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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 881647, member: 289"] With Gomez: Gomez wished Jim a Happy New Year. Jim didn’t accept that because New Year’s is long past. Gomez said that it still counts because he hadn’t seen Jim since the new year began, (apparently he wasn’t available for last week’s show, which I missed). JB: “What if I don’t see you until July: are you going to wish me Happy New Year then?” They went back and forth for a couple minutes on that issue. Gomez then told Jim that he was going to go ice fishing ‘in’ Raquette Lake, (hopefully on it).”It will be like Grumpy Old Men.” Jim likes fishing but has little use for ice fishing. “It’s just another excuse to drink.” The SU women were falling behind the Duke women’s team. They would get blown out, 53-86. But Duke got blown out by Connecticut 61-83. JB: “Breanna Stewart is the best player in the country and they have the best team.” Gomez wondered if the Virginia Tech game was typical of what we’d see in the ACC- small on-campus arenas. “We had arenas like that in the Big East: Villanova, Rutgers, Notre Dame. There may be a few more in the ACC. Sometimes it’s a good thing- it gets you going. It can be fun. The students are a big factor in the noise level of a smaller building.” Gomez praised the poise of the younger players in such an environment. JB: “People forget that we’ve already played a lot of close games- St. Francis, the games in Hawaii, St. John’s. We have really good players.” Gomez suggested that JB must have made a good halftime speech. “Speeches don’t win any games. The players on the court do. We needed better ball movement. Defensively, we were playing well. There weren’t a lot of things that had to be different.” Roy Williams is another coaching friend of JB and they both golf. “We’re both getting bad. He likes to schedule his operations in the offseason- the golf off season.” Jim has no beefs with the Hall of Fame voting. “What are they going to do with the other guys? Everybody did something. Bonds and Clemens are Hall of Famers.” They discussed some of the football coaching hires. Bobby Petrino “is a really good coach”. James Franklin: “If you can win 8 games at Vanderbilt, you can win 10-11 at Penn State”, Jay Gruden: “The Redskins probably thought they were hiring John. John is happy with his TV gig.” A caller named Ed contrasted today’s basketball to the ‘high powered’ offenses of the 80’s and the 90’s. Today there’s a greater emphasis on defense and Ed likes it. JB: “We are a better half court team now. The zone slows the game down. You can run more against a man-for-man. There are more opportunities to fast break. We had a higher level of talent back then. Guys who could push it. You want to run but it’s a slower game.” Ed wondered if the guys get ‘pumped up’ when they shut down a team on defense. “I hope so. Shutting teams down helps everybody. We just try to get players to play well in every possession, to be consistent.” I called in my second question, about Tyler Ennis. “He’s a good fast break point guard. He makes good decisions- that’s the key to the fast break. There are just fewer opportunities to fast break.” How can Tyler improve? “He needs to get stronger, become a better shooter.” Gomez asked how you get to Blacksburg. “Charter Flight. The advantage of a charter flight is that you can get home the same day. If we had flown commercial, we wouldn’t be back until the middle of the next day. We had to go to Roanoke due to heavy winds. It’s about a half hour away.” They talked about Louisville without Chane Behanan. The Cardinals were playing Memphis, (who they eventually lost to 67-73). “Louisville is still a good team without Behanan but he was capable of getting 15 points and 10 rebounds any night. They lost Dieng and Siva. They’ve weathered it. It’s a bit of a loss but they will still win a lot of games. “ Duke’s Jabari Parker is a Mormon and has announced that he’s going to do a mission when his career at Duke is over. JB: “I don’t think that’s going to happen. Most guys do it in college. It’s highly unusual for a guy like Parker to take a mission”. Of course, his Duke basketball career may be over before the normal four year run. Lynn “has been a Syracuse fan forever”. (That’s a long time.) He used to be the only kid in Fort Bragg with an SU jersey. He pointed out that North Carolina doesn’t have Michael Jordan any more. JIM: “They don’t happen very often.” Lynn thought that if Cooney makes his threes, we will beat UNC. JB : “And, if we rebound and play good defense we’ve got a good chance.” Coaches…. They talked about past North Carolina games, including the two we lost to MJ’s teams, (both by the same score 64-87 but totally different games- we were in the first down there until the Heels pulled away at the end with the help of the refs who called about 3 times as many fouls on us as them. The Second was in the Dome but it was a blow-out from the opening tip. At least Dr. Spera got to see the look on Michael Jordan’s face as his 60 footer at the halftime buzzer went in.) JB: “That team had Michael Jordan, Brad Daugherty and Sam Perkins, three long-time NBA players. The 1975 game was a big win for Syracuse basketball. In 1987, we got to my first Final Four as a head coach.” Therese praised the team’s improvement in free throw shooting, (we are .688 this year vs. .675 last season). JB: “We have guys who can make foul shots. If the right guys get fouled, you’ll have a good percentage. In past years we had some big guys who could score and rebound and got fouled a lot but weren’t good foul shooters.” Barry called on his cell phone even though he was at Delmonico’s at the time. He was worried about over-confidence. Jim: “Our guys aren’t over-confident. We haven’t been blowing people out. I’ve seen teams start 12-0 and then lose 6-7 in a row in the conference.” Rob in Geddes asked if JB was “ready for that southern cooking”. Jim: “We have the best barbeque in the country right here at the Dinosaur. We went to a simple place at Virginia Tech. it was good. There was a great place at Clemson one year, (that would have been the 2007 NIT). I have relatives in Birmingham Alabama and down there there’s an Italian place run by a guy who had a place in New York City for 20 years. You can’t get into his place with a reservation. I’m really not concerned about food when we’re on the road.” Maybe we should have joined Conference USA, which has UAB in it. Andrew Bynum has been traded with draft choices for Luol Deng to Chicago. “The Bulls are looking to the future with Rose hurt. They’ll probably waive Bynum, who isn’t that motivated to play. Somebody will pick him up.” Gomez suggested the Heat might give him a try. “They already have Oden- do they want another project?” I checked the headlines this morning and the Bulls have already waived Bynum. Miami is shooting 51.1% from the field, an historical number. They were playing the Knicks last night. The Knick’s chances? “It depends on who they are resting.” Chalmers and Battier were hurt and Haslem and Jones’ didn’t play. The Knicks won, 102-92. Of course, they are without a lot of guys, too. They talked about Blake Griffin, who “has worked hard on his shooting and is a better player.” Greg Popovich blew off another halftime interview. “He doesn’t like them and makes no bones about it. It’s a rule that you have to give them. I think ti’s a 50 grand fine. Of course, in the NBA, they fine you 50 grand if you spit on the court.“ Jr Smith, “is crazy. They won’t get rid of him. Nobody wants him. He’s not shooting the ball well.” There were stories that the Lakers were asking Kobe Bryant who he wanted to be the next coach. JB: “Players are not involved with hiring. They might ask Kobe what he might suggest but they won’t ask if it’s all right with him. And Red McCombs should no better than to object to Texas hiring Charlie Strong. He should know from being a businessman that you’ve got to leave that up to the professionals. “ Pete said that Tyler Ennis is like that Robert Redford movie “The Natural”. JB laughed. Pete then compared him to Gerry McNamara because he was so good as a freshman. “Gerry was a great shooter. Tyler was a great playmaker. Gerry won’t like this about Tyler is a little bigger. Gerry was a scoring point guard. Tyler is a passing point guard. Both are tough competitors. Not many guys are successful in college if they aren’t. Linda called in just to say she’d enrolled 6th grade son into a basketball team to make him well rounded. She went to the 1981 National Sports festival in Syracuse and became fascinated with judo. She took judo classes from any Olympian. It has made her well-rounded. Who is going to argue with her? Mandy noted that when we played Miami, the Miami players went over to shake JB’s hand. Jim: “We’ve never done that. Our guys shook hands with the referee. I don’t know where that came from. In my career here, we probably haven’t had 10 teams come over and shake my hand and two of them have done it this year. They probably just think I’m an old man and felt sorry for me.” Gomez suggested they just wanted to shake hands with a Hall of Famer while they had the chance. “Maybe so….” [/QUOTE]

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