The Downside - Wake Forest | Syracusefan.com

The Downside - Wake Forest

SWC75

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- Welcome to a day in the life of an SU fan. Just when we get encouraged by a performance and the progress a team seems to be making, we pull a stinker and the ball rolls back down the hill. The keys for this have been defensive intensity and hitting the boards and we did neither tonight. We were letting Wake get easy shots from the corner, get the ball to the high post and score on lobs and dunks. Then we tightened up midway through the first half. They stopped scoring and we slowly engineered a small lead with our grind it out, take it to the hole offense. We didn’t carry it over to the second half and when even it looked like we had a chance to extend the lead, we’d miss, they’d hit a three and we never really gained control of the game. Then we couldn’t make the plays down the stretch to win the game. We’re going to have game after game where we have to get it done at the end and we didn’t do it tonight.

- The biggest statistical disappointment was being out-rebounded 29-38. That just hasn’t happened to us this year. We were dominated on the boards early, totally turned it around during our first half comeback, then got out-rebounded 14-24 in the second half. The three most important parts of the game are shooting, defense and rebounding. We just don’t have the firepower we had last year so we’ve got to win the other two and we came up way short.

- Frank Howard had an amazing game shooting, hitting 5 of 7 threes to keep us in it. But his teammates were only 2 for 11 from the arc and Frank had 5 assists to 6 turnovers on the night.

- Tyus Battle had the same sort of game he had against St. Bonaventure. He was 1 for 7 from the arc and scored 13 points but had 5 turnovers. He’s our big gun and when he’s shooting blanks the bad guys win.

- Marek Dolezaj had been subbing for Paschal Chukwu, allowing Matthew Moyer to play more and play better. But in this game, facing the 7-1 280 Doral Moore, JB had Marek sharing time with Moyer again. Moyer made an early mistake and got yanked. Marek played ineffectually and Moyer went back in, just about when our comeback started. Moyer played most of the rest of the game, (31 minutes) while Marek, who has been a key player for us, sat on the bench, (he only played 9 minutes. Neither player was able to contribute as much as they have bene in recent games.

- Oshae Brissett got decent numbers (16p 7r 3a) but his jump shooting is off again. He was 1 for 4 from the arc and missed a similar amount of shorter jumpers. He also missed two key free throws late in the game, after a long stretch of being almost automatic from the line.

- Our lack of depth was exposed when battle got in foul trouble. Howard Washington came in for three ineffectual minutes before Boeheim had had enough and sent Battle back in. I wonder what Geno Thorpe is doing these days.

- Yeah, Bourama Sidbie’s medical redshirt possibility was blown with 2 minutes in which he got a rebound. I still say it doesn’t matter because if he gets over this and becomes a good player, we’ll lose him before his redshirt senior year would have come anyway.

- I’m getting sick of losing to Wake Forest.
 
Hate the fact that Frank was credited with a turnover on his one drive to the hoop where Wilbekin nearly ripped his arm off.
 
This was the first game we fell apart in every aspect the last 4-5 minutes of the game and it likely was because of fatigue. We played no bench. Have no bench (other than Marek, the one man bench). The open corner treys, hitting front rim on jump shots, good free throw shooters missing free throws they usually make -- all signs of tired legs. Against OOC teams we were able to weather it because we usually had a cushion. Against ACC teams its going to be a bigger factor.
 
Can't believe the rebounding issue got brought up and no mention made of PC only grabbing 5 boards in 37 minutes played. That's completely unacceptable from 7-2 and a major reason for this loss. I only got to see the second half, but I saw him get stripped of rebounds he should have had at least twice and possibly a few more. He has to give us more.
 

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