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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 4589597, member: 289"] PART 2 Matt Asked JB: “What sense are you making of it?” JB: “We’re just not stopping people and when we do stop them, they get the rebound. Some of our offense has been very good. I feel bad for the fans. We’ve been in some good battles, (Miami, UNC, Virginia, Pitt 1). But when you don’t have a chance…We’ve changed line-ups and defenses. Nothing has been remotely successful…Notre Dame is a really good shooting team and we beat them twice. North Carolina State can shoot it and we beat them. UNC, Virginia and Miami are good and we limited them. You have to look at individual games. Georgia Tech shot the lights out. Clemson is a very good team…Our defense has not bene good enough. I’m the head coach, so that’s on me…It’s everything, the players the coaches, the opposition. Every player has had 3-4 bad defensive plays each. They are defeating us at every position…Wake is a very good offensive team – better than Georgia Tech and a lot of other teams. We’ll give it everything we have and see if we can bounce back. It will be a tall, tall order…” [He did not sound very confident.] Todd in East Jersey [There’s an ‘East Jersey’?] asserted “The game hasn’t passed you by.” JB: “They said that a decade ago. We’re not doing a great job this year. It’s a young team and the record is about equal to people’s expectations. I’m frustrated, too, not happy. It’s expectations. If you expected us to win 25 games you’d be upset. Our record is better than a lot of other people.” Daniel in Fulton is “a big fan. How do you feel about the ACC tournament and using man-to-man?” JB: “Everybody’s going to play man-to-man against us. We certainly need to play better Saturday and to play better next week. A lack of optimism can change if we regroup. DePaul in 2006 was worse than Georgia Tech. We once lost to Georgia Tech by 30, [2013: 39-61) and went to the Final Four. It’s a balanced league and we can beat anybody. One year Seton Hall made about 40 shots in a row. (I’m guessing 2011 when we lost in the Dome 66-90.) Sometimes you’re going to have 1-2 bad losses in a row. 4 is really bad.” [This was the point at which I asked Question #1 and JB said that this situation is not comparable to 2006 and 2013 after he’d just cited them as reasons to be hopeful.] Steve in Liverpool wondered if it was helpful to have Gerry McNamara on the staff since he went through something similar at the end of the 2006 regular season and then led us through the conference tournament and on the NCAA tournament. JB: Gerry will do that. We’ve all been through something where we turned it around. That doesn’t mean it will happen this time. But it can. We can give them pep talks – but they’ve still got to play.” Going around the ACC – Virginia beat Clemson 64-57. NC State lost to Duke 67-71, despite Jarkel Joiner’s 26 points and 8 rebounds, (he’s 6-1). JB: “Jarkel Joiner may be the best guard in the league. All the teams in the middle of league are pretty good – and we’re in the middle. Virginia Tech beat Louisville 71-54. The Cardinals are 4-26 and 2-17 in the league. Matt and Jim expressed sympathy for Kenny Payne, the Louisville coach. [Last year a legendary program – Georgetown, hit bottom, going 6-25 and 0-19 in the Big East. Who is next for 2023-24?] “When you lose games you get discouraged. We’ve battled but we didn’t battle very good.” Notre Dame – Pitt “was a shocker”. John in Liverpool noted the importance of three pointers in the current game. “If you have a cold day you lose. The last four games have been against hot teams.” [MEDIA=youtube]0rdF7o08KXw[/MEDIA] JB: ”You’ve got a good chance to win. (when you hit your threes). We’ve just got to play a little better defense.” [A little?] “It matters whether you give up 10-11 threes or 15-16. We held the percentage down until the last four games. Some games they will shoot it and we will have to find another way to win.” Matt said that the percentage of three made basically hasn’t changed since 1995, although the range may have increased. JB: “Our advantage is that we’re shooting more free throws. They can take a lot of threes and you can win if you keep the percentage down. Teams that shot a god percentage do it against a man-to-man. We normally hold them down but we’ve got new guys, young guys.” [I’ve been convinced that the number of attempts still matters – if a team is going to put up 30-40 treys they can overcome percentage and you still have to move out to guard them, which weakens your internal defense.] Josh in Boulder asked if we have the talent to be a Top 25 team and if recruiting players to play the zone hurt us. JB: “Nobody evaluates players based on defense, not from high school to college or from college to the pros. People who think we have a Top 25 program are going to consistently over-rate your talent…We played man-to-man but wasn’t very good.” [I saw some stops.] “It’s hard to improve defensively at this stage of the season.” Later in response to an inquiry from a Carrabba’s customer Jim said “We might take a guy not good at man-to-man because we play zone. We recruit good players. (Because they are good players.) Teams have been better shooting against the zone the last 3-4 years” Matt asked Jim about Louie Carnesecca and I didn’t know why. I checked and he hadn’t died, (he’s age 98). “He’s a great man. He just wanted to beat you. He never made excuses.” Sarah from Ogdensburg wondered what NBA player Jim wishes was on his team right now. “Giannis (he didn’t try the last name) would be one way to break a losing streak.” Donovan in Syracuse sounded as if he’d had a few too many. He announced, “You can’t win every game!” [We know.] “University of Miami…Virginia in Charlottesville…that wasn’t a heartbreaker.” He then grew silent. Jim finally said “I’m not sure which game you’re talking about…” [Yeah, it’s hard to know which loss to Virginia in Charlotteville he was talking about.] Michael called to ask about “the fate of the SU tradition”. That got a brief chuckle for Jim. “It’s alive and well. We’ve had 47 pretty good years. This is definitely a down year. You don’t throw 47 years away. We’d like it to be better but it isn’t.” A four year old at the restaurant asked if Jim likes to ski. “I have never been on skis- snow or water in my life. I’ve also never been on skates. Fred Lewis wouldn’t let us skate. Jake wondered who Jim’s favorite team USA player was. “I couldn’t pick out just one guy. It was a great experience.” Jim did he enjoyed withing with Russell Westbrook. “We had one backcourt with him, Steph Curry, Kyrie Irving, Klay Thompson and James Hardin. And Kobe was phenomenal.” Sarah from Fayetteville wondered which player’s performance this year surprised him the most. “Judah’s played at a high level. Maliq has bene solid. Joe and Jesse have been good. We just hadn’t gotten push from the forward position that we need.” “Wake has size- two 7 footers.“ Gomez took over for the second hour. He said something about it seeming like a short time since the season began. JB: It’s been a long season, 5 months since we started. We started poorly, then got better. We’ve had a good offense all year. Lately the defense has been kinda crazy. The game hasn’t changed that much. We’ve faced good shooters. There’s not that much difference in percentage over the years. We’ve had a respectable season until the last few games.” “Pittsburgh had no players back and they got 4-5 transfers who were 23-24 years old. Freshmen don’t get better. They are still freshmen. They learn from this year what they have to do to compete at this level and then they go out and work for it. I would never have thought that we’d struggle the way we have these last 3-4 games. We’ve never been great but we haven’t forgotten how to play. Young players get discouraged. You also try harder on offense to make up for it and that can hurt you, too.” Val in Cicero is age 50 said “watched what basketball was and I know you don’t put up with this. The best of luck to you.” JB: It’s a young team. Other teams brought in lots of veterans, four year college players. They will be better than freshmen. Everyone can come back but in today’s world you’re going to have guys who will leave.” Joe in California asked about Judah Mintz’s draft prospects. “There’s no way to know. If he’s a second round pick he’ll probably wind up in the G League. Or he could stay and improve his shooting and be a first round pick next year.” Mike Brey had his last home game at Notre Dame. “It’s a tough place to coach. He’s done an unbelievable job. He could get another job if he wanted one.” On this day in SU basketball history: 3/1/03: We spotted Georgetown an 11 point second half deficit and came back to win 93-84. Craig Forth can make it to the reunion but Jeremy McNeill will be there. [The Forth will not be with us – UGH! – but Jeremy was always a good back-up.] Recalling the 2003 title game, JB said “Kansas was the better team. They’d just beaten a Marquette team that had Dwayne Wade by 40 [94-61]. We didn’t show that game to the team. We just told them to get back on D, which was important. Josh Pace stole a pass to stop a fast break and got the ball to Carmelo who hit a three.” They are replaying the game with Jim and the players commenting on it. It will be the first time Jim’s seen the entire game since it happened. He said he’s seen segments of it, probably most of it, at different times. “It was a little too exciting. Our two best players were freshmen and Hak was a sophomore. We didn’t get ranked until the end of January.” Gomez told a story about Carmelo and GMAC not many people have heard. Gerry was #31 in high school and Melo #22 but those numbers had been retired, (the Pearl and Dave Bing), so they switched to #3 and #15 at Syracuse.” Jim said “We use some of the numbers over and some we don’t.” When I called in Q2, I asked him if his number had been retired. He chuckled and said they might do it for Buddy, (#35). Jim doesn’t have “the hat” and doesn’t know where it is. “Somebody just gave it to me on Bourbon Street.” I suggested it was with the national championship lacrosse trophy the NCAA wants back. That got some laughs. Gomez asked Jim if he helped design the wrong. “Probably. I don’t remember. I’ve never worn the ring. I have three Olympic rings, a couple World Championship rings, and a Hall of Fame ring. I’ve never worn any of them. I don’t like rings. They are too big. Jim said that he never slept that night until they got on the plane. “It’s a hard feeling to describe. There’s no feeling quite like it.” And, with that, Thursday becomes just another night of the week… [/QUOTE]

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