sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2011
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I am temporarily filling in for OE as he recovers from surgery. Get well soon Dan.
News
BMK's Plans for the Future (PS; Ditota)
Baye Moussa Keita is considering a continuation of his basketball career.
The 6-foot-10 former Syracuse University center said Thursday he has no timetable for exploring his options. But he's willing to investigate whether he can play professional basketball somewhere.
Baye Moussa Keita (left) and C.J. Fair get ready to participate in the Sitrin STARS wheelchair basketball game on Thursday night at Utica College.Donna Ditota | dditota@syracuse.com
"Yeah, I'm going to try to play," he said. "But I don't know where. I'm just going to take my time about it. There's a process. I'm going to talk to people I have to talk to. I'm going to get a lot of help from the people around me, so I'm not going to hurry the process."
Since Syracuse lost to Dayton in the NCAA tournament, Keita has spent most of his time catching up on his sleep and his school work. He has one class left — Magic and Religion — to complete his degree requirements.
In the meantime, he is working out at the Melo Center, hanging out with friends and playing video games as his senior year winds down. Keita is majoring in child and family studies in the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics.
Where SU Players Rank in Mock NBA Drafts Now that Season is Over (PS; Axe)
We've seen "One Shining Moment." a few times and it is archived on YouTube forever.
The confetti has been cleaned up, Connecticut has been named national champs (both the men and women's teams) and the 2013-'14 college basketball is fully in the rear view mirror.
Now we can really focus on the speculation of who is going where in the upcoming NBA Draft.
Has the NBA Draft stock of former Syracuse basketball players Tyler Ennis and C.J. Fair and current Orange forward Jerami Grant (as of this writing) gone up or down?
Let's take a look.
ESPN
ESPN draft expert Chad Ford has updated his "big board" and places both Tyler Ennis and Jerami Grant on the list.
"Ennis ranks as the No. 9 overall prospect according to Ford, one spot higher than the previous ranking.
"Ennis didn't finish the season as strong as he started, and I know there are some scouts who are starting to get off the bandwagon. But his steadiness as a point guard is pretty rare. I think you see Smart and Exum go ahead of him in virtually every scenario, but after those two are off the board, Ennis doesn't have a lot of competition, and several teams in the late lottery/mid-first round need point guards."
Grant slid down a few spots on Ford's big board, from No. 15 to No. 18.
The final USA Today poll was released on Tuesday, the day after the University of Connecticut defeated Kentucky for the NCAA men's basketball championship.
The need for a poll after the conclusion of the NCAA tournament seems a little curious and it was made even more curious when UConn received just 30 of the 32 potential first-place votes. Two of the 32 coaches didn't put a team other than UConn at No. 1 on their ballots.
It turns out that the two contrarians were North Dakota State coach Saul Phillips and Texas State's Danny Kaspar. (The ballots for all 32 of the coaches in the USA Today poll are published on the USA Today website.)
Phillips put Kentucky at No. 1 on his ballot with Connecticut second. A full check of Phillips' ballot shows that he also voted for his own team at No. 25. It was the only vote that North Dakota State received in the final poll.
Kaspar's ballot was even more interesting. Kaspar had Wichita State at No. 1. The Shockers were undefeated for the year until losing to Kentucky in the third round of the NCAA tournament.
Kaspar then had Wisconsin at No. 2 followed by Florida, Arizona, Kentucky, Michigan, Michigan State and Louisville before finally bringing in Connecticut at No. 9.
The Texas State coach had Syracuse at No. 10.
ACC News
Miami Season Wrap: Canes Overachieved in 2014; Help is on the Way (PS; Stevens)
Record: 17-16 (7-11 ACC)
Last seen: Running out of gas in the final four minutes of an ACC tournament loss to N.C. State, a setback that occurred a day after the Hurricanes clinched an improbable winning season.
What went right: Rion Brown provided the quality senior season Miami direly needed, and freshman Manu Lecomte came on in the second half of the season to provide some stability at point guard. Forward Erik Swoope was exceptional late in the season as the Hurricanes won five of their last eight games.
More than anything, Jim Larranaga offered yet another reminder of his uncanny ability to figure out how to get the most out of any roster he has in front of him. Miami adopted a zone defense fairly early in the season, and it was more than content to play at a slower pace than anyone else in the country. Rare was the night when Miami didn't aggravate a more talented opponent; just ask North Carolina and N.C. State, which both lost to the Hurricanes at home.
What went wrong: Things looked ugly early, as the Hurricanes lost to St. Francis Brooklyn and needed overtime to upend Georgia Southern to start the season. A left wrist injury cost guard Deandre Burnett his entire freshman season, and Miami could have used a pure scorer to complement Brown.
The Hurricanes also bizarrely lost to lowly Virginia Tech twice, which made their 7-11 conference mark all the more difficult to attain. Scoring 50 points was never a sure thing for this bunch (they failed to reach that plateau six times), but that wasn't a surprise after graduation and Shane Larkin's jump to the NBA gutted the 2013 ACC champions.
Who's leaving: Four of the top seven scorers — Brown, Adams, Swoope and forward Donnavan Kirk — are out of eligibility. Brown, who scored at least 12 points in 15 straight games to close out his career, provided the most oomph out of any of the departures.
G Tech Season Wrap: Injuries, Youth Led to .500 Record (PS; Stevens)
Record: 16-17 (6-12 ACC)
Last seen: Bowing out in overtime against Clemson in the second round of the ACC tournament after squandering a nine-point lead in the final eight minutes of regulation.
What went right: Trae Golden was declared immediately eligible after transferring from Tennessee and was more or less Georgia Tech's best player. Daniel Miller continued his improvement, turning in a stout senior season. He departs having started all 126 games of his career.
The Yellow Jackets won at Syracuse during the Orange's late-season swoon, but otherwise they did exactly what was expected based on the final standings. Including the ACC tournament, they went 6-0 against Boston College, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest and 1-13 against everyone else in the conference.
What went wrong: Injuries didn't help this bunch. Backup point guard Travis Jorgensen was lost for the season after just four games, robbing Georgia Tech's backcourt of some depth. A far bigger hit was the 10-game absence of forward Robert Carter Jr. at the start of conference play. The Yellow Jackets were 3-7 without their best big man.
Guard Chris Bolden regressed as a sophomore, turning in just five double-digit scoring days while shooting 30.5 percent from 3-point range.
Who's leaving: Miller departs as one of only two Yellow Jackets to start every game of his career; 1980s star Mark Price is the other. That's good company for the 6-foot-11 center, who worked his way into a nice player by the time his career ended.
Golden filled a needed role for his lone season with the Yellow Jackets, and reserve forward Kammeon Holsey also departs. Toss in Solomon Poole's midseason dismissal, and Georgia Tech will be without four of its top six scorers from this season moving forward...
Former Players
JS Scores 10 Points in 9 Minutes in Pelicans Debut (syracuse.com)
Former Syracuse forward James Southerland made a good first impression by scoring 10 points in nine minutes in his first game with the New Orleans Pelicans.
Southerland's mini scoring outburst came in a 116-94 loss at the Oklahoma City Thunder on Friday night.
Southerland came into the game in the fourth quarter and made four of his seven shot attempts, including two 3-pointers...
Other
Virginia's Loss Ensures SU-UNC a Play-In for Conference Tournament (PS; Stevens)
Syracuse's game Saturday against North Carolina was likely to serve as a play-in game for the main portion of the ACC tournament.
Virginia's 17-15 loss to Duke on Friday night ensured that would be the case, eliminating the only remaining convoluted scenario in which North Carolina could make it into the league semifinals even with a loss at the Carrier Dome.
Syracuse now has two possible opponents for its first (and perhaps only) game at the April 25-27 event at PPL Park in Chester, Pa. If the Orange beats North Carolina, it will face Duke in a rematch of the Blue Devils' 21-7 drubbing of Syracuse on March 23.
Depending on the outcome of the April 19 Maryland-Notre Dame game, Syracuse could be the No. 3 seed or the No. 4 seed. But in either case, it would play the Blue Devils.
Should the Orange lose its conference regular season finale, it will meet Virginia in a game pitting the bottom two teams in the league. The Cavaliers earned their only ACC victory of the season March 1 against Syracuse, earning a 17-12 victory.
Here's the full scenarios rundown with just two conference games (North Carolina-Syracuse and Maryland-Notre Dame) still to come:
DUKE
Lax Analysis: Placing SU's Offense and Defense in ACC Games in Context (PS; Stevens)
Syracuse (7-3, 1-3 ACC) closes its first ACC regular season schedule Saturday when North Carolina (9-2, 2-2) heads to the Carrier Dome. There's certainly plenty for the Orange to play for.
A win gives the Orange an excellent chance of reaching the main portion of the conference tournament later this month in suburban Philadelphia. A loss relegates Syracuse to what the league is dubbing the ACC Showcase the night between the semifinals and the title game but, in reality, is just an extra game for the bottom two teams in the league to play.
Saturday is also the latest step in gauging Syracuse's first impression in this loaded lacrosse conference, so it seemed like a good time to place the Orange's work on offense and defense in context with how ACC teams have fared over an extended span. Say, back to 1989.
So why 1989? That was 25 years ago, and 25 is as round as a non-round number can get (or, more accurately, as common as it gets for an odd number of years to get revisited). But it was also the first season the ACC conducted a tournament, which makes it a decent starting point for how serious the sport was taken at the league level.
First up, the offense ...
News
BMK's Plans for the Future (PS; Ditota)
Baye Moussa Keita is considering a continuation of his basketball career.
The 6-foot-10 former Syracuse University center said Thursday he has no timetable for exploring his options. But he's willing to investigate whether he can play professional basketball somewhere.
"Yeah, I'm going to try to play," he said. "But I don't know where. I'm just going to take my time about it. There's a process. I'm going to talk to people I have to talk to. I'm going to get a lot of help from the people around me, so I'm not going to hurry the process."
Since Syracuse lost to Dayton in the NCAA tournament, Keita has spent most of his time catching up on his sleep and his school work. He has one class left — Magic and Religion — to complete his degree requirements.
In the meantime, he is working out at the Melo Center, hanging out with friends and playing video games as his senior year winds down. Keita is majoring in child and family studies in the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics.
Where SU Players Rank in Mock NBA Drafts Now that Season is Over (PS; Axe)
We've seen "One Shining Moment." a few times and it is archived on YouTube forever.
The confetti has been cleaned up, Connecticut has been named national champs (both the men and women's teams) and the 2013-'14 college basketball is fully in the rear view mirror.
Now we can really focus on the speculation of who is going where in the upcoming NBA Draft.
Has the NBA Draft stock of former Syracuse basketball players Tyler Ennis and C.J. Fair and current Orange forward Jerami Grant (as of this writing) gone up or down?
Let's take a look.
ESPN
ESPN draft expert Chad Ford has updated his "big board" and places both Tyler Ennis and Jerami Grant on the list.
"Ennis ranks as the No. 9 overall prospect according to Ford, one spot higher than the previous ranking.
"Ennis didn't finish the season as strong as he started, and I know there are some scouts who are starting to get off the bandwagon. But his steadiness as a point guard is pretty rare. I think you see Smart and Exum go ahead of him in virtually every scenario, but after those two are off the board, Ennis doesn't have a lot of competition, and several teams in the late lottery/mid-first round need point guards."
Grant slid down a few spots on Ford's big board, from No. 15 to No. 18.
"Grant hasn't declared his intentions for the draft yet. He's a pretty raw player offensively, but his combination of length and athleticism intrigues scouts. So do his defensive efforts. He's an upside pick, but his upside is so high, I think he could go anywhere from No. 15 to No. 25."
USA Today Final Poll Analysis: Which Coaches Didn't Vote UConn #1 and Who Did JB Vote For? (PS; Waters)The final USA Today poll was released on Tuesday, the day after the University of Connecticut defeated Kentucky for the NCAA men's basketball championship.
The need for a poll after the conclusion of the NCAA tournament seems a little curious and it was made even more curious when UConn received just 30 of the 32 potential first-place votes. Two of the 32 coaches didn't put a team other than UConn at No. 1 on their ballots.
It turns out that the two contrarians were North Dakota State coach Saul Phillips and Texas State's Danny Kaspar. (The ballots for all 32 of the coaches in the USA Today poll are published on the USA Today website.)
Phillips put Kentucky at No. 1 on his ballot with Connecticut second. A full check of Phillips' ballot shows that he also voted for his own team at No. 25. It was the only vote that North Dakota State received in the final poll.
Kaspar's ballot was even more interesting. Kaspar had Wichita State at No. 1. The Shockers were undefeated for the year until losing to Kentucky in the third round of the NCAA tournament.
Kaspar then had Wisconsin at No. 2 followed by Florida, Arizona, Kentucky, Michigan, Michigan State and Louisville before finally bringing in Connecticut at No. 9.
The Texas State coach had Syracuse at No. 10.
ACC News
Miami Season Wrap: Canes Overachieved in 2014; Help is on the Way (PS; Stevens)
Record: 17-16 (7-11 ACC)
Last seen: Running out of gas in the final four minutes of an ACC tournament loss to N.C. State, a setback that occurred a day after the Hurricanes clinched an improbable winning season.
What went right: Rion Brown provided the quality senior season Miami direly needed, and freshman Manu Lecomte came on in the second half of the season to provide some stability at point guard. Forward Erik Swoope was exceptional late in the season as the Hurricanes won five of their last eight games.
More than anything, Jim Larranaga offered yet another reminder of his uncanny ability to figure out how to get the most out of any roster he has in front of him. Miami adopted a zone defense fairly early in the season, and it was more than content to play at a slower pace than anyone else in the country. Rare was the night when Miami didn't aggravate a more talented opponent; just ask North Carolina and N.C. State, which both lost to the Hurricanes at home.
What went wrong: Things looked ugly early, as the Hurricanes lost to St. Francis Brooklyn and needed overtime to upend Georgia Southern to start the season. A left wrist injury cost guard Deandre Burnett his entire freshman season, and Miami could have used a pure scorer to complement Brown.
The Hurricanes also bizarrely lost to lowly Virginia Tech twice, which made their 7-11 conference mark all the more difficult to attain. Scoring 50 points was never a sure thing for this bunch (they failed to reach that plateau six times), but that wasn't a surprise after graduation and Shane Larkin's jump to the NBA gutted the 2013 ACC champions.
Who's leaving: Four of the top seven scorers — Brown, Adams, Swoope and forward Donnavan Kirk — are out of eligibility. Brown, who scored at least 12 points in 15 straight games to close out his career, provided the most oomph out of any of the departures.
G Tech Season Wrap: Injuries, Youth Led to .500 Record (PS; Stevens)
Record: 16-17 (6-12 ACC)
Last seen: Bowing out in overtime against Clemson in the second round of the ACC tournament after squandering a nine-point lead in the final eight minutes of regulation.
What went right: Trae Golden was declared immediately eligible after transferring from Tennessee and was more or less Georgia Tech's best player. Daniel Miller continued his improvement, turning in a stout senior season. He departs having started all 126 games of his career.
The Yellow Jackets won at Syracuse during the Orange's late-season swoon, but otherwise they did exactly what was expected based on the final standings. Including the ACC tournament, they went 6-0 against Boston College, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest and 1-13 against everyone else in the conference.
What went wrong: Injuries didn't help this bunch. Backup point guard Travis Jorgensen was lost for the season after just four games, robbing Georgia Tech's backcourt of some depth. A far bigger hit was the 10-game absence of forward Robert Carter Jr. at the start of conference play. The Yellow Jackets were 3-7 without their best big man.
Guard Chris Bolden regressed as a sophomore, turning in just five double-digit scoring days while shooting 30.5 percent from 3-point range.
Who's leaving: Miller departs as one of only two Yellow Jackets to start every game of his career; 1980s star Mark Price is the other. That's good company for the 6-foot-11 center, who worked his way into a nice player by the time his career ended.
Golden filled a needed role for his lone season with the Yellow Jackets, and reserve forward Kammeon Holsey also departs. Toss in Solomon Poole's midseason dismissal, and Georgia Tech will be without four of its top six scorers from this season moving forward...
Former Players
JS Scores 10 Points in 9 Minutes in Pelicans Debut (syracuse.com)
Former Syracuse forward James Southerland made a good first impression by scoring 10 points in nine minutes in his first game with the New Orleans Pelicans.
Southerland's mini scoring outburst came in a 116-94 loss at the Oklahoma City Thunder on Friday night.
Southerland came into the game in the fourth quarter and made four of his seven shot attempts, including two 3-pointers...
Other
Virginia's Loss Ensures SU-UNC a Play-In for Conference Tournament (PS; Stevens)
Syracuse's game Saturday against North Carolina was likely to serve as a play-in game for the main portion of the ACC tournament.
Virginia's 17-15 loss to Duke on Friday night ensured that would be the case, eliminating the only remaining convoluted scenario in which North Carolina could make it into the league semifinals even with a loss at the Carrier Dome.
Syracuse now has two possible opponents for its first (and perhaps only) game at the April 25-27 event at PPL Park in Chester, Pa. If the Orange beats North Carolina, it will face Duke in a rematch of the Blue Devils' 21-7 drubbing of Syracuse on March 23.
Depending on the outcome of the April 19 Maryland-Notre Dame game, Syracuse could be the No. 3 seed or the No. 4 seed. But in either case, it would play the Blue Devils.
Should the Orange lose its conference regular season finale, it will meet Virginia in a game pitting the bottom two teams in the league. The Cavaliers earned their only ACC victory of the season March 1 against Syracuse, earning a 17-12 victory.
Here's the full scenarios rundown with just two conference games (North Carolina-Syracuse and Maryland-Notre Dame) still to come:
DUKE
- The Blue Devils will be the No. 1 seed with a Maryland loss to Notre Dame
- The Blue Devils will be the No. 2 seed with a Maryland win at Notre Dame
Lax Analysis: Placing SU's Offense and Defense in ACC Games in Context (PS; Stevens)
Syracuse (7-3, 1-3 ACC) closes its first ACC regular season schedule Saturday when North Carolina (9-2, 2-2) heads to the Carrier Dome. There's certainly plenty for the Orange to play for.
A win gives the Orange an excellent chance of reaching the main portion of the conference tournament later this month in suburban Philadelphia. A loss relegates Syracuse to what the league is dubbing the ACC Showcase the night between the semifinals and the title game but, in reality, is just an extra game for the bottom two teams in the league to play.
Saturday is also the latest step in gauging Syracuse's first impression in this loaded lacrosse conference, so it seemed like a good time to place the Orange's work on offense and defense in context with how ACC teams have fared over an extended span. Say, back to 1989.
So why 1989? That was 25 years ago, and 25 is as round as a non-round number can get (or, more accurately, as common as it gets for an odd number of years to get revisited). But it was also the first season the ACC conducted a tournament, which makes it a decent starting point for how serious the sport was taken at the league level.
First up, the offense ...