SWC75
Bored Historian
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- Aug 26, 2011
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- This one was brutal. It was a great game but a great loss. Our guys put up some big numbers but so did theirs. The five 2019 losses leave us with very little room for error and a home loss to Notre Dame is an error.
- I wish I could blame it on the two no-calls at the end of the game: Hughes drive and Girard’s flop. I’d have to say they were probably good no calls. Both might have bene called in other situations but I really don’t think Notre Dame did anything outside the rules to prevent us from scoring. I hate it when a defender makes contact with a shooter long after the ball is released and gets call for a foul when nothing he did could possibly have affected the shot and that’s what happened on the Girard play. In Hughes case, I think he was expecting to get fouled and wasn’t and when he found himself with an open shot, he missed it because his mindset was to get to the line.
- More close games are won and lost in the 39th minute than in the 40th minute because it’s the 39th minute that creates the strategical situation for the 40th minute. I have thought that we were going to have just the situation I envisioned in my “Closing it Out” post a while back. We have a 97% free throw shooter at the point, (Girard), and two other guys who are 83%, (Boeheim) and 77%, (Hughes). I’m looking forward to a game where we are protecting a small lead in the final minute and can inbound the ball to those guys. I think they’d all be money at the line and the door would be shut on the opposition. I thought that was going to happen here. It didn’t because after Quincy Guerrier dunked to give us an 84-81 lead with 1:33 left Prentice Hubb hit a trey at 11:20 to tie it, Joe Girard missed a trey at 1:05, Dane Goodwin got the rebound and missed a shot with 47 seconds left that Mooney rebounded. Mooney missed an rounded again, then scored to give Notre Dame the lead with 36 seconds left. Then came the Hughes play, at 21 seconds, two Hubb free throws and the Girard play at the buzzer. Some of that did come in the final minute but the point is we never set it up for our “bullpen” to shut the door.
- Mooney getting those two offensive rebounds and scoring the go-ahead bucket was the real story of the game. We were only out-rebounded by 39-36. We did not have the turnover edge Boeheim counts on to negate that, (11 for us, 9 for them). We had 13 offensive rebounds and scored 14 points off of them. They had 17 offensive rebounds and scored 24 points off them. One big factor was fatigue. With our bench on the DL, (and isn’t strange to have healthy starters and a bang-up bench?), We had three guys, (Hughes, Dolezaj and Boeheim) play 40 minutes. Notre Dame’s bigger, more muscular guys took over down the stretch. The other factor was fouls. The refs let ‘em play tonight for the most part, (as Hughes and Girard found out at the end). But they didn’t let Sidibie or Guerrier play. They played exactly 40 minutes between then and were called for 8 fouls, at least half of which were questionable. They were “reputation” fouls. Those two players have a reputation for fouling, (or, at least being called for fouls), so if they make any kind of physical defensive move, they are likely to get called for a foul whether there is an actual foul or not. Sometimes they could be call for a foul by the letter of the law but other players would have gotten a no-call. Sidibe was more than holding his own I the early going, getting 5 of his 6 boards in the first 5:35 of the game. But once you are in foul trouble you not only have to leave the game for long periods but you tend to play more tentatively when you come back in. Mooney threw his weight around all night and got whistled twice in 32 minutes.
- Mooney is still another guy who wasn’t a top rated recruit, (#146 per 2 47), but he grew up playing the game here, had size, (6-9 245), and skills and one of our opponents took him and we have no answer for him from our skinny foreign players who are still learning the game. He wound up with 28 points and 14 rebounds. Sidibe had 2 points and 6 rebounds.
- Elijah Hughes had his usual numbers but he was a non-factor for much of the game. He scored 12 of his points in a 3 minutes 20 second stretch of the first half which helped key a 16-3 run for the Cuse. But he’d been scoreless in the first 11:15 and only scored 7 in the second half and missed that bunny at the end. Interestingly, that first half burst came shortly after Howard Washington entered the game. He had 2 assists in 5:42 and Joe Girard had none in 34 minutes. Maybe Elijah needs the point guard to be in pass first mode to be fully effective.
- TJ Gibbs averages 12.3 point per game and had made 32 three pointers at 38% in 13 games. Prentice Hubb averaged 10.8 points. He’d hit 43 treys going in but only at a 26% average. They totaled 43 points on 12 for 20 shooting from the arc. Fun fact: in the SU-Notre Dame game of 1/5/19, (won by SU 72-62 in South Bend), neither Notre dame’s Hubb or SU’s Boeheim scored a points. Tonight they scored a total of 45 points.
- Condolences to those of you who are both SU and Bills fans. Rough night. I’d be a Bills fan if Ernie Davis had signed with them. I was a Browns fan because of Jim brown, a Broncos fan because of Floyd Little and a Dolphins fan because of Larry Csonka. On second thought, I withdraw my condolences. You guys had a much better year than my teams did.
- I wish I could blame it on the two no-calls at the end of the game: Hughes drive and Girard’s flop. I’d have to say they were probably good no calls. Both might have bene called in other situations but I really don’t think Notre Dame did anything outside the rules to prevent us from scoring. I hate it when a defender makes contact with a shooter long after the ball is released and gets call for a foul when nothing he did could possibly have affected the shot and that’s what happened on the Girard play. In Hughes case, I think he was expecting to get fouled and wasn’t and when he found himself with an open shot, he missed it because his mindset was to get to the line.
- More close games are won and lost in the 39th minute than in the 40th minute because it’s the 39th minute that creates the strategical situation for the 40th minute. I have thought that we were going to have just the situation I envisioned in my “Closing it Out” post a while back. We have a 97% free throw shooter at the point, (Girard), and two other guys who are 83%, (Boeheim) and 77%, (Hughes). I’m looking forward to a game where we are protecting a small lead in the final minute and can inbound the ball to those guys. I think they’d all be money at the line and the door would be shut on the opposition. I thought that was going to happen here. It didn’t because after Quincy Guerrier dunked to give us an 84-81 lead with 1:33 left Prentice Hubb hit a trey at 11:20 to tie it, Joe Girard missed a trey at 1:05, Dane Goodwin got the rebound and missed a shot with 47 seconds left that Mooney rebounded. Mooney missed an rounded again, then scored to give Notre Dame the lead with 36 seconds left. Then came the Hughes play, at 21 seconds, two Hubb free throws and the Girard play at the buzzer. Some of that did come in the final minute but the point is we never set it up for our “bullpen” to shut the door.
- Mooney getting those two offensive rebounds and scoring the go-ahead bucket was the real story of the game. We were only out-rebounded by 39-36. We did not have the turnover edge Boeheim counts on to negate that, (11 for us, 9 for them). We had 13 offensive rebounds and scored 14 points off of them. They had 17 offensive rebounds and scored 24 points off them. One big factor was fatigue. With our bench on the DL, (and isn’t strange to have healthy starters and a bang-up bench?), We had three guys, (Hughes, Dolezaj and Boeheim) play 40 minutes. Notre Dame’s bigger, more muscular guys took over down the stretch. The other factor was fouls. The refs let ‘em play tonight for the most part, (as Hughes and Girard found out at the end). But they didn’t let Sidibie or Guerrier play. They played exactly 40 minutes between then and were called for 8 fouls, at least half of which were questionable. They were “reputation” fouls. Those two players have a reputation for fouling, (or, at least being called for fouls), so if they make any kind of physical defensive move, they are likely to get called for a foul whether there is an actual foul or not. Sometimes they could be call for a foul by the letter of the law but other players would have gotten a no-call. Sidibe was more than holding his own I the early going, getting 5 of his 6 boards in the first 5:35 of the game. But once you are in foul trouble you not only have to leave the game for long periods but you tend to play more tentatively when you come back in. Mooney threw his weight around all night and got whistled twice in 32 minutes.
- Mooney is still another guy who wasn’t a top rated recruit, (#146 per 2 47), but he grew up playing the game here, had size, (6-9 245), and skills and one of our opponents took him and we have no answer for him from our skinny foreign players who are still learning the game. He wound up with 28 points and 14 rebounds. Sidibe had 2 points and 6 rebounds.
- Elijah Hughes had his usual numbers but he was a non-factor for much of the game. He scored 12 of his points in a 3 minutes 20 second stretch of the first half which helped key a 16-3 run for the Cuse. But he’d been scoreless in the first 11:15 and only scored 7 in the second half and missed that bunny at the end. Interestingly, that first half burst came shortly after Howard Washington entered the game. He had 2 assists in 5:42 and Joe Girard had none in 34 minutes. Maybe Elijah needs the point guard to be in pass first mode to be fully effective.
- TJ Gibbs averages 12.3 point per game and had made 32 three pointers at 38% in 13 games. Prentice Hubb averaged 10.8 points. He’d hit 43 treys going in but only at a 26% average. They totaled 43 points on 12 for 20 shooting from the arc. Fun fact: in the SU-Notre Dame game of 1/5/19, (won by SU 72-62 in South Bend), neither Notre dame’s Hubb or SU’s Boeheim scored a points. Tonight they scored a total of 45 points.
- Condolences to those of you who are both SU and Bills fans. Rough night. I’d be a Bills fan if Ernie Davis had signed with them. I was a Browns fan because of Jim brown, a Broncos fan because of Floyd Little and a Dolphins fan because of Larry Csonka. On second thought, I withdraw my condolences. You guys had a much better year than my teams did.
