SWC75
Bored Historian
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- Aug 26, 2011
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- Too many Saturdays since September have been ruined by the SU game. We went through a football season with many key players getting hurt and the schedule being redone due to CoVid to very much our disadvantage and we watched a dismal 1-10 season play out. The basketball season starts out with high hopes and four minutes in, our center goes down. None of his back-ups can take his place and we’ve been a donut team since. Again the schedule has to be re-arranged due to CoVid. We lose some of those developmental early season games and several home games become road games. We don’t cover shooters well or shoot as well as we should. We can’t rebound with physical teams or stop them inside. It kills me that Bourama went out 11/27 and was supposed to be out 4 weeks and Justin Champagnie was hurt 12/20 and was supposed to be out 8 weeks and yet on 1/16 Champagnie dropped 24p/16r on us while Bourama watched. That, to me, symbolized not only this basketball season but the entire school year. We stand at 10-6, 4-5 and are unlikely to make the NCAA tournament and don’t care about the NIT, (will they even have that?). if we can just get out of this with The Streak intact, I’ll be happy about that. The rest is “Wait til’ next year”.
- I heard a bit of the pre-game show. Eric Devendorf said that against Clemson’s physical defense we had to get them moving back and fourth with our passes to create openings. We spent the whole game driving through the defense to the basket, something that this team isn’t good at. We are a jump shooting team, at it’s best when the players move in concert with each other, make the defenders move and beat them with passes. We had one play like that: With 11:20 left in the second half, Joe Girard and Marek played a two-man game, Marek winding up with the ball at the top of the key and sank a jumper. Unfortunately that made it 38-58. The rest of it was guys lowering their shoulder and driving into the teeth of a defense manned by stronger more physical players.
- Clemson played great defense in that first half. They were in every Syracuse player’s face the whole game and every shot was contested. Our guys were totally intimidated by this. Even when they got in position to attempted a shot, it was a weak flick at the basket. Even wide-open layups were being babied and this was no game for infants. We wound up an astonishing 3 for 25 from the field in the first half, 1 of 6 from three and an absurd 2 for 19 inside the arc. I’ve never seen a worst shooting stat than that. We wound up with 6 assists, just one in the first half, a hand-off from Marek to Buddy on the opening score of the game.
- Yeah, we played better in the second half but the game was decided in the first half. You aren’t going to have a 20 point halftime lead against a decent team and not have them comeback a bit. But even when we played better and Clemson cooled off, they matched us point for point and prevented any real comeback. We got some decent numbers but it was not a decent performance.
- Clemson had a 6-8 245 guy and, of course he went off. Aamir Simms had 18 points on 7 of 9 shooting and 11 rebounds. Quincy Guerrier, our strongest player, was pushed around by Simms, shot 3 for 11 and had 8 points and 6 rebounds.
- We got out-rebounded 25-42, our formula for defeat this year. We have lost 6 games this year and have bene out-rebounded by 16, 16, 17, 12, 13 and now 17 in those games. NC State awaits Tuesday night with 6-11 230 Manny Bates and 6-10 225 DJ Funderburke, who didn’t play in the last game, which we won by just 3 points in the Dome.
- Clemson had one really good outside shooter, Nick Honor, (who at 38.2% is better than any of our guys. Of course, he went off for 15 points from 5/8 shooting from three. They were all wide open.
- There are lost of contenders for ‘stat of the game’. I’d pick 2 for 19 from two in the first half. Another contender is that Alan Griffin was our leading scorer even though he was 0 for 5 from the field. (He was 5 for 5 from the foul line.) In the post-game show Steve Infanti said that Alan looked to him like a player who would be more at home on a team that pressed all the time. “He wants to run around and make plays”. He didn’t make many of them today, although he did get to the line enough to score 12 points, even though he was an appalling 2 for 13 from the field.
- You can compare numbers and make it look like Alan Griffin is a replacement for Elijah Hughes but he isn’t, at least not at this stage. Elijah would have just said “Gimmie the ball!” in this game and carried us on his back. We just don’t have a bell cow on this team, a guy who can get going when the going is tough.
- Buddy Boeheim was 3 for 13 from the field. He managed 8 points plus a picket fence: 1 rebound, 1 block and 1 steal plus a goose-egg in assists in 35 minutes. I wondered who would lose minutes when Bourama played. You want Marek, Quincy, Alan and Buddy out there but none are point guards. It’s musical chairs at the 2,3 and 5 spots. Bourama played 11 minutes, Marek 37, Quincy 34, Buddy 35 and Alan 26. That’s who.
- It was nice to see Bourama and Woody Newton get into the gam after 2-3 months of being unable to play. Both played like guys who hadn’t played in months, scoring a combined 1 point blocking one shot and committing 1 turnover and 5 fouls in a combined 15 minutes. What might they have done if they’d been playing all year? Maybe we’ll find out before this season is over.
- SU in the second half against Pitt vs. SU in the first half against Clemson who wins? Nobody.
- I heard a bit of the pre-game show. Eric Devendorf said that against Clemson’s physical defense we had to get them moving back and fourth with our passes to create openings. We spent the whole game driving through the defense to the basket, something that this team isn’t good at. We are a jump shooting team, at it’s best when the players move in concert with each other, make the defenders move and beat them with passes. We had one play like that: With 11:20 left in the second half, Joe Girard and Marek played a two-man game, Marek winding up with the ball at the top of the key and sank a jumper. Unfortunately that made it 38-58. The rest of it was guys lowering their shoulder and driving into the teeth of a defense manned by stronger more physical players.
- Clemson played great defense in that first half. They were in every Syracuse player’s face the whole game and every shot was contested. Our guys were totally intimidated by this. Even when they got in position to attempted a shot, it was a weak flick at the basket. Even wide-open layups were being babied and this was no game for infants. We wound up an astonishing 3 for 25 from the field in the first half, 1 of 6 from three and an absurd 2 for 19 inside the arc. I’ve never seen a worst shooting stat than that. We wound up with 6 assists, just one in the first half, a hand-off from Marek to Buddy on the opening score of the game.
- Yeah, we played better in the second half but the game was decided in the first half. You aren’t going to have a 20 point halftime lead against a decent team and not have them comeback a bit. But even when we played better and Clemson cooled off, they matched us point for point and prevented any real comeback. We got some decent numbers but it was not a decent performance.
- Clemson had a 6-8 245 guy and, of course he went off. Aamir Simms had 18 points on 7 of 9 shooting and 11 rebounds. Quincy Guerrier, our strongest player, was pushed around by Simms, shot 3 for 11 and had 8 points and 6 rebounds.
- We got out-rebounded 25-42, our formula for defeat this year. We have lost 6 games this year and have bene out-rebounded by 16, 16, 17, 12, 13 and now 17 in those games. NC State awaits Tuesday night with 6-11 230 Manny Bates and 6-10 225 DJ Funderburke, who didn’t play in the last game, which we won by just 3 points in the Dome.
- Clemson had one really good outside shooter, Nick Honor, (who at 38.2% is better than any of our guys. Of course, he went off for 15 points from 5/8 shooting from three. They were all wide open.
- There are lost of contenders for ‘stat of the game’. I’d pick 2 for 19 from two in the first half. Another contender is that Alan Griffin was our leading scorer even though he was 0 for 5 from the field. (He was 5 for 5 from the foul line.) In the post-game show Steve Infanti said that Alan looked to him like a player who would be more at home on a team that pressed all the time. “He wants to run around and make plays”. He didn’t make many of them today, although he did get to the line enough to score 12 points, even though he was an appalling 2 for 13 from the field.
- You can compare numbers and make it look like Alan Griffin is a replacement for Elijah Hughes but he isn’t, at least not at this stage. Elijah would have just said “Gimmie the ball!” in this game and carried us on his back. We just don’t have a bell cow on this team, a guy who can get going when the going is tough.
- Buddy Boeheim was 3 for 13 from the field. He managed 8 points plus a picket fence: 1 rebound, 1 block and 1 steal plus a goose-egg in assists in 35 minutes. I wondered who would lose minutes when Bourama played. You want Marek, Quincy, Alan and Buddy out there but none are point guards. It’s musical chairs at the 2,3 and 5 spots. Bourama played 11 minutes, Marek 37, Quincy 34, Buddy 35 and Alan 26. That’s who.
- It was nice to see Bourama and Woody Newton get into the gam after 2-3 months of being unable to play. Both played like guys who hadn’t played in months, scoring a combined 1 point blocking one shot and committing 1 turnover and 5 fouls in a combined 15 minutes. What might they have done if they’d been playing all year? Maybe we’ll find out before this season is over.
- SU in the second half against Pitt vs. SU in the first half against Clemson who wins? Nobody.
