T score, he did rebound and assist well.
 

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