UpDown: NC State III | Syracusefan.com

UpDown: NC State III

SWC75

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The Upside

- We’ve never won the NIT, and got robbed of it in 1981 by the refs. As long as we’re in it, let’s win it.

- And if we aren’t in it, it’s time to sit back and relax and see who does win it without caring who that is, (unless you have money on it you can’t afford to lose or it’s Connecticut again). The comes baseball, where every game is 1/162 of the season. The masters, Horse races, auto races, some prize fights and the Olympics. I get tired of caring so much who wins and need some time off from it.

- Elijah Moore scored 67 points last night. He hit 12 threes. Donnie Freeman is a McDonald’s All-American. Chance Westry should finally be healthy. Naheem McCloud is 7-4 and William Patterson is 7-2. Maybe Brandon Huntley Hatfield would like to come here. Maybe Red will keep most of the sophomores here. Sports is all about hope.

20-12 (11-10) with ? to go…

LET’S GO ORANGE!


Net Points

This year I’m going to make things a bit easier on myself and just list the net points in each game after the Upside. Once a month I’ll do a deeper dive into the numbers rather than doing a “Net Points, etc.” post after every game. ‘Net’ points are the positives (points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks) minus the negatives, (missed field goals and free throws, turnovers and fouls committed).

Maliq Brown game: 21NP in 39 minutes; season: 486NP in 946 minutes = 20.5NP/40m
Judah Mintz game: 11NP in 36 minutes; season: 449NP in 1,087 minutes = 16.5NP/40m
JJ Starling game: 8NP in 35 minutes; season: 308NP in 1,102 minutes = 11.2NP/40m
Quadir Copeland game: 7NP in 31 minutes; season: 292NP in 715 minutes = 16.3NP/40m
Chris Bell game: 4NP in 21 minutes; season: 253NP in 847 minutes = 11.9NP/40m
Kyle Cuffe game: 3NP in 12 minutes; season: 44NP in 309 minutes = 5.7NP/40m
Peter Carey game: 0NP in 1 minutes; season: -2NP in 71 minutes = -1.1NP/40m
Justin Taylor game: 0NP in 25 minutes; season: 167NP in 742 minutes = 9.0NP/40m


Did not play:
Mounir Hima game: 0NP in 0 minutes season: 7NP in 45 minutes = 6.2NP/40m

Hurt:
Chance Westry game: 0NP in 0 minutes; season: 0NP in 0 minutes = 0.0NP/40m

Out for the season:
Naheem McLeod game: 0NP in 0 minutes; season: 108NP in 202 minutes = 21.4NP/40m

Red Shirting:
William Patterson game: 0NP in 0 minutes; season: 0NP in 0 minutes = 0.0NP/40m

Left team:
Benny Williams game: 0NP in 0 minutes; season: 99NP in 307 minutes = 12.9NP/40m


Brent Axe:



The Downside

- It was a dismal, uninspired performance, totally undeserving of victory.

- We’ve been an NIT team all season, dreaming of crawling onto the bubble. We never made it. The way the NCAA tournament is, there may be worse teams in it but that doesn’t mean we deserved to be there.

- We aren’t going to win any games where we are out-rebounded by 9 and have 9 more turnovers. That’s not the Syracuse formula for victory. It’s supposed to be our edge in takeovers vs. theirs on the boards.

- And the 17 offensive rebounds we gave up were 17 opportunities to get a stop and didn’t. To make comeback, you have to get stops. We didn’t.

- Our two primary ball handlers, Judah Mintz and Quadir Copeland, had 6 turnovers each. Maliq Brown, whom we run our half-court offense through, had 4. Many of them were careless passes, described by Matt Park as “passes thrown to where they assumed players would be without actually looking to see if that’s where they were”. They weren’t intentional “No Look” passes: they were “I didn’t bother to look” passes. Then there was Quadir’s attempt to thread the needle through three defenders to Peter Carey with a rocket propelled pass. Not a good idea.

- The best team won, but it didn’t help that the Wolfpack went to the line 24 times to our 6. It also didn’t help when Judah Mintz got a forearm shiver that required treatment on the bench – after the refs T’d him up for complaining. Judah fakes a lot of stuff but there was nothing fake about what happened to him.

- Red had to make a judgement call and went with the ‘two foul’ rule when Chris Bell got called for his second foul with 16:21 left in the first half. He missed the rest of the half. This is the same Chris Bell that hit 8 straight three pointers against this team in Raleigh. He never got a chance to get going in this game. Red’s being criticized for this decision but it should be pointed out that we fell apart in the second half when Chris played 17 minutes – and fouled out.

- Justin Taylor played like a drowning man. He hasn’t attempted a jump shot in a month but now his lay-ups are short. He needs to realize that there’s a backboard behind the basket.

- Jayden Taylor scored 18 points, (including 3 three pointers) and had 9 rebounds. Their Taylor was better than our Taylor.

- DJ Horne was hobbled by an injury but still scored 16 points in 19 minutes. D-fense…D-fense….D-fense!

- I’m not feeling any pain. No, it’s not alcohol. It’s the long held feeling that we weren’t going anywhere and the resulting lack of any shock at this result. We’ve been coming up short all year.

- This will be the 10th consecutive year where the last poll before the tournament contained not a single vote for Syracuse to be in the Top 25 and the third straight year we won be in March madness, something that hasn’t happened since the 1960’s.
 
Your last point and paragraph is so telling. We haven’t been relevant in the regular season for a decade. I'd hate to think where we'd be were it not for 3 surprising runs in the NCAAs, 2016 F4, 2018 and 2021 S16s. Sick and tired of being on the bubble or out.
 

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