Sunday, March 23, 2014

Requiem for the Orange

I'm too sad to compose any flow into this post, with complete paragraphs and transitions, so let's just go with bullet-points.
  • (Apols. to Garrison Keillor...) It's going to be cold to start this week, with a flurry or two in the air - exactly the sort of weather the city would have shrugged off with the distraction of SU still playing basketball. In retrospect, maybe SU's play over the last month is to blame for everyone complaining so much about this winter that doesn't seem to end.
  • Remember when CJ Fair was your favorite player. (That's a statement, not a question.) He's a phenomenal complementary player, not a star. Let's remember him at his best.
  • At some point, doesn't Ennis deserve some of the blame for SU's offensive woes? He gets so much credit for being relaxed, cool-headed, and under-control but in the same breath we're criticizing the team for looking lackadaisical and seeming at times to play without passion. Doesn't the demeanor of the leader on the floor tend to spread to the rest of the team? The worst part of this final stretch of the season has been how un-fun SU has been to watch as they lose. Meanwhile, I'm writing this during the Wichita St.-Kentucky game. These Shockers run and gun and attack from all over the floor. They might not hold off Kentucky's talent, but they are a joy to watch play basketball.
  • My biggest question about Ennis is whether he can play at a high tempo. We know he makes great decisions playing at a steady pace, but given a team with more weapons, can he raise the tempo and really get an offense to hum? My one memory of Ennis really pushing the pace is from early in the second half of the Georgia Tech loss. It seemed like he sensed SU needed a spark in that moment. The Orange looked good, but the game was too choppy for the Orange to sustain that style. I doubt Ennis will be back next year, so this is mainly speculation about what kind of NBA point guard he will be.
  • Final Ennis thought...Ennis is a better pure point guard, but Michael Carter-Williams was a better college player than Ennis. (Better defender, better all-around scorer.) I think the same will be true in the NBA.
  • Cooney and Ennis are very good but not great defenders at the perimeter of the zone. The 2-3 was still excellent this year, but it never churned out turnovers (and, thus, offense) with the same effectiveness as it did in the Triche et al era.
  • SU played great pressure defense in the final minute to scrape back into the game. The flagrant foul (tough call, but correct based on the strict elbow rules) and the timeout granted to Dayton that should have been a travel or an out-of-bounds both sting in my memory.
  • My brother asked me to rank the worst SU losses of the last ten years, so here goes...
 5. March 16, 2006 - Texas A&M in the NCAAs. With Gerry McNamara exhausted and injured after his "overrated" run to the Big East Championship, the five-seed Orange fall in the first round to the 12-seed Aggies. This was one of the least tournament surprising upsets ever, as Texas A&M was one of the best defenses in the country that year and everyone knew Gerry was spent. The Big East tournament run was SO worth this loss.

4. November 4, 2009 - LeMoyne in the dome. Hugely embarrassing in the moment to lose to the tiny school down the road. In retrospect, this might have been a useful jumpstart as SU went 30-5, reach number one in the polls, and earned a one-seed in the NCAAs.

3. Last night - Dayton in the NCAAs. SU was who we feared they were, and Dayton took advantage. The ceiling for the Orange this year was never as high as we hopped it might be. We'll always have 25-0 and the Pitt game... (But oh, if that last shot had gone in!)

2. March 25, 2010 - Butler in the NCAAs. SU loses as a one-seed in the regional semifinals to five-seed, eventual national runner-up, and general team of destiny Butler. This is the year (same season as the LeMoyne loss) everyone looks back on and wonders what might have been had Arinze Onuaku been healthy. A-O was probably my favorite center of recent SU teams. Hard to believe he wouldn't have made a difference in this agonizingly close loss to the Bulldogs. The champion that season, Duke, was beatable.

1. March 18, 2005 - Vermont in the NCAAs. For me, his one hurts the most. Hakim Warrick is my all-time favorite Orange. SU was coming off a Big East Conference Championship that had earned them a four-seed. I think the Orange had a chance to make a really deep run but they ran into a Vermont team that played the game of their lives, hitting crazy threes late. When the game went into overtime it seemed certain that the Orange would come out on top, but it didn't happen.

(Interesting note: I was watching the regionals in the Carrier Dome during the Butler loss and producing a webcast of the ECAC Hockey tournament during the Vermont loss, so I wasn't glued to a TV for either. Some higher power protected me from both of those painful memories...)

Thursday, March 20, 2014

2014 NCAA First Round: Walking Commentary

It's not a running commentary. It's not even a jogging commentary. I'll scatter my updates throughout the day, listed from newest at the top to oldest at the bottom. As games finish, look for more posts. If the games are duds, my posts will be slim to UConn (that is, nil). The only way to tell if I've posted again - refresh your browser!

Off we go with the greatest weekend in sports!



Relive last year's First Round:
Day 1

And the 2012 First Round:
Day 1
Day 2 

And the 2011 First and Second Rounds:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4

--------------------------------------------------------------

2:08 - We begin with an Aaron Craft intentional foul! Good call, especially since I don't want to see him against the Orange ever again. Come on Dayton!

2:21 - One game, one great finish, one upset. I love this tournament! I think SU's zone can clamp down on these slashy Flyers and get the Orange to the 2nd weekend. 

2:31 - Meanwhile, Pittsburgh is LITERALLY wiping the floor with Colorado. I was shocked the Panthers were on the bubble heading into the ACC tournament. I know Jamie Dixon has put up some bad results in the NCAAs, and this isn't his strongest team in recent years, but they can still defend. Says here Pittsburgh could cause Florida a lot of trouble in the next round. I agree.

2:50 - Does rooting for a Harvard upset make you more or less of an elitist? If it was Yale...it'd be different obviously. But Harvard is right on the edge.

2:53 - A shot of the Western Michigan lockeroom as head coach Steve Hawkins gives what is apparently supposed to be a motivational speech. The most alarming thing about that shot...Steve Hawkins sounds a lot like Steven Hawkings! 

2:54 - Slight delay as I pause the game. Normally, no pausing during March Madness but this is my first married March and I'm waiting for my wife to get home to watch.

In the meantime, let's take note of the stakes for this game for the Orange. First and foremost, if SU survives the opening weekend, that means everyone in town is in a good mood all week long, regardless of the weather. A nice March run through the tourney is always good for morale as Central New York deals with the last few gasps of winter. (Yes, it snowed a bit today.)

A win today avoid embarrassment, pure and simple. A first round exit would sure leave a bad taste in the mouth from the CJ Fair era, wouldn't it? That would be a shame, since the guy was never meant to be the best player on a team. He's a wonderful 2nd or third option. Not a superstar. Incidentally, that's ultimately what is going to stop the Orange in this tournament.

Finally, Jerami Grant is gone. The rumblings around SU are that he refused acupuncture treatment for his sore back because he didn't want to mess around with anything heading into the NBA draft. Tyler Ennis, despite being a higher projected pick, is still slightly less of a lock to leave. I think he's gone too, but an early exit could prompt him to take one more go around. So there's the silver lining if things go awry here. 

3:12 - We're underway in the Arras Apartment. My brother-in-law's (AKA Pookie) bracket pool is called "Cooneypleasehita3." And Cooney does, after Boeheim yells at him to, "just shoot the ball!" Good sign. 

3:17 - Don't waste those threes, Cooney! They come in limited quantities. 

3:22 - Conversation after Rak got called for goaltending:
Taylor-When did the goaltending rule first start?
Me-I dunno, a long time ago...when black guys started playing.

3:25 - The tourney is one time when I have no mercy on an opponent. (UConn games used to be the other...) I'm already muttering, "Bury these guys!" under my breath. Not until we're up by 50 will I be comfortable. 

3:38 - SU's killing these guys...but CJ's shooting touch is still not there. It should come back, but we'll see if the Orange can survive until that happens. 

3:46 - Switched over to the Haaahvahd-Cincy game during SU's halftime. Listening to Doug Gottlieb commentate is the exact opposite of listening to Bill Raferty, in every single way. 

5:00 - Good work by SU. Survive and advance. Play like that against Dayton, and they'll win again. Still, doesn't yet feel like they can beat a top seed.

5:35 - Love it when a 16-seed hangs around. And, as I have said in the past, I think the first 16-seed is going to win by coming out of the play-in game. Helps them build some momentum, get right into the flow of the tourney. Come on Albany! Nuke the brackets! 

5:55 - And right on cue, Albany starts to crumble...

11:54 - What? You're still here? As well you should be! What an opening day! Do not take today for granted; this has been above average. Multiple overtimes. Multiple games coming down to the wire. Multiple upsets. Great stuff.The beauty of March is that it feels like days like this happen every year. They do happen a lot, but it is not this good every year. Fun times!

12:00 - And at the stroke of midnight, a buzzer-beater! Fantastic! What a phenomenal job by the Longhorn big fella to scoop up that ball from the ground and pop it in the hoop. Brutal break for Arizona State. The commentators nailed it- that three-point shot was so bad it turned into an easier rebound for Texas. 

12:03 - Meanwhile, Manhattan takes their first lead of the night a few minutes into the second half against Louisville. I would love to see the Cardinals go down. How annoying is Rick Pitino griping about his match-up with Manhattan? And the general outrage over Louisville's seed went a little too far. They played a fairly weak slate this year, compared to days of Big East yore. They're always dangerous, but I think they're Sweet 16 and out.

Saturday, March 15, 2014

March Memories: Harvard-Princeton

True college basketball fans know March Madness is already well underway. And, as someone who loves the beauty of the bracket, I like to imagine the conference tournaments as dozens of little brackets funneling into the big bracket.

Right now, the America East Conference Finals are on my TV. Stony Brook is looking for their first ever NCAA tournament bid. They've won the regular season title three times but never the conference tournament for the autobid. That led me to hunt for a great America East appearance in the NCAA tournament...which led me to Vermont-SU 2005...which I am not going to submit SU fans to, despite how awesome that win was for the Catamounts, objectively speaking.

Instead, let's go to the one of the greatest non-tournament win-or-go-home games from recent years, the Harvard-Princeton one game playoff in the Ivy League, the only remaining conference that doesn't hold a conference tournament. In 2012, Harvard and Princeton were tied at the end of the regular season so they had to play one more game. Harvard was the favorite. And watching at the time, we thought they probably needed to win to get into the bracket. This is how the game ended:


Poor Harvard! As it turned out, they did get an automatic bid to the tournament. They lost in the first round, but pulled off an upset last year in the tournament. Harvard is back in the bracket again, and will be a tough first round opponent.

Love that game. And I love the little conference tournaments. Happy March!

Friday, March 14, 2014

SU-NC State Reaction

I don't think I have any surprising thoughts on tonight's disappointing exit from the ACC Tournament. The Orange still look pretty bad these days. They're not much fun to watch when they're playing like this. Each offensive possession is agonizing. The defense is solid, but not really clicking like you'd hope.

A couple things stand out to me from that final futile barrage.
1. Cooney passing up the open three off Grant's missed dunk. I'm afraid that is Trevor Cooney in a nutshell. Ultimately, his confidence is not quite what you'd want from your shooter. He's streaky and he'll always be streaky.
2. CJ Fair missing the open three from the corner. Last year and even as recently as the beginning of this season a CJ Fair corner three felt like a layup. That's no longer true. As amazing as his midrange game has become (this game being an exception), his huge drop in three point shooting percentage really hurts the Syracuse offense. He's down to .286 from .469 from long range last year.

Speaking of CJ's weaknesses, he went 1 for 2 from the free throw line with 3:41 left. Late in games his free throw shooting has been extremely shaky all season.

I still believe that if the Orange get hot, they will make a deep run in the tournament. Right now though, they feel like a Sweet 16 and out team. As for seed, they might get a 4 but that would be unjust. Five losses in the ACC is nothing to be ashamed of. A 3-seed is deserved, and that's what I think they will get on Sunday.

Happy March Memories!

It's March! The season of perpetual hope! The one time of year when the Sports Sauna really kicks into gear to celebrate my favorite sports tournament, the NCAA basketball championship. And honestly, the only reason why I shouldn't write so much this year is my new wife my dissertation my new house that needs to be fully painted among other things before we move in ...nothing! We're a full 24 hours before SU plays its first ACC Tournament game, a few days away from BRACKETS, and exactly a week before the tournament tips off. (Opening round? Never heard of it.) But because I just can't wait, and because old sports clips on YouTube is reason # 783 why the 21st century is going to be the most delightful century yet, I thought I'd post a random March (first week of April counts) Memory regularly (or not...we'll see) from now until...whenever.

Today's clip is the best near-miss in the history of the tournament. Butler. Duke. The great Gordon Hayward. Watch the whole finish of the game, or just start at 5:40 for the shot.



Oh, it almost went in! Remember, this game was in Indianapolis, and had Butler pulled off the greatest upset ever in NCAA Finals, I do believe the Butler students would have paraded all the way back to their campus, six miles away.

I was watching the game with my favorite Duke fans, Dr. Paul and his dad, a Duke graduate. By the end of the game, Doc and I, despite our own affinity for the Blue Devils, and despite the fact that Butler knocked the Orange out of the tournament that year, were secretly hoping Butler would win. Even Paul's dad had to admit that part of him - a very small part - would have enjoyed seeing the impossible happen.

It didn't go in. But it almost did. Almost...