I had to take a brief break from blogging because I "wanted to be more challenged" by doing some projects around the house and I "voluntarily" choose to spend some time with my family and friends.
Ignore anything you may have read otherwise. I definitely was not suspended by the Commissioner of Blogger due to attempting to submit a profanity-laced tirade against Doug Gottlieb as my last post.
Seriously though, I did start about three different attempts to post some kind of piece on Boeheim's 900th win (and subsequently 903rd win - second most all-time), but they all devolved into long, rambling, nonsensical diatribes against all the haters. So I won't fall into that trap again this time. But allow me a couple quick rebuttals to everybody who came out of the woodwork to congratulate Boeheim with some of the best back-handed compliments I've ever seen.
To everyone who says Boeheim's win total is inflated because he plays a week non-conference schedule every year: Boeheim has 393 career Big East wins, Coach K has 382 career ACC wins. So Boeheim has more conference wins against a conference in a more difficult conference. Face.
To everyone who says Boeheim's not a great coach because he has only 1 national title and 3 final four appearances: Breaking News. Are you ready for this one? You may want to make sure you're sitting down. Okay. It's really difficult to make the Final Four, yet alone win it all. The NCAA tournament is a fickle beast. One scrappy white kid making an improbable jumper (I'm looking at you T.J. Sorrentine) or one poorly timed injury (R.I.P. Arinze Onuaku) is all it takes to derail a promising team from making the Final Four and potentially winning the title. Even with those lost opportunities there are still only 4 active coaches with more Final Four appearances than Boeheim (K, Roy Williams, Tom Izzo, and Rick Pitino) and only 3 active coaches with more titles than Boeheim (K, Williams, and Billy Donovan). So yea, it's not as easy as it sounds to pile up titles and Final Four appearances. Face.
To everyone who says Boeheim's wins are tainted because too many players have been arrested or suspended or transferred: Right, because no other coach has this problem. 18 and 19 year old kids who have been handed everything there whole life and are mere months away from being multi-millionaires never get in trouble. If you named a coach and gave me an hour and a Google search engine, I'm sure I could come back with nearly as many, if not more, issues in that program as well. At least Boeheim himself stays clear of the law and hasn't had any vacated Final Fours (<cough> Calipari <cough>), been caught publicly cheating on his wife by banging his waitress (<cough> Pitino <cough>), or physically assaulted a player (<cough> Knight <cough>). Face.
Ah, what a nice cathartic cleanse that was. I feel much better now, don't you?
At least someone got the notice that the Syracuse coach was great. Unfortunately for the Bills, they didn't realize this meant the basketball coach, not the football coach. At least Marrone is a perfect fit for the Bills. I mean anytime you can grab a coach who knows how to take lesser talent and get it to perform mediocre, you gotta do that. Right guys? Cheers to three more years of stress-free playoff weekends and the 2016 coaching search.
Now on to those Scarlet Knights.
Player of the Game: Brandon Triche
Pretty obvious who was the star of this game. Triche made three 3-pointers before the first TV timeout and never looked back from there. At the end of the day, he finished with 25 points, 6 assists, 3 rebounds, and 4 steals. Not too shabby.
I actually was mildly surprised he had only 3 rebounds, but I suppose that is just because when Triche gets rebounds they are not the cheapy variety that most guards wind up with. They are usually a very signature Triche-type rebound that is much more memorable. You know the kind. Where about 4 or 5 other players that have 6 inches on Triche all lazily stand around the basket waiting for the ball to drop to them, only to have Triche come flying in out of nowhere and steal the rebound.
Those plays have become my favorite moment of each game. I may just have to come up with some wacky acronym for them, like I did for C.J.'s jumpers last season.
Goat of the Game: DaJuan Coleman
Nobody stood out as particularly egregious this game, but I did take notice that Coleman is slowly morphing into Boeheim's token freshman big man that starts but only plays 5 minutes a game before our very eyes. Coleman only got 9 minutes of burn on this night, which was good for last among the regular rotation players.
Cooney is going to keep getting some minutes out of necessity with only two guards and as long as Jerami Grant continues to do Jerami Grant type things, he'll continue to see a handful of minutes. The proof is in the pudding for Coleman. Hopefully this doesn't lead to a situation where Coleman gets depressed, eats the pudding (along with multiple Chipotle burritos, Jimmy John subs, and Varsity pizzas) and winds up looking like Michael Sweetney by the time the Big East Tournament rolls around.
General Observations:
- The last seven minutes of the first half were about as perfect as a team can play. There was good defense, slick passing, and lots of easy layups. Say what you want to about Rutgers and how good or bad they may be, but a 21-0 run to end the half is pretty damn impressive no matter who the opponent is.
- Very impressed with Carter-Williams in this game. 10 assists with only 2 turnovers. I think the general perception of Carter-Williams in the non-conference portion of the schedule was that all those double-digit assist games against Canisius and Central Connecticut State were cute, but they weren't going to be there in Big East play. That seemed to be backed up by the fact that against some of the tougher competition in the early part of the season, Hyphen's assist totals were much more pedestrian (4 against SDSU, 6 against Temple).
I'm sure there will still be games where he can't hit double-digits, like when the refs allow our games against Pitt and Georgetown to devolve into street brawls where the first team to 40 wins. But I think it's becoming more and more evident that when Triche and Southerland are knocking down their three-point shots, double-digit assist performances for MCW are the rule, not the exception. I expect him to make a very strong run at Kendall Marshall's record for highest assists per game total for a major conference player (9.8 apg last year).
- Plus his steals are down the last couple games, so that's good right? Cue the drumroll, followed by crickets chirping. Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week.
- Lindsey has dibs on Jerami Grant. She loves watching him play and makes sure to point out this out at least four times a game. It's like me with Trevor Cooney, in a less creepy, stalkerish kind of way.
- Lindsey also mixes up James Southerland and Rakeem Christmas at least four times a game. For her sake, one of them needs to take one for the team and channel their inner Dennis Rodman and dye their hair in some kind of blue and orange basketball pattern.
- C.J. Fair is having a sneaky good year. I had no idea before last game that he was shooting 81% on free throws and 40% on threes (albeit in a limited amount of attempts). For a player whose know for scoring on slithering drives through the lanes and putbacks, he's really become a pretty good shooter.
Next Game:
Next up for Cuse is the South Florida Bulls this afternoon. This is the Big East opener for the Bulls, who are 9-3 on the season. Brace yourself for plenty of "Jim Boeheim left the state of New York for a game, it must be January" jokes. Don't let solid facts, like that we've played in San Diego and Arkansas already this year, get in the way of a good joke.
No comments:
Post a Comment