The Downside - Pitt II | Syracusefan.com

The Downside - Pitt II

SWC75

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- If you saw the lacrosse game, you saw the basketball game. We can score, but not at the rate we are giving up scores. I thought the zone was easy to teach.

- Thursday night Jim was lauding the fact that his team does better in second halves than first halves, due to halftime adjustments, (rather than the team well in the lead relaxing or our having to press). We got out-scored 49-62 in the second half.

- Jim repeated the stat that we are -3 rebounds per game but +4 in turnovers. So we come out ahead. Well, Jimmy, in this one we were -6 in rebounds, (Pitt had 18 offensive rebounds and 25 second chance points), and -6 in turnovers. We’ve been -11, -14 and -12 in these three games in what I call “manufactured possessions”, (one team’s rebounds plus the other team’s turnovers). It’s not working.

- We’ve given up 13, 14 and 16 three pointers in this three game losing streak. I don’t like the trend. It’s like we’re playing Loyola Marymount, (circa 1990), in every game.

- What really hurts us is that the zone comes apart when we have to go out and guard teams that are putting up 30-40 treys a gain and they score inside at a rate we can’t match: 59%, 69% and 59% in consecutive games.

- Benny had a great game but I’m worried about the players who have faded badly. Maliq Brown played 6 minutes and his only stat was a foul. Justin Taylor, who had a 25 point game earlier this year, as a ‘billionaire’ in the first half, playing 12 minutes and the rest of his line in the box score was all zeros. He wound up playing 17 minutes and getting zero points on 0 for 2 shooting. Chris Bell was “available” per JB in his presser, but didn’t play at all. What’s going on there? And Sym Torrence has no idea what’s doing out there. Jim used to say that college basketball players don’t get tired due to the TV time outs. He’s stopped saying that.

- I’m always hopeful we can win and through maybe we were going to do it much of the first half. But I was pessimistic enough to look up how many three game losing streaks we’ve had in the JB era and how many points we’d lost those games by to compare it to these three games. I had hopes of turning my research into a paper airplane in the first half but that ship sailed (?) So here is what I came up with:
1980-81 Connecticut (63-65), Villanova (78-88) and Seton Hall (65-66) beat us by a total of 13 points
1981-82 Boston College (77-88), St. John’s (76-84) and Boston College (92-94) beat us by a total of 17 points
1988-89 Villanova (73-76), St. John’s (63-65) and Connecticut (62-68) beat us by a total of 11 points
1991-92 Seton Hall (76-86), Notre Dame (98-101), St. John’s (62-63) and Georgetown (68-72) beat us by a total of 18 points
1992-93 Boston College (93-94), Villanova (61-79) and Georgetown (60-64) beat us by a total of 23 points
1994-95 Connecticut (70-77), Villanova (87-89 in OT) and Seton Hall (74-82) beat us by a total of 17 points
1995-96 West Virginia (78-90), Connecticut (70-79) and Georgetown (64-83) beat us by a total of 40 points
2001-02 Georgetown (69-75), Villanova (61-67), Boston College (65-69) and Villanova (64-78) beat us by a total of 30 points
2005-06 Connecticut (80-88), Villanova (65-80), Pittsburgh 67-80) and Seton Hall (61-68) beat us by a total of 43 points
And Georgetown (53-68), DePaul (69-108) and Villanova (82-92) beat us by a total of 64 points
2006-07 St. John’s (60-64), Louisville (71-76) and Notre Dame (91-103) beat us by a total of 21 points
2007-08 Louisville (50-61), Notre Dame (87-94) and Pittsburgh (77-82) beat us by a total of 23 points
2008-09 Pittsburgh (60-78), Louisville (57-67) and Providence (94-100) beat us by a total of 34 points
2010-11 Pittsburgh (66-74), Villanova (72-83), Seton Hall (68-90) and Marquette (70-76) beat us by a total of 47 points
2012-13 Georgetown (46-57), Marquette (71-74) and Louisville (53-58) beat us by a total of 19 points
2014-15 Duke (54-73), Virginia (47-59) and North Carolina State (57-71) beat us by a total of 45 points
2015-16 Pittsburgh (61-72), U of Miami (51-64), Clemson (73-74) and North Carolina (73-84) beat us by a total of 36 points
And North Carolina (70-75), Florida State (73-78) and North Carolina (70-75) beat us by a total of 45 points
2017-18 Wake Forest (62-73), Notre Dame (49-51) , Virginia (61-68) and Florida State (90-101 in 2OT) beat us by a total of 31 points
And North Carolina (74-78), Duke (44-60) and Boston College (70-85) beat us by a total of 35 points
2019-20 Oklahoma State (72-86), Penn State (64-85), Iowa (54-68) beat us by a total of 49 points
And North Carolina State (74-79), Florida State (77-80) and Louisville (66-90) beat us by a total of 32 points
2021-22 Virginia (69-74), U of Miami (87-88) and Wake Forest (74-77 in OT) beat us by a total of 9 points
And Notre Dame (69-79), Duke (72-97), North Carolina (79-88 in OT) and U of Miami (72-75) beat us by a total of 47 points
2022-23 St. John’s (69-76 in OT), Bryant (72-73) and Illinois (44-73) beat us by a total of 37 points
And North Carolina (68-72), Virginia Tech (70-85) and Virginia (62-72) beat us by a total of 29 points
And Duke (55-77), Clemson (73-91) and Pittsburgh (82-99) beat us by a total of 57 points

This would be the worst slump of the JB era if not for that rip to Chicago back in 2006. We had no 3 or 4 game slumps in the Louie and Bouie Era. We had three in the 1980’s, (our most talented team- the 1988-89 group – wasn’t immune. There were four in the 1990’s (the team that played for the title in 1996 wasn’t immune, either). Five came in the 2000’s, including two in the 2005-06 season, the one where Gerry led us to the BET title and a birth in the Big Dance. The two teams in the first half of the last decade that didn’t make it to a #1 ranking each had a bad streak.

Then came the “bubble” era. 11 of the 25 three or four game losing streaks in the Boeheim Era have come in the last 9 seasons. We’ve had two of them in 2015-16, (and went to the Final Four), 2017-18, 2019-20, 2021-22 and, for the first time, three this year. It’s getting worse. If we have a mass exodus of players after this season, we’ll see a lot of them in the future. We could be next year’s Louisville.
 

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