The Upside- Wake Forest | Syracusefan.com

The Upside- Wake Forest

SWC75

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- For all our problems we have won 7 games in a row and are 4-0 in the league. Duke, believe it or not, is 2-2. We are tied with Virginia for first place. I realize our challenges are ahead of us but nobody thought Virginia was really that good early last year and they just kept winning until they’d won the league. Our team reminds me of our first Final Four team, which had 6-8 Rudy Hackett cleaning up inside and Jimmy lee hitting from outside and not a lot else. But they hung together and got hot at the right time. Maybe this team will, too.

- The “Big Three” came up huge in this one. Rakeem Christmas danced around their big men all night and hit some huge free throws at the end. He scored a career high 35 points and pulled down 9 rebounds, 0the fifth time this year he was a rebound short of a double-double: he’d had ten of then if he’d gotten that extra boards). He was 13 for 21 from the field despite Wake knowing that they had to make to make things difficult for him, and 9 for 12 from the line, including the free throws that gave us the needed margin at the end. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a Syracuse player improve this much between one year and the next.

- Trevor Cooney continued his amazing shooting. Actually, his percentage wasn’t that great, (6 of 17, 5 fo 12 three pointers: he started to remember to drive to the basket late in the game). But he scored 21 big points and hit some amazing shots, being closely guarded all the time. One from the corner next to the SU bench with a hand in face was amazing. He was so far in the corner he was actually behind the basket. JB marveled at in the presser. Cooney also did a lot of aggressive and smart ball-hawking, getting 4 steals and coming close to as many more.

- Michael Gbinije was helping us on the board with 8 first half rebounds and had several assists but he wasn’t scoring. JB got on his case and he came out looking to score in the second half. He got 16 points in that half and in overtime and wound up with 17 points, 11 rebounds and 7 assists, within sight of a triple-double. I could see him getting one before this season is over. The Big Three will be getting most of the stats the rest of the way.

- Tyler Roberson is still trying to figure out when to shoot but he’s a natural rebounder. He got 10 of them tonight, keeping a lot of late possessions going.

- Kaleb Joseph and Ron Patterson didn’t have great stats but they kept the ball moving- and kept it in our hands. We are starting to have the sort of “turnover margin” stats he benefited from last year. Tonight we had only 8 of them to 13, which offset a 39-43 rebounding deficit.

- Don’t give up on these guys just yet.

13-4, (4-0) with 14+ more

LET’S GO ORANGE!!!!
 
Last edited:
Cooney's basket fading into the corner would have been a difficult shot in a game of H-O-R-S-E, with nobody guarding him. And it came at a crucial time.
 
One nit: Rak was 9/12 from the line.

Tx as always for the up/down posts...


It was past midnight when I wrote this.
drowsy_2_080228_mn.jpg
 

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