SWC75
Bored Historian
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- Aug 26, 2011
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- We lost. We aren’t 10-0 anymore and won’t be ranked #3 in the next poll. Our 50 game non-conference winning streak is over. We lost to a team Duke blew out. But that’s all cotton candy. November and December are about developing the team so it can compete in the Big East. Is this team getting better?
- Part of this is a judgment call by JB but based on that call, the big men have not progressed to the point where he’s willing to play two of them at once in a close game against a good team. He really didn’t try that but he didn’t try it because he concluded it would not work. DuJuan Coleman only got 4 minutes during which he grabbed one rebound and missed two foul shots. Would it have been better if he had played more? I don’t know but he’s not having the immediate impact that many had hoped for. Rakeem Christmas is developing but he seems to take plays off and was dominated inside by Temple’s Anthony Lee. Rak was 2 for 7 from the field although he did have 6 rebounds and a block in 17 minutes. Baye is Baye. He gives you what he’s got but he’s not a guy you want out there, surrounded by small forwards and guard, for 24 minutes. If we don’t get more than from the big guys in the Big East, it’s going to be a very bumpy ride.
- Michael Carter-Williams got undressed in this game. He was 3 for 17 from the field, (way too many shots for a point guard and way too many makes for that number of shots) and 7 for 15 from the foul line, after basically winning the last game from there, (he came in shooting .805). They took Southerland away from him and there was no inside scoring so he got a mortal 6 assists. He did have only three turnovers but with the lack of overall production, they meant more. His counter-part on Temple, Khalif Wyatt, went off for 33 points. Then there’s the incident of his angrily trying to trip an official after the game was over, which is discussed at length in another thread. MCW was blessed with big-time talent but he’s got a lot of maturing to do both in his game and in himself.
- Brandon Triche, coming off his worst game of the season vs. Detroit, got off to a hot start with 9 points on 4 for 4 shooting and it looked like he’d come back strong with a huge game. The rest of the game he was 3 for 10, including 0 for 3 from outside, (including a huge one near the end), and 2 for 4 from the line. He also had 1 assist and 3 turnovers. Two years ago he shot 84.2%, last year a still very good 77.5%. This year he’s 69.4% and 10 for 18 in the last three games.
- There’s always a big debate about how much difference foul shooting makes, (it’s a foul shot if you miss it, a free throw if you make it), but this team has missed double figures in foul shots for the least 7 straight games. They are 131/214 in those games, a dismal 61.2%. Normally it’s a case of getting the ball in the hands of your best free throw shooters but who are they? Triche? MCW? And it’s not as if our guys look hopeless at the line. Their form is OK, (AO isn’t on this team). It’s got to be a matter of concentration. Maybe it was playing all these games against over-matched teams. We went 19 for 34 against Long Beach State, just as we did in this game. It didn’t matter against LBS. It did against Temple. It will against Big East teams.
- You want to take away the other team’s biggest offensive threat, if you can. Ours, James Southerland, got off 6 shots, never got to the line, and scored 6 points. Theirs, Khalif Wyatt, got off 17 shots, was 15 for 15 from the line and scored 33 points.
- The rebounding numbers don’t reflect it much, (41-44 and 19-19 on the offensive boards), but there were too many times, especially down the stretch when we got the defensive stop we needed but didn’t get the rebound, (which means we didn’t get the defensive stop we needed). As JB said in the post game presser, when you can’t play two of your big guys, you aren’t going to be big enough to do a good job on the boards. (But I’m not sure our big guys rebound that much better than our small guys.)
- In our last two losses the officials have called 49 and 46 fouls. It’s not that the calls have been one-sided. It was 29 for us and 20 for Ohio State but 22-24 here. And we have the depth to absorb some fouls. But when the game is constantly disrupted by whistles, it’s harder for a running, (and sometimes pressing) team like SU to “play it’s game” than for a team that likes to hold the ball more, as Ohio State and Temple do. And those two calls against Keita, (yes there was contact but how often does a moving screen get called, especially in the final minute of a game?), and Southerland, (what, exactly did he do wrong?), had an enormous impact on how this game ended.
- Jim Boeheim had never coached vs. Fran Dunphy before. According to Matt Park, Dunphy is an expert at attacking a zone defense and even has an instructional DVD out on the subject. I guess it must be this one:
http://eba-stats.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5970&Itemid=87
Round one went to Coach Dunphy. (Hey, could he be…Igor?)
- The previous three years we started 13-0. In 2010 we then went 17-5. In 2011 it was 14-8. Last year it was 21-3. This team more resembles the 14-8 team. And we won’t be 13-0.
- Part of this is a judgment call by JB but based on that call, the big men have not progressed to the point where he’s willing to play two of them at once in a close game against a good team. He really didn’t try that but he didn’t try it because he concluded it would not work. DuJuan Coleman only got 4 minutes during which he grabbed one rebound and missed two foul shots. Would it have been better if he had played more? I don’t know but he’s not having the immediate impact that many had hoped for. Rakeem Christmas is developing but he seems to take plays off and was dominated inside by Temple’s Anthony Lee. Rak was 2 for 7 from the field although he did have 6 rebounds and a block in 17 minutes. Baye is Baye. He gives you what he’s got but he’s not a guy you want out there, surrounded by small forwards and guard, for 24 minutes. If we don’t get more than from the big guys in the Big East, it’s going to be a very bumpy ride.
- Michael Carter-Williams got undressed in this game. He was 3 for 17 from the field, (way too many shots for a point guard and way too many makes for that number of shots) and 7 for 15 from the foul line, after basically winning the last game from there, (he came in shooting .805). They took Southerland away from him and there was no inside scoring so he got a mortal 6 assists. He did have only three turnovers but with the lack of overall production, they meant more. His counter-part on Temple, Khalif Wyatt, went off for 33 points. Then there’s the incident of his angrily trying to trip an official after the game was over, which is discussed at length in another thread. MCW was blessed with big-time talent but he’s got a lot of maturing to do both in his game and in himself.
- Brandon Triche, coming off his worst game of the season vs. Detroit, got off to a hot start with 9 points on 4 for 4 shooting and it looked like he’d come back strong with a huge game. The rest of the game he was 3 for 10, including 0 for 3 from outside, (including a huge one near the end), and 2 for 4 from the line. He also had 1 assist and 3 turnovers. Two years ago he shot 84.2%, last year a still very good 77.5%. This year he’s 69.4% and 10 for 18 in the last three games.
- There’s always a big debate about how much difference foul shooting makes, (it’s a foul shot if you miss it, a free throw if you make it), but this team has missed double figures in foul shots for the least 7 straight games. They are 131/214 in those games, a dismal 61.2%. Normally it’s a case of getting the ball in the hands of your best free throw shooters but who are they? Triche? MCW? And it’s not as if our guys look hopeless at the line. Their form is OK, (AO isn’t on this team). It’s got to be a matter of concentration. Maybe it was playing all these games against over-matched teams. We went 19 for 34 against Long Beach State, just as we did in this game. It didn’t matter against LBS. It did against Temple. It will against Big East teams.
- You want to take away the other team’s biggest offensive threat, if you can. Ours, James Southerland, got off 6 shots, never got to the line, and scored 6 points. Theirs, Khalif Wyatt, got off 17 shots, was 15 for 15 from the line and scored 33 points.
- The rebounding numbers don’t reflect it much, (41-44 and 19-19 on the offensive boards), but there were too many times, especially down the stretch when we got the defensive stop we needed but didn’t get the rebound, (which means we didn’t get the defensive stop we needed). As JB said in the post game presser, when you can’t play two of your big guys, you aren’t going to be big enough to do a good job on the boards. (But I’m not sure our big guys rebound that much better than our small guys.)
- In our last two losses the officials have called 49 and 46 fouls. It’s not that the calls have been one-sided. It was 29 for us and 20 for Ohio State but 22-24 here. And we have the depth to absorb some fouls. But when the game is constantly disrupted by whistles, it’s harder for a running, (and sometimes pressing) team like SU to “play it’s game” than for a team that likes to hold the ball more, as Ohio State and Temple do. And those two calls against Keita, (yes there was contact but how often does a moving screen get called, especially in the final minute of a game?), and Southerland, (what, exactly did he do wrong?), had an enormous impact on how this game ended.
- Jim Boeheim had never coached vs. Fran Dunphy before. According to Matt Park, Dunphy is an expert at attacking a zone defense and even has an instructional DVD out on the subject. I guess it must be this one:
http://eba-stats.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5970&Itemid=87
Round one went to Coach Dunphy. (Hey, could he be…Igor?)
- The previous three years we started 13-0. In 2010 we then went 17-5. In 2011 it was 14-8. Last year it was 21-3. This team more resembles the 14-8 team. And we won’t be 13-0.