SU-Virginia

This is a rambling post, but I have a lot of thoughts about SU, as usual. Thanks for listening. You'll be rewarded at the end.

It's funny. Two years ago, I could probably write a whole column about how big a win this was tonight for Syracuse. After last year's NCAA selection committee (which, by the by, had no representatives from the Big East) ignored SU's great finish in the Big East and left them out of the field, everyone here in Syracuse knew going in that SU had a lot to gain from a win tonight. As Bud Poliquin put it on the radio today, this was a great "scalp" for our resume. Even though the Orange are led by Freshmen, you can bet that the holdovers made it clear to everyone that this game was important.

Just for fun, let's take a look at the official Sports Sauna pre-season rankings of the teams SU has played so far this year, as well as their current records:
Siena (3-3) - 61 - W
Saint Joseph's (4-3) - 206 - W
Fordham (4-4) - 143 - W
Ohio State (4-3) - 16 - L
Washington (4-3) - 86 - W
UMass (5-2) - 215 - L
Tulane (4-3) - 198 - W
Virginia (6-2) - 19 - W

That's a pretty respectable stretch of early season games. All winning records. And note that Ohio State's only losses have been to Texas A&M, Butler, and UNC (speaking of a tough early schedule).

In fact, I believe that schedule is a bit too tough for a team made up of mainly freshmen. I think 9 years out of 10, or even 999 years out of 1000, a team with Syracuse's 2006-07 resume gets into the tournament. Given the choice, I would have preferred to be 7-1 right now with lesser teams replacing UMass and Virginia rather than 5-3 with the scheduled loss at Virginia. Then the non-conference schedule would basically be a pre-season for the Big East, where we'd find out what kind of team we really are anyway. As it turned out, we won the game tonight, which completely makes up for those two losses anyway. I'm not sure if I'm making any sense, so I'll just say that I'd rather be a 7-1 team with a few wins over Siena-like teams then risk losing a handful of games with a young team that needs time to get ready for our brutal Big East schedule. Of course, it appears we're not going to lose a handful of games after all, and now we enter a stretch of games that should put us on a nice roll heading into the Big East season:

Rhode Island (9-1) - 262
East Tennessee State (4-3) - 81
Colgate (6-3) - 237
Cornell (4-2) - 180
Northeastern (3-4) - 254

OK, so Rhode Island has already beaten two Big East teams this year (at South Florida, Providence). I think they'll wilt in the dome. ETSU is off to a slow start. And Cornell has beaten Siena, but lost to Colgate in their quest to prove me wrong and steal the wide open Ivy League. A loss in any of these games would be a setback. Look for the Orange to be on a nice winning streak entering the New Year. Almost as if Boeheim planned it that way...

* * *

As for the game itself, it was very encouraging on a few levels, the most obvious being that we beat a team of Virginia's caliber on the road. Virginia fans will say that Sean Singletary's illness was the difference, and I am sympathetic. They were a totally different team without him on the floor. I've never been so impressed by a supposed scoring machine who only had 10 points on 3 of 14 shooting. They guy is a leader, and UVA will go as far as he takes them.

At the same time, I do think the game revealed SU to be the better team. The Virginia crowd was great, and the players really fed off the emotion of that building. It's easy to see why that place is such a home court advantage, even through the TV set. But the young Freshmen, who until now had played only in the dome and the home away from the dome (MSG), battled through. Other than the start of the game, they didn't have any incredibly hot stretches to keep the crowd out of it. They just took care of business.

When your best rebounder is your small forward, you're either a very good rebounding team or a very bad rebounding team. SU is a very good rebounding team. That's an unbelievable luxury to have, and a nice safety net for a young team.

Looking ahead to this game, I wondered if the Orange might be better off starting the game right off with man-to-man defense, just to try to keep Virginia from getting hot right away from three-point range. Of course, Boeheim is a man of routine. He always starts in zone. And of course, it worked. In fact, other then when one of the best PG's in the country wasn't hyperventilating, the zone was the best it's looked all year.

Eric Devendorf is going to go down as the least-liked excellent player the Orange have ever had. Orange fans, search your feelings. You know it to be true. You're not that crazy about him handling the ball, right? You're not comfortable when he drives the lane, are you? And you'd much rather Greene, Flynn, or even Harris shoot the three, yeah? Well guess what. Devo is our most consistent player. He's a lock for 15-20 points a game. And I will bet you that doesn't change when the Big East starts. He'll even go for 30 one night and single-handedly win it for us. And yet, even I still won't really like him that much.


OK, I've vented. Your reward: here is a video we made this fall about the Arras's annual football match against my cousins.