- Let's start with tonight's game. Holy freaking crap. As I said to approximately 5 people within the first two minutes after the game, I'm not going to overreact to one game against an over matched opponent, but that is a team that can absolutely win the national title. Like OH EM GE guys.
Obviously they have to keep improving and stay healthy, but wow what a ceiling that is.
- The box score from the Monmouth game was straight out of a video game. I've been staring at it for five minutes trying to figure out where to start and I'm flummoxed. It's really just amazing. It ate the whole wheel of cheese, pooped in the refrigerator, and I'm not even mad.
- I think I have to start with Michael Carter-Williams. I know it's not the highest level of competition, but he has 5 double-digit assist games already and is averaging 10.3 per game, including a ridiculous 37 assists in 3 games this week. As a frame of reference, with the exception of last year (which had to players average just under 10 assists per game before a drop off to 3rd at 8 per game), basically no player since 2005-06 has averaged more than 8.5 assists per game.
Does he turn the ball over a little too much? Yes. Is he potentially one of the worst alley-oopers ever? Maybe. But all I know is if he keeps racking up games like tonight, he can turn the ball over a few times and that will just be a-ok.
And oh by the way, he's fourth in the country in steals too.
I think my preseason bold prediction that Michael Carter-Williams would be a first-team all Big East selection is looking a tad bit conservative. I don't want to get carried away here, but he has a legitimate chance to be a national first team All-American.
- With the being said, allow me to be Smokey the Bear and douse this forest fire just a little bit. We need to have a serious conversation for a minute. Is Michael Carter-Williams the all-time worst "alley-er" ever? It's a legitimate question. My vote is wavering towards yes.
I mean, it's hard to make fun of the nation's assist leader for his passes, but he's bordering on two alley-oop attempts per game that either clang off the backboard or sail out of bounds untouched. I think he just gets a little too excited sometimes, and I'm willing to deal with that (I mean, we survived 5 years of Scoop after all), but man it can be painful sometimes.
- Speaking of Michael Carter-Williams. His name is really long. Like, I'm getting sick of typing it long. So let's come up with a nickname. I've mostly used MCW here (and occasionally the Hyphen). But here's a first in the Great White Forth's history. I'm letting the fans decide. What do you prefer I call him when I'm feeling lazy and don't want to type his full name for the 17th time in a post? Vote in the sidebar for the next couple weeks.
- Trevor Cooney. Oh my boyfriend Trevor Cooney. My how fortunes can change in one short week. There was one point during the Eastern Michigan game, after a particularly egregious Cooney airball, when I was just broken. I mean, I wasn't to the point of calling Taylor Swift for pointers on break-up songs, but I was wondering whether I needed to give Trevor some space in order to let him blossom. The Curse of the Jay Schwartz man crush was seeping from every three-point shot he clanged off the back of the rim.
10 3-pointers and a couple of nice dunks later and I'm outside Trevor's window with a boom box, professing my love for him and begging him to take me back.
Ok, in all seriousness though, it was good to see Cooney finally find the range during some live action. Based on the reaction of the fans when he finally sank a three against Eastern Michigan, I'd guess I'm not the only one with big hopes for Cooney. And honestly, based on his teammates reactions these 3 games, I think this is what they see every day in practice and they were just waiting for it to translate to a game.
- Forgive me if I've made this point on the blog before. I've talked about it with Lindsey so many times that I honestly can't remember if I ever wrote about it here or not. Does anybody else feel like Trevor Cooney is the equivalent of a 7th grader playing up on Varsity?
He gets so excited after every play and plays so hard and so fast at all times, its like he has to prove himself with every second on the floor. Not a bad thing certainly, but funny to watch.
- Good to see Fair finally bust out of his funk. It was hard to criticize him too much, because he was still putting up good stat lines at the end of the day, but he had certainly been very quiet over the last few games. Then he proceeded to put up 16-13 and 14-10 in just over a half of play in back-to-back games.
I particularly liked the article I saw on the Syracuse newspaper's website, where Fair essentially said that he didn't think it was right that a point guard was leading the team in rebounding. He wasn't overly concerned with individual stats, but those where his rebounds and he was going to do something about it. And then he went out there and backed it up with back to back double-doubles.
- Lindsey has claimed Jerami Grant as her's. She was on him before I was, and I'm very jealous after his breakout week. I still think Grant is a year away, as I think he's going to lose almost all of his playing time once Big East play starts. But he is going to be reallllly good. He is just so steady and doesn't really seem to make many bad plays.
He's also a much better shooter than I thought, knocking down a three in back-to-back games and a couple of outside jumpers too. If he keeps working on that jumper, he's going to be a stud next year.
- Speaking of unexpected outside shooting, how about Cuse making 26 3-pointers in 3 games this week with an 0-fer from Arkansas hero James Southerland? Like I said in my preseason predictions, this team has a lot of people capable of shooting the deep ball and that is what is going to make them so dangerous this season. On any given night, Cooney or Southerland are capable of putting up 5+ threes in a game, and MCW, Triche, and Fair can all knock down a few in their own right.
- Kind of a random note, but did anybody else notice the announcer going all John Madden on us in the Long Beach State game? In describing Michael Carter-Williams game, he said something to the effect of...
"This kid is might just get a triple-double this season. He has a double-double tonight. That's a double-digit point night and a double-digit assist night. And he might just get double-digit steals too, which if he did it with double-digit rebounds, that would be a quadruple-double. Because you see, that's like a double, double-double. Speaking of double double-doubles, CJ Fair's got a double-double tonight. So when you have two players with double-doubles, that's a double double-double, not to be confused with a double double-double by one player, which is really a quadruple double and that's what we're talking about here. Boom, tough acting Tinactin.
- Poor Brandon Triche. He just put up 18 points and 8 assists, and nobody even noticed, because his assist total was half that of MCW's.
- In the spirit of full disclosure, Lindsey managed to somehow get me into a conversation about which Syracuse players were the hottest and which were the most busted during the game tonight. I still maintain that she slipped something into my beers, but I can't deny that I did play along. In case you're interested here were the unofficial results....
Good Looking: Christmas, Southerland, Keita
Ok Looking: Cooney, Triche,
Kind of Weird Looking: Grant, Carter-Williams
Pretty Ugly: Fair (sorry buddy, it's the gapped teeth)
Really Ugly: Coleman. It's never good when you look like a heavily tattooed pitbull/pug hyrbid.
I've got more thoughts on this week, and the team in general, but I'll hold on to them for now since this post is probably already unnecessarily long. Next game's not until Saturday, so use the week off to get caught up on Top Chef. There will be a scoring update and recap coming up later this week, I promise.
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