SWC75
Bored Historian
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- Aug 26, 2011
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- The game came down to two stats: Vernon Carey, a 59% free throw shooter, made 8 of 10 form the line and Elijah Hughes, a 37% three point shooter made 1 of 9 from the arc. If Carey makes 6 of 10 and Hughes 4 of 9 we win by 2 points.
- Our three point game, which had been a strength of the team, has gone south. We were hitting 37% of our threes through the Boston College game. In the last five games we are 33 for 124, 26.6%. We’ve played these games much like SU teams of recent years, missing long shot s but trying to make up for it with drives to the basket and getting to the line. That worked for 88 points against Duke tonight, which is laudable. But if we can bring back the good outside shooing to go with the drives, we will be nearly unstoppable. I know the defense is geared to take away any open three point shots, (and Duke did a great job of this) but a strength is not really a strength if the other team can just decide to take it away from you. Many of the teams we played in those first 16 games tried to do the same thing but failed. If we are going to make a run at the NCAA tournament, the perimeter game has to make a big comeback in a big hurry.
- Free throw shooting should be a strength of this team but we missed 9 of them tonight. We still shot 76%, which is very good. But Buddy Boeheim and Joe Girard missed two apiece. Girard’s form had bene deteriorating slightly in recent games. He was just flipping the ball up there. IN the second half he got back to his fundamentals and looked automatic again. There is a question as to how good a free throw shooter Buddy actually is. He doesn’t get to the line much so the sample is small. He was 15 of 18, (83.3%), going into the new year but is 8 of 14, (57.1%) since the ACC season started in earnest. Bourama Sidibe was 2 for 6 from the line. His form isn’t that bad, but it isn’t consistent. And watching Carey, a 59% guy hit 8 of 10 while our guy goes 2 for 6 was painful.
- Coach K’s 270 pound freshman dominated Coach B’s 210 and 185 pound juniors in the paint. If we don’t recruit big guys with muscle or add some muscle onto them when they are here for three years, we’re going to lose these battles every time.
- The officiating wasn’t bad buy there was a lot of it. 54 fouls were called. (The notorious 2012 Ohio state had 48.) 29 were on Duke, 25 on us. This was to be a year where we could absorb fouls because of all the recruited players on the roster. But Brissett left. Bol Ajak redshirted. Our Carey, (Jalen) stunk up the joint for two games, the opted for an operation and medical redshirt. We found out about Robert Braswell’s shin splints, (he already knew about them) and now he’s going the same route. Brycen Goodine stunk up the joint and then bent his nose. He’s actually had a couple of good games but JB opted not to use him in this one. Jesse Edwards wouldn’t have played except for the foul trouble. That turns 13 guys into 7 guys. Coach K played one guy for the full 40 minutes- Tre Jones. Nobody else played more than 28 minutes, even Vernon Carey who got his 26 points and 17 rebounds in 2/3 of a game, (and got a technical for mocking the players trying to defend him). They actually had three guys foul out and it didn’t matter. We had two guys foul out, (Sidibe and Guerrier) and it mattered a lot.
- There is one foul that definitely should have bene called: Carey elbowed Guerrier in the face for a dunk in the first half and Quincy, no beanpole he, felled hard to the ground, allowing Carey to slam it down. The refs called everything else but not that.
- Alex O’Connell, who had 16 and 20 point game against us last year, scored 11 tonight. It was his first double figure game since Brown on 12/28. He’d scored 34 points in 8 games since, including two where he didn’t score at all. Don’t you love guys like that?
- We’ve done a decent job of beating mediocre teams, at least in conference. But it’s generally thought that we need to win at least one, perhaps two of the three games against Duke, Florida State and Louisville to get into the Big Dance. This was thought to be the most likely win – because it’s the only one of those games tob e played in the Dome- and we just lost it.
- It was a valiant effort. You know what a valiant effort means to the NCAA committee? It’s a loss, just like the Clemson game. (And the Tigers screwed the pooch against Wake Forest tonight.)
- Our three point game, which had been a strength of the team, has gone south. We were hitting 37% of our threes through the Boston College game. In the last five games we are 33 for 124, 26.6%. We’ve played these games much like SU teams of recent years, missing long shot s but trying to make up for it with drives to the basket and getting to the line. That worked for 88 points against Duke tonight, which is laudable. But if we can bring back the good outside shooing to go with the drives, we will be nearly unstoppable. I know the defense is geared to take away any open three point shots, (and Duke did a great job of this) but a strength is not really a strength if the other team can just decide to take it away from you. Many of the teams we played in those first 16 games tried to do the same thing but failed. If we are going to make a run at the NCAA tournament, the perimeter game has to make a big comeback in a big hurry.
- Free throw shooting should be a strength of this team but we missed 9 of them tonight. We still shot 76%, which is very good. But Buddy Boeheim and Joe Girard missed two apiece. Girard’s form had bene deteriorating slightly in recent games. He was just flipping the ball up there. IN the second half he got back to his fundamentals and looked automatic again. There is a question as to how good a free throw shooter Buddy actually is. He doesn’t get to the line much so the sample is small. He was 15 of 18, (83.3%), going into the new year but is 8 of 14, (57.1%) since the ACC season started in earnest. Bourama Sidibe was 2 for 6 from the line. His form isn’t that bad, but it isn’t consistent. And watching Carey, a 59% guy hit 8 of 10 while our guy goes 2 for 6 was painful.
- Coach K’s 270 pound freshman dominated Coach B’s 210 and 185 pound juniors in the paint. If we don’t recruit big guys with muscle or add some muscle onto them when they are here for three years, we’re going to lose these battles every time.
- The officiating wasn’t bad buy there was a lot of it. 54 fouls were called. (The notorious 2012 Ohio state had 48.) 29 were on Duke, 25 on us. This was to be a year where we could absorb fouls because of all the recruited players on the roster. But Brissett left. Bol Ajak redshirted. Our Carey, (Jalen) stunk up the joint for two games, the opted for an operation and medical redshirt. We found out about Robert Braswell’s shin splints, (he already knew about them) and now he’s going the same route. Brycen Goodine stunk up the joint and then bent his nose. He’s actually had a couple of good games but JB opted not to use him in this one. Jesse Edwards wouldn’t have played except for the foul trouble. That turns 13 guys into 7 guys. Coach K played one guy for the full 40 minutes- Tre Jones. Nobody else played more than 28 minutes, even Vernon Carey who got his 26 points and 17 rebounds in 2/3 of a game, (and got a technical for mocking the players trying to defend him). They actually had three guys foul out and it didn’t matter. We had two guys foul out, (Sidibe and Guerrier) and it mattered a lot.
- There is one foul that definitely should have bene called: Carey elbowed Guerrier in the face for a dunk in the first half and Quincy, no beanpole he, felled hard to the ground, allowing Carey to slam it down. The refs called everything else but not that.
- Alex O’Connell, who had 16 and 20 point game against us last year, scored 11 tonight. It was his first double figure game since Brown on 12/28. He’d scored 34 points in 8 games since, including two where he didn’t score at all. Don’t you love guys like that?
- We’ve done a decent job of beating mediocre teams, at least in conference. But it’s generally thought that we need to win at least one, perhaps two of the three games against Duke, Florida State and Louisville to get into the Big Dance. This was thought to be the most likely win – because it’s the only one of those games tob e played in the Dome- and we just lost it.
- It was a valiant effort. You know what a valiant effort means to the NCAA committee? It’s a loss, just like the Clemson game. (And the Tigers screwed the pooch against Wake Forest tonight.)
