HCJB
They discussed the Seton Hall game and Fab Melo’s performance. JB: “They could have 3-4 lay-ups in the early going but Fab blocked them and soon we were up by 10. He blocks shots and alters shots. And sometimes they just don’t go in there at all.
A caller asked how we maintain the intensity we had last night. Jim said we’ve had that intensity all year. “I haven’t noticed any difference. They challenged Fab so he had a lot of blocked shots. They really had no chance in there. Of course they didn’t have much recourse because they weren’t hitting from the perimeter.”
I called in my comment about the non-conference wins the least four season- and the three before that. Coach accepted the congratulations but pointed out that we were badly outplayed in that Cleveland State game. “We made a miracle comeback in a game we didn’t deserve to win and when they hit that shot, well, I guess they were supposed to win.” He also said that the teams we lost to in the previous three years “were all good teams. They were all in the NCAA tournament, or at least Drexel and Rhode Island should have been.”
Matt brought up Norris Cole, who had gone to Cleveland State and who made some big plays down the stretch for the Heat. JKB wasn’t sure he was on the team that beat us but they looked it up and he scored 16 points in that game. JB noted that he had a 40/20 game while at Cleveland State. (41 points 20 rebounds and 9 assists vs. Youngstown State- and he’s only 6-2.)
This led to a discussion of triple doubles, including Melo’s chance for one last night. JB said that “we haven’t had too many triple doubles here”. Alan Griffin, Derrick Coleman and Leo Rautins were mentioned. They didn’t keep track of assists before 1965 . Dave Bing had three triple-doubles his senior year “and must have had a bunch of them before that”. Coach said Leo Rautins had quadruple doubles- with 10 turnovers.
Bob in Syracuse had heard a rumor that “we might lose Melo to academics.” JB laughed and said it was the first time he’d heard that one.
William told the coach he was concerned about our rebounding problems. JB said he really didn’t see a rebounding problem- we’ve outrebounded our opposition by 1 overall, (actually by 30) and we get plenty of steals blocks and other turnovers. “If we were getting outrebounded by 7 and not getting steals, then we‘d be in trouble.” Matt Park noted that the two best teams in turnover margin since 1997 are this year’s Syracuse and Ohio State teams, (of course neither has completed their season)- about +8 each. We are 17th in scoring and 33rd in shooting percentage. JB said we are shooting 46-47% and led the country two years ago “so I don’t see why people think we have offensive problems.”
Cliff in Fulton said he keeps hearing about getting a new arena or reconstructing the Dome to make it more “fan friendly”. Matt Park said that “no one in a decision making capacity was talking about that“. JB wasn’t in favor of it. “It’s the most building in the country, the only Dome anybody plays in. If we got a smaller arena we’d have to tell 10-12,000 fans not to come to the big games. If we had an 18,000 seat arena every seat would be sold- we sell about 16-17,000 season tickets- and some people would only come to 5-6 games so there would be a lot of empty seats. We’ve never lost a big time recruit we really wanted who came to see a big game here. I’ve never had one say they’d rather play in a 12,000 seat arena.” (Things have changed since JB, according to his biography, he got into a protracted argument in the office of Vice Chancellor Cliff Winters in the spring of 1980 over playing games n the Dome rather than Manley, one that ended with an angry Winters slamming his fist on the table and JB leaving “in a huff”.)
Mark in Syracuse said that he’d heard that Jim’s oldest son is quite a basketball player. Could he be a Division 1 prospect? Jim said both his sons, age 13 and 12, are good players but his 12 year old daughter is “very good”. But he said “they have a lot of work to do.”
Matt asked “What’s the earliest point at which you can tell a kid might have the potential to be a player?” Jim said that in the 6th grade, he was the fourth best player in the school. “There was one guy who was totally dominant- and he never played in college. Magic Johnson was as great player as a kid. Michael Jordan was mediocre as a kid. It’s not easy to predict but by the 9th or 10th grade you can usually tell who’s going to be a college player. It’s a little different than football back we have national AAU tournaments where you can evaluate players.” He said his daughter went to a national AAU tournament in the fifth grade.
On TV Rutgers was giving Florida quite a battle, (which they won 85-83). This prompted a discussion of the teams in the Big East and how tough the league can be. Notre Dame struggled without their best player, then “hammered” Pittsburgh, (72-59). Providence was 11-2 and got hammered by St. John’s, (91-67). Georgetown is a surprise te4am with a lot of veteran players. “A lot of teams have good records but they haven’t beaten anybody. Georgetown has beaten people. Cincinnati was pulling apart before the big fight with Xavier: they have pulled together since and are coming back. Talent’s a funny thing. Villanova is the only team in the league with four McDonald’s All-Americans. Georgetown has none and is #12 in the country.”
An old friend of Jim, Mark Goodman called up. They’d taken a history class at SU together under a Professor Rabeck, (sp?). “He was the only professor who would give me an A”. Matt suggested that because they would have taken that class 45 years ago, the class itself is no “history”. Mark suggested that our supposed rebounding problems may be the product of all the steals and turnovers we get- teams can’t get shots off. JB didn’t think that was a big factor but we’ve taken 100 more shots than our opponents this year, so there may be something to that.
Larry from Venice, Florida asked why Syracuse doesn’t have a pre-game “shoot-around” on the road. By that he means a special trip to the arena to conduct shooting drilled when the team arrives at the city where the game is to be played. This involves a trip, often as much as 45 minutes on a bus from the hotel to the arena, a 45 minute shooting session and a 45 minute trip back to the hotel. JB would rather spend that time in meetings, going over the other team’s films and game plan while letting the players rest up. Then they do some shooting just before the game. Bill Sharman started the tradition of separate shoot-around when he was with the Lakers and they won a title doing it so everybody started doing it. “Without it, coaches wouldn’t feel they were doing all they could do to win.” But now, with the shortened season, the NBA is skipping the shoot-arounds. Some teams are playing three games in three days.
They talked about the NBA. “The Knicks had a great game but have major issues. Carmelo isn’t going to be able to score 37 points in every game. He made some amazing shots. I don’t think anybody can beat Miami in a seven game series. The Lakers are down. Dallas is down. Those veterans at San Antonio still have something left. Oklahoma City is probably second best with Durrant. But I’m not sure they could beat the Heat.”
DePaul is “playing much better. They’ve won their last five games. Cleveland Melvin, who missed the game here last year, was the league’s rookie of the year. He’s a terrific inside player.” Matt noted that they had lost to Minnesota, Mississippi and Milwaukee, “so if they can just avoid the “M” teams, they’ll be OK.” JB laughed.
Gomez was on vacation, (JB said he was at Motel 66), so Chris McManus took over for the second hour.
Coach had a great Christmas and got a new sports jacket which he wore last night. He had a Christmas night practice. “We practice on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. You get so you can’t think about it. The big issue is whether everybody makes it back on time.”
They will be spending New Year’s Eve in Chicago. JB again said that DePaul will be much improved this year.
George called in and said that “anyone who watched the team this year can see why you’re a Hall of Fame coach” JB: “I’m not sure about that but thank you.”
Dick in Syracuse asked what was the coach’s “favorite shot in basketball”. He noted that John Wooden liked lay-ups but Kareem had that sky-hook, etc. Coach had never thought about it. He liked Kareem’s sky-hook, which he could make as far as 15 feet out, or Magic’s running hook shot. “Jerry West’s jumper had perfect form. That’s how he got on the logo. Oscar Robertson had that high-arching turn-around jumper. He was 6-5 and the guys guarding him were 6 feet tall so they had no chance to stop it. My best shot was a lay-up. I’d run around to get open and when my man was guarding Dave Bing, I’d get a lay-up”.
They again talked about Fab’s near triple double. “It’s hard to do in a 40 minute game and getting 10 blocks is even harder- we’d never had anybody do it before. He almost did it in the first half.”
Chris asked about “true centers”. He said JB usually seems to have one but a lot of teams don’t. Jim said that there just aren’t that many true centers any more., even in the NBA. “Back in the old days, you had Wilt and Kareem and Bill Russell and Nate Thurmond all banging away at each other. Now they are mostly Europeans who have grown up facing the basket. Dwight Howard is a an exception today. What we need is for guys like Dwight to marry a girl about 6-2”.
Chris said he’d read about a 6-10 14 year old in Indian who might be the next Yao Ming. JB: There’s 300 seven footers playing college ball and about four of them can really play. A lot of them don’t really like to play but they get into it because of their height. They don’t work at it.”
I called in my second question about whether we could introduce more than 5 men at the beginning of the game. JB said there’s probably a rule against it and if there wasn’t there should be. “You don’t want a team to introduce ten guys.” He enjoyed my story about Bear Bryant, though. (I still think it’s would be a fun thing to do.)
Chris asked how many players were dressing for games. It’s a record 20. “We’ve got a good group of upper class non-scholarship players. I don’t like to run the first and second teams against each other all the time. It tends to ware them down.” Chris said you can tell the walk-ons have been here 3-4 years. Jim says they get real good playing against the scholarship players all the time. “They hold their own- for a while.”
Jim said we’d never tried playing ten guys before-”maybe 9 for a while when Derrick was here. But usually 7-8 guys in recent years, with four guys playing a lot.” He said that in the first league game he wanted to go with veteran guards and so he didn’t go to Michael Carter Williams until the game was decided. He and Rakeem will get more time later.”
Richard in North Syracuse wondered if Fab Melo could be named Big East Player of the Year. JB: “It helps to play on a team that wins. But here are a lot of guys in that race, a big field.” Richard said he’s got a son who will be starting for SU in 15 years. JB: “I’ll enjoy watching him. I hope Richard or his wife is tall. Usually the father is 5-4 and the wife 5 feet.” Chris said that there are guys under six feet in the NBA. “Yeah, about 2-3 of them out of 300 players.”
Chris asked about the Olympic team- there would be a quick transition form the NBA season. JB isn’t worried. “The coaches and players have been doing this for several seasons now. The players will be in great condition right after the season and they like playing for the national team because they only have to play 18 minutes or so a game and they like playing with other stars.” Chris wondered if the coaches learn for each other from their Olympic experience. JB said he’s using plays he learned from Mike D’Antoni. He’s also learned a lot about the mental preparation of a team for a game from Coach K.
“Everybody would have loved our Olympic team if they could have seen it at 9 or 10 in the evening. But we were always on in the wee hours of the morning. In London they will probably play at night and the games will be seen here in the afternoon. It should be another great team but Spain will be very tough. We have an exhibition game against them.” He talked about Ricky Rubio. “He’s great in transition but not in the half court. It’s hard to get into transition in the NBA. He’s averaging 6 points and 4 assists a game. He’s got to do better.”
They talked about the NBA point guards. He feels Baron Davis will be an effective point guard for the Knicks “if he’s in shape and ready”, which he sometimes is not. Chauncey Billups, “still has something left and the Clippers will have a great 1-2 punch. Chris Paul can win games for you.”
Tom in Pulaski asked if Coach would rather have a team with a star or a team with no stars like this one. JB: I’d rather have a lot of good players and one star- a star can be stopped. Look at last night and what happened to Herb Pope and Kris Joseph.” Chris noted that we have some guys who would be stars on other teams.
They were talking about the thumb injuries of Brandon Triche and Dion waiters. JB said that “players get hit all the time- Dion got hit in practice today.” It happens. They have to play through it.”
A caller asked about the scenario where we have the ball with 5 seconds to go in the half: why don’t we call a time out to set up a play. Jim likes to conserve time-outs for the second half. They have to use one in the first half. If they haven’t used one, they lose one. If they have used one, Jim likes to beat the defense down the court “if we’re going down and have good offensive rhythm, the players know to play for the last shot. If you call a time out, they get to set up their defense, as well.” Another caller asked who Jim wanted to take the last shot. “It would depended on the defense and who’s playing well. Everyone’s been able to make plays for us. When the shot goes in, it‘s about the player. When it doesn‘t, it‘s about the coach.”
