College Basketball 12/13

gooDevil said:
Oh, and that's as badly as IU has played all season. So we're either going to collapse again next game and almost certainly lose, or we've just gotten our bad game out of our system and we'll only have good ones left!
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Give credit where credit's due -- the played great defence and were king of 2nd chances with they rebounds.

Syracuse any good this year?
 
sglowrider said:
Give credit where credit's due -- the played great defence and were king of 2nd chances with they rebounds.

Syracuse any good this year?
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They're pretty strong defensively but not so much offensively.

Syracuse won 19 of their first 20 games, including a win @ #1 Louisville. Their only loss in that span was to Temple by 4! They beat (at the time) #20 San Diego State by 13 in their first game, and beat (at the time) #21 Cincy by 2 at home. But the others were a string of 2nd rate teams.

In the next 18 games they've lost 8 of them, starting with losses to unranked Villanova, Pitt and UConn. They lost 3 straight vs (at the time) #11 Georgetown, @ #22 Marquette and vs #10 Louisville, won against DePaul then lost another to #5 Georgetown. They were knocked out of their conference tournament by 17 against Louisville in the final. In those 18 games they had wins vs (at the time) #25 Notre Dame, vs #17 Pitt and #5 Georgetown in OT.

So against the teams they've played that were ranked when they faced them they're 6-5 overall, yet only have 2 wins in their last 7 ranked games.

W vs #20 SDSU (62-49)
W @ #1 Louisville (70-68)
W vs #21 Cincy (57-55)
W vs #25 Notre Dame (63-47)
L vs #11 Georgetown (57-46)
L @ #22 Marquette (74-71)
L vs #10 Louisville (58-53)
L @ #5 Georgetown (61-39!)
W vs* #17 Pitt (62-59)
W vs* #5 Georgetown (58-55 OT)
L vs* #4 Louisville (78-61)

Other losses are:

L vs Temple (83-79)
L @ Villanova (75-71 OT)
L @ Pitt (65-55)
L @ UConn (66-58)

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/183/syracuse-orange
 
It depends which Syracuse team shows up.

Duke has beaten 4 of the Sweet 16. Not too shabby. Michigan State is going to be a tough game though. :nervous:

The Midwest has 3 coaches who've won NCAA titles(6 total NCAA titles). The other three regions combined have 3 NCAA title-winning coaches(4 total NCAA titles).
 
Sir Matt said:
It depends which Syracuse team shows up.

Duke has beaten 4 of the Sweet 16. Not too shabby. Michigan State is going to be a tough game though. :nervous:

The Midwest has 3 coaches who've won NCAA titles(6 total NCAA titles). The other three regions combined have 3 NCAA title-winning coaches(4 total NCAA titles).
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Toughest region by far -- IU dodged a bullet here. The upside is that BIG teams are looking a bit physically and mentally spent -- a long season of beating each other up maybe taking its toll.
 
The real part of the tourney starts tomorrow.. will be praying to Sweet Baby Jesus, Mohammed and Buddha that Hulls and esp Watford shoots the rock like their lives depended on it to nullify their long perimeter defenders.
 
IU needs the mother of all comebacks to beat Cuse. Syracuse looks like they are a circus for long arm freaks.
 
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That aside, the feck-up-athon in the IU-Syracuse game just now :lol:
 
Has IU played against a zone before? It doesn't seem like they understand how to break it down. A key is not standing around.

The bigs at the free throw line can't do anything if there are no guards attacking.
 
Even good zones have major weaknesses. The biggest being ball movement. No one on IU has been good enough passing the ball to cause any problems for Cuse.
 
Sir Matt said:
Even good zones have major weaknesses. The biggest being ball movement. No one on IU has been good enough passing the ball to cause any problems for Cuse.
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Our guards are too small against that sort of length for outlet passes/create any movement.
 
Zeller is a finesse player, and we heard all about him hitting 15 footers and 3s during the off season, but he took maybe 3 shots from 15 feet all season. If he had taken those mid range shots against Syracuse he probably would have hit a lot of them.

But honestly I think the expectations and pressure from the fanbase didn't help. John Harbaugh from the Ravens came in and gave the pregame speech about how they were good enough to win the championship, but maybe they should have been more concerned about making the Elite Eight.

Regardless, we may have been the best of a somewhat lackluster group of top programs, but we were never going to walk to a national title. We should be happy we're back in the yearly battle for the #1 spot and give Crean a brake, maybe he'll go out and hire someone who knows X's and O's to help him with his short comings.
 
gooDevil said:
Zeller is a finesse player, and we heard all about him hitting 15 footers and 3s during the off season, but he took maybe 3 shots from 15 feet all season. If he had taken those mid range shots against Syracuse he probably would have hit a lot of them.

But honestly I think the expectations and pressure from the fanbase didn't help. John Harbaugh from the Ravens came in and gave the pregame speech about how they were good enough to win the championship, but maybe they should have been more concerned about making the Elite Eight.

Regardless, we may have been the best of a somewhat lackluster group of top programs, but we were never going to walk to a national title. We should be happy we're back in the yearly battle for the #1 spot and give Crean a brake, maybe he'll go out and hire someone who knows X's and O's to help him with his short comings.
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I am not sure we can go back to that old chestnut of Crean 'not being a X&O game' coach. They knew what they needed to do to break the 2-3 zone (see Sheehey who generated a lot of movement.)

The fact is we had 19 TOs -- . no team can win like that. So I am not sure thats a coaching issue and issue of more a composure issue.

The other thing is we need to beef up a lot. These slick skinny skilled (sorry for the alliteration overdrive) players will always get pushed around -- against the likes of the corn-fed boys from Wisconsin, MSU and OSU.
We are trying to be like Barcelona with our slick movements in a Championship level type physical league. So we struggle to finish the basket.

The other problem we had was we had no decent 3pts threat besides an off-form Hulls. Creek's a non-factor this season but I suspect he'll be gone next season to make space. Then the worrying thing is that, we don't have any shooters next year either. So we maybe pounding inside mainly in November with skinny players once again. No Deshawn Thomas girth or Adriean Payne in the squad.
Crean may need to relook how he wants to recruit or play.
 
Well, I'm not a basketball coach myself, perhaps it was a complete and total failure of players who were perfectly prepared and who were given accurate in-game info on how to succeed, and simply failed to utilize even a tiny bit of that.

But it looked to me like a team that was far too tight and nervous that was without even a bit of comfort against the zone or any idea of how to change their fortunes. Then Crean is talking about how we need to get the ball inside at half time...inside? Did you see us being constantly rejected in every attempt around the rim? Maybe he should have mentioned taking open jump shots.

To quote Jim Boeheim from last night:

"They never really succeeded in getting the ball in the right places," Boeheim said about the Hoosiers. "And it's not that easy, but it can be done. But they didn't know how to do that."
 
gooDevil said:
Well, I'm not a basketball coach myself, perhaps it was a complete and total failure of players who were perfectly prepared and who were given accurate in-game info on how to succeed, and simply failed to utilize even a tiny bit of that.

But it looked to me like a team that was far too tight and nervous that was without even a bit of comfort against the zone or any idea of how to change their fortunes. Then Crean is talking about how we need to get the ball inside at half time...inside? Did you see us being constantly rejected in every attempt around the rim? Maybe he should have mentioned taking open jump shots.

To quote Jim Boeheim from last night:

"They never really succeeded in getting the ball in the right places," Boeheim said about the Hoosiers. "And it's not that easy, but it can be done. But they didn't know how to do that."
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Cody's a finesse player, plays small and really will never survive at the Big Show at the 5. I suspect he will come back (which he clearly should) and get Crean to play him at the 4 in preparation. So our potential line-up will be:

Yogi
Sheehey/Remy
Vonleh/Hollywell
Cody
Perea/Fisher

Still lean skinny players but Sweet 16 possibility?
 
McGary looks beaten already. YOu guys look as one dimensional as IU. But with a banger in the middle who will be good next year.
 
sglowrider said:
Cody's a finesse player and really will never survive at the Big Show at the 5. I suspect he will come back (which he clearly should) and get Crean to play him at the 4 in preparation. So our potential line-up will be:

Yogi
Sheehey
Vonleh/Hollywell
Cody
Perea/Fisher

Sweet 16 possibility?
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Troy Williams is the 2nd highest rated player in our incoming class, he'll definitely be starting at the 2 right away along with fellow freshmen Vonleh and Fischer. Maybe if Cody stays we'd see Fischer start on the bench, but i doubt that will happen personally. Hollowell might turn into a decent role player but I don't think that Perea will.

Could be a sweet 16 team, but will be a pretty young one. With Cody back I think we'd definitely be good enough for the elite eight.
 
gooDevil said:
Troy Williams is the 2nd highest rated player in our incoming class, he'll definitely be starting at the 2 right away along with fellow freshmen Vonleh and Fischer. Maybe if Cody stays we'd see Fischer start on the bench, but i doubt that will happen personally. Hollowell might turn into a decent role player but I don't think that Perea will.

Could be a sweet 16 team, but will be a pretty young one. With Cody back I think we'd definitely be good enough for the elite eight.
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Troy looks more like a VO type player, an athlete rather than a starting shooting guard. We need perimeter shooters or consistent shooting threats from the 3.
Cody will come back but as a 4 next season. (Or he can gamble to go the the NBA as a potential 4 and work his way up.) He isn't strong enough and plays too small as a 5 even in college. Even McGary as a soph would kill him there if he stayed at the 5 next year.
But to move to the 4, we need to get Perea or Fisher to contribute fast -- right after after the powderpuff games.
Plus at his rate, he can be the 1st Phd candidate heading into the NBA! ;-)
 
Come On Michigan! Feck!

(I used to live in KC... hated those jayhawk fans. Who the feck are Phog Allen or Naismith? Do they know MC Hammer or Jay Z?) ;-)
 
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