Pittfalls Postgame...

[tptcuse]

In the "Dancing" thread I made a very similar post above 45 minutes ago or so. I laid out the same goal as you 21 wins... need to sweep the Q3/Q4 to keep a clean resume with no bad losses, and as you said go 5-5 against the tougher games.

Not sure if 21 is a close lock. I'm going to say that looks like the solid bubble line (perhaps I'm being conservative - need more time to see how things play out). But not comfortable putting close lock this early -- perhaps it will be in the end though.

Would love if we got some ACC tournament wins for once.

 

[Todoubled23]

12-5 (3-3)
JJ smiling at the end of the game after having an out of body experience shooting
Team bonding after getting into a scrum
Pretty balanced scoring
Peter Carey didn't knock out anyone on his own team with an elbow
Benny with some nice buckets

Listen, it's never going to be perfect with this team and we still have some issues... but we're still getting wins. And a road conference win is always big.

I missed much of the game, what scrum happened?

 

[OrlandoCuse]

In the "Dancing" thread I made a very similar post above 45 minutes ago or so. I laid out the same goal as you 21 wins... need to sweep the Q3/Q4 to keep a clean resume with no bad losses, and as you said go 5-5 against the tougher games.

Not sure if 21 is a close lock. I'm going to say that looks like the solid bubble line (perhaps I'm being conservative - need more time to see how things play out). But not comfortable putting close lock this early -- perhaps it will be in the end though.

21 may not be a lock if we go 0-5 vs Q1 but 5-0 vs Q2, but I’d still lock in 21 wins right now and take my chances if we were allowed to.

 

[jncuse]

Would love if we got some ACC tournament wins for once.

Would be nice.

 

[Cheriehoop]

Oregon is 13-3 They don't lose. How did that game drop from quad 1? Dohn must be behind this.

They are in 1st (undefeated) in the Pac 12. Strange.

 

[OrlandoCuse]

I missed much of the game, what scrum happened?

Cope was between 4 Pitt players scrambling for a loose ball. One of the Pitt players (Hinson) kept grabbing at the ball after the whistle and stood over Cope not letting him get up. Benny did a little shove of Hinson for him to get off Cope. Result was a double technical

 

[Todoubled23]

Cope was between 4 Pitt players scrambling for a loose ball. One of the Pitt players (Hinson) kept grabbing at the ball after the whistle and stood over Cope not letting him get up. Benny did a little shove of Hinson for him to get off Cope. Result was a double technical

Thanks, good on Benny for sticking up for Copeland.

 

[OrlandoCuse]

They were in 1st (undefeated) in the Pac 12. Strange.

Oregon will most likely get back to Q1 win for us. Just toggling between Q1 and Q2 based on their upper 40’s to mid 50’s ranking.

 

[Fly Rodder]

There’s zero reason to fret about metrics at this point. Syracuse needs to win games and lots of them.

 

[AZOrange]

He had one of the sickest moves I’ve seen in the second half. I’m still not sure what I saw

 

[SWC75]

A few issues with that.

#1. There is not even a NET for the first 5 or 6 games. So how would you measure those games -- would you say those are based on year end, but then game 7 is based on "as of played"

#2. You can't use AP Poll as an alternative, because that only ranks 25 or 30 teams each week.

#3. Be it NET, KP, or AP Polls they are not very robust in November and December. They have some value as measures, but they are much more accurate at year end. Therefore it makes more sense to use year end ranking.

#4. Part of the problem is that there is a lot of meaningless games that teams played in their first 15 games... it makes the "as of now" data, even into mid-January, a bit flimsy and not robust.

I'd still rather value a win based upon what people thought of the opponent at the time we played them. Teams evolve, (and I think this team will) and injuries can have a big impact. We are already making decisions based on the results of early games. That's why our schedule was so beefed up compared to what it used to be.

 

[FRANKIEFAN]

The middle-bottom of the ACC is pretty good so I don’t buy these tank and file wins as worthless. Just don’t lose a lot of games.

 

[FrancoPizza]

TV is cheaper (relatively since you get ancillary benefits in terms of streaming) than going to the game. One game running you 300+ all in (food tickets and fees for family) is a hard sell to the casuals. Granted, it’s been that way since the 90s

What put an end to the blackouts they managed back in the 80s/early 90s? Blackouts only work though if you have demand. It would be terrible in the current situation- whatever fans we are still clinging to would just go back to watching their latest show on Netflix.

 

[Cuse99&01]

Thanks, good on Benny for sticking up for Copeland.

Agree. I liked seeing Benny stick up for his teammate. I also liked Judah pulling Cope aside and talking to him in order to calm him down. In my opinion both showed some leadership.

 

[billsin01]

My thoughts:

This is what it feels like to be on the other end of the 3 pts for / against equation. It’s hard to overcome being on the wrong side of this ratio.

This was an excellent win and I’m thrilled, but this model is not sustainable. We essentially ran an offense of passing the ball around the arc for 25 seconds and then someone would make a tremendous shot. Looks cool. Really fun. Not something you can hang your hat on. No idea why Q isn’t running the offense when he’s out there. Mintz is as much a PG as Jimmy Boeheim was a center. Notice how brown was not very effective? Because his buckets are generally a result of facilitation. Very little facilitation went on tonight.

Defensive rebounding is going to kill us. Only Pitts ineptitude at converting their O boards to points saved us. This has to be fixed. No idea how . But it’s not my job either

I actually thought Judah — who I agree isn’t exactly a point guard traditionally — played a really nice all-around game tonight despite a tough night getting shots to fall. Thought he had some nice passes in the first half and thought a rolling brown and a cutting Copeland missed two really nice feeds in the second half that get credited as TOs to Judah. Pitt also did a really nice job bottling up the high ball screen (hope red can learn something from that) with the Diaz Graham boys and generally played very tough man the last 8-10 mins or so. We also do nothing except the high ball screen in terms of sets, so that’s a bit of a problem too.

I get the frustration with Judah but he is a constant threat when he has the ball and is our best offensive player by a country mile. So I’m fine with having the ball in his hands.

Thought Hinson (2024’s version of Darius Lane) absolutely killed any chance Pitt had tonight.

We got very few easy baskets. On the plus side we played tough defensively and got enough shots to fall to win. On the negative side, not sure that will work against better teams.

Interesting game. Interesting roster. Will be interesting to see the next few games to see if we can string anything together.

 

[billsin01]

I know we all want to be elite again and not lose by 40. But that's a good road win tonight after Saturday's humiliation.

We're yet to lose at home, and we have 3 nice wins away from home (G'town, Oregon, Pitt, none of which were all that competitive).

Things could be a lot worse in the first year of the Red era.

JJ looked great.

Yeah, I wasn’t sure after the preseason games and first couple regular season games if this team would get more than 10-12 wins. We’re already there and they’re fighting, so that’s good. A productive JJ would be a great thing if we see that going forward.

 

[billsin01]

I think Red preferred Copeland because he rebounds and plays D.

There was a play where bell was in position to block out a Pitt rebounder and he lost the rebound anyway. Didn’t even get a hand on it. He’s got to figure that out if he wants to log consistent minutes. Some will point to strength and that’s part of it, but you have to want to rebound and I’m not sure he does. Not knocking the kid just not sure it’s something he’s done before. Zero rebounds in 16 mins makes it really tough to give him 30, even if his shots are falling

 

[IthacaMatt]

I thought we played a really good game. We jumped on them early. Pitt got chippy, made it kind of close a few times, but I felt like we managed this game pretty well.

One of Judah's very best games - 5 assists, 2 steals and 9 boards. And he still got his FTs at the end.
Bell with a good game, could have played more. Peter Carey was actually pretty good, nicely surprised.

Starling was the star of the game, along with Benny, who had his best game in a long time. Copeland with another pretty good game, but forced a couple of his drives into traffic.

Overall, very pleased. We have about 4 or 5 more games like this that we have to win to make the NCAAs. This was a great start, but we have to win a lot of games between now and Feb 7th.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Another deep, deep post from Rothstein. SMH

 

[IthacaMatt]

Start to finish this was our best game of the year.
-JJ was sublime. Obviously, he hit his shots. Just as importantly, he took good care of the ball, and I actually had more confidence with him with the ball in his hands late in the game than I did with Judah.
-Who thought we were going to win the game if Maliq had two points and five rebounds?
-Big bounce back game for Justin Taylor. Those threes were huge and he had some very important rebounds. Also moved well on defense. Good to see him come back after perhaps the worst game of his Syracuse career although you could say that about a lot of kids the other day.
-likewise Benny played much better today. It’s amazing how much better he shoots when he puts arc on the ball. Had some really athletic rebounds and a huge block.
-Judah seemed kind of skittish late with the ball. Wasn’t dribbling with a ton of confidence and made some bad decisions. But he did make some critical free throws as he usually does and played 39 hard minutes and remarkably had 9 boards.
-Big picture this says a lot about Red as a coach. Coming off of the abortion at North Carolina, he had this team ready to play and they played confidently and hard. I was a little surprised that he didn’t put Bell back in late in the second half but that is nitpicking.
-terrific win gives us some serious momentum against a good but gettable Miami team this weekend at the dome. We need the rest of the fans to match the students and get a great crowd in there.

Yes, I thought the movement on offense today was a huge improvement. Really, really good.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Copeland told us.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Glad this team has some stones.

Miami
FSU
NC St
@BC

This stretch needs to be 4-0 if we want to dance.

You are correct. And I would add that we need to beat ND, Louisville and Va Tech at home, and Ga Tech on the road. That's 8 more wins, gets us to 20 (11 in conference) before the ACC tournament.

 

[IthacaMatt]

it can be 4-0 but doesnt have to be

No, we have to win these next several games right now. Starting the 2nd week of February, we play 3 ranked teams in 4 games, and we finish with 4 out of 6 on the road. We have to stack these wins.

 

[STEVEHOLT]

Brown was out with foul trouble tonight. Yes we hit a few shots at the end of the clock but also made the extra pass for a number of wide open looks. Defense was great with a few exceptions, that wins games. What I did not see a lot of was crazy driving shots with guys falling to the floor, or off balance 3’s giving the opponent easy run outs.

you didn't see crazy driving shots? True that almost nobody was doing this, but one player did indeed do this over and over again. I saw quite a few that were either bad misses leading to fast breaks, blocked by the opposition leading to fast breaks the other way, or turnovers.

That the Panthers were completely inept at converting their opportunities was quite fortunate or the result or at least margin would have been quite different. Road wins at Pitt will always be tough though so the shine on the win will not be tarnished.

 

[STEVEHOLT]

I am wondering if Bell didn't tweek something on that dunk. He was not smiling after picking himself off the floor. Not sure how much he played after that?

the post dunk rim hang was because he felt something grab I think. it was to protect himself. Idiot Pitt fans wanted a T.