That was the best defensive effort I have ever seen | Syracusefan.com

That was the best defensive effort I have ever seen

General20

General20

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Best defensive effort I have ever seen. Bar none.

Gonzaga had a huge mismatch down low (how often has Syracuse ever had to double team a player 100% of the time?) AND they were red hot from deep, and we still held them to 60 points.

Unbelievable.

We have shut down teams before, but never shut a team down that had so many advantages over us.

That effort was through the roof. Best ever!
 
General20 said:
Best defensive effort I have ever seen. Bar none.

Gonzaga had a huge mismatch down low (how often has Syracuse ever had to double team a player 100% of the time?) AND they were red hot from deep, and we still held them to 60 points.

Unbelievable.

We have shut down teams before, but never shut a team down that had so many advantages over us.

That effort was through the roof. Best ever!
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Absolutely no doubt. AND JB's best coaching effort I can ever recall.
 
General20 said:
Best defensive effort I have ever seen. Bar none.

Gonzaga had a huge mismatch down low (how often has Syracuse ever had to double team a player 100% of the time?) AND they were red hot from deep, and we still held them to 60 points.

Unbelievable.

We have shut down teams before, but never shut a team down that had so many advantages over us.

That effort was through the roof. Best ever!
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Two points:

1. Can anyone be inducted into the Hall of Fame twice?

2. And how about giving us back those victories you POS NCAA!
 
It really was a great combo of effort on D. Want to point out a significant adjustment made by JB.

We're down one very late. He called off the press...Zags gets a good look, but don't score. We miss...but JB realized we were at a huge disadvantage...so he goes back to the press and I think we got a turnover.

JB almost never pressed when a simple defensive stop will do...huge adjustment to game conditions from him. Brilliant game changing move.
 
my seat was center baseline just over the court. Unbelievable watching from that angle.
It was like watching a venus fly trap snap shut whenever the ball got into the middle.
And the closeouts to the wings were so fast...it was incredible. It looked the whole thing was moving as one giant blob.
 
SURREAL DEFENSE!!!! Think of all the times we stopped them, got the ball, went down the court and couldn't convert. And we did it over and over and over! We were horrific. NO ONE WANTED THE BALL except G. But the heart of this team, oh my god!

General, do you think we'll find offense against Virginia? Anyone??????
 
But we matched up better against Indiana than tonite. Our guards in 2013 dominated those midgets. Tonite we had to give max effort just to give ourselves a chance. Tonite was more impressive, our center is a 6'8 frosh against 2 nba bigs!
 
LetMeIn said:
my seat was center baseline just over the court. Unbelievable watching from that angle.
It was like watching a venus fly trap snap shut whenever the ball got into the middle.
And the closeouts to the wings were so fast...it was incredible. It looked the whole thing was moving as one giant blob.
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When they are all play D together moving together rotating together it's just amazing to watch!!!
 
Ajflood12 said:
Besides that awful call at the end...the refs let them play. Not many foul calls.
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I think this was the key to the game. If it was called tight we might not had enough players to finish the game. Except for the baseline call it was a pretty good called game both ways.
 
CorduroyG said:
But we matched up better against Indiana than tonite. Our guards in 2013 dominated those midgets. Tonite we had to give max effort just to give ourselves a chance. Tonite was more impressive, our center is a 6'8 frosh against 2 nba bigs!
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I'm not saying this was our best ever defensive game by the numbers, but it was our best ever defensive effort. As you say, we matched up great with Indiana. We were bigger and more athletic across the board. Think about that team, MCW, Triche, Southerland, Fair, Christmas. With Cooney, Grant, Kieta coming off the bench. That team never had to double anybody, and our guards had five or six inches a piece over their guards. Its easy to win when the match ups favor you, that happens all the time, that's suppose to happen.

In this game all the match ups favored Gonzaga. We had to double or triple team Sabonis down low every time, and they got it to him every time. They were well coached. When Sabonis passed it out, people were wide open, our zone broke down, and it was a matter of hustle and nothing more to shut them down from that point. There was no fix for this, Sabonis was a 100% guaranteed lock to score if he had anything less than two players on him. Add to that the fact that they hit a huge percentage of their 3s until the very end and the fact that they had by far the two best players in this game. I still have no idea how they lost.

We held them to 60 on effort alone. That almost never happens.
 
bballbeadle said:
SURREAL DEFENSE!!!! Think of all the times we stopped them, got the ball, went down the court and couldn't convert. And we did it over and over and over! We were horrific. NO ONE WANTED THE BALL except G. But the heart of this team, oh my god!

General, do you think we'll find offense against Virginia? Anyone??????
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Is Virginia the match up we want? No.

Are we better than Virginia? No.

Do we have a punchers chance in this game? Hell yes! Virginia does not want to go up against us with only one day to prepare. Nobody does.

Law of averages says we shoot better on Sunday, but of course nothing is guaranteed.

My biggest worry is that our guys will be gassed from the effort they put in today. Virginia won easily and we had to put everything we had and then some into our win.
 
Jake said:
It really was a great combo of effort on D. Want to point out a significant adjustment made by JB.

We're down one very late. He called off the press...Zags gets a good look, but don't score. We miss...but JB realized we were at a huge disadvantage...so he goes back to the press and I think we got a turnover.

JB almost never pressed when a simple defensive stop will do...huge adjustment to game conditions from him. Brilliant game changing move.
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Agreed, I texted a friend when we were pressing that I hoped he'd leave it on for once... I was pleasantly surprised he went back into it. It's been very effective this year, and I would LOVE to see JB throw it on a couple times in the first half Sunday to try to catch UVA off guard. We could really use a swing of 2-3 possessions to have a good shot at the upset, and that's one way to try to do it.
 
General20 said:
Is Virginia the match up we want? No. Are we better than Virginia? No. Do we have a punchers chance in this game? Hell yes! Virginia does not want to go up against us with only one day to prepare. Nobody does. Law of averages says we shoot better on Sunday, but of course nothing is guaranteed. My biggest worry is that our guys will be gassed from the effort they put in today. Virginia won easily and we had to put everything we had and then some into our win.
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We can beat UVa but I really wish we were playing a non-ACC team with only 1 day to prepare.
 
General20 said:
My biggest worry is that our guys will be gassed from the effort they put in today. Virginia won easily and we had to put everything we had and then some into our win.
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Full day off, two games a week in the tourney, I think unless you've got a multi-overtime game this is basically a non-factor. Those things matter in conference tourneys when you play the next day, but not so much in the NCAAs in my opinion.
 
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