Syracuse GAME Thread

Watched at home and it was fun for sure. I'm just getting kind of tired with moral victories. Of course it's nice to hang until the end with the #2 team in the nation, but the game was ours for the taking and we kind of choked. I guess it made it harder because it was against the team I hate most.

This could have been that flagship victory for the season come Selection Sunday. Oh well,
maybe we will meet again in March. That would be awesome.

Need 10 wins in conference play for tourney hopes IMO.
 
Thread is hilarious. Anyways,

@jeffborzello: St. John's expects to have Isaiah Briscoe, Adonis Delarosa, Devonte Green, Kassoum Yakwe and Cheick Diallo on campus tonight.
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That tweet was from Midnight Madness
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Whoops :)

Ignore then por favor.

Briscoe was there. Spent more time on his phone than on the game.
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With Sean Miller?
 
At the game today...Here are my observations sans replays (will watch the recorded version later)

1) Extremely proud of and encouraged by the team's effort. Contrary to the chronic whiners on this thread, team made a statement today and this is simply a case of the team "walking before it runs". This was the team's debutante ball - our 1st time on the big stage with a team that has expectations (not Wisconsin, not PSU). I told my buddy in 1st half, that they just needed to hang around until they figured out that they could play with these guys..Once the realized it, things changed...An undeniable positive
2) Jordan looked good and enjoyed himself today. Lavin, to his credit, recognized this and did not force Phil or Branch in 2nd half
3) Branch made some unbelievable passes that, with more assertive finishers, should have been buckets
4) The missed fouls shots were the turning point...it was a tug of war at that point and we let go for a moment
5) Was a bit disappointed that Sanchez was not more assertive...He had a # of opportunities to take it to the hole and looked around for someone else to give it to
6) Much improved zone offense with obvious attempts to feed the post...but need to anticipate the next move and not be as deliberate
7) Not gonna cry here because we were up 2 with ball and could have extended lead. But, just seemed that ALL contact was called on us and there were 3-5 instances where they got away with contact
8) Don't think 3 guard lineup was correct approach as they had 3 bigs for much of game...
9) As much as I would have liked Hooper to hit a 3 ball, the game was teetering and I think Lavin did not want to leave him in lineup for very long as he was going to struggle on defense.
10) I think the fan differential was not significant and I loved it when SJ crowd shouted down the "Let's go Orange" chant mid way thru 2nd half. Look forward to the day when we have 75% of MSG...
11) And to those who sold their "premo" center court tix -- shame on you...you don't deserve the tix

All in all, disappointed? Absolutely...Encouraged? Absolutely!!!
 
Was at the game today with a few friends and had a blast. Don't make it to many games but this was a lot of fun. The garden really was buzzing when we made our run. Could have been a great upset but I'm proud of the way our guys played. Give credit to Syracuse they have some players! (CJ Fair was lights out) all in all a fun day, looking forward to more!
 
I will be in the minority I suppose but 16 minutes of great basketball and 24 minutes of well, ugh...doesn't get me charged up. We make a great comeback from a deficit we should probably never have been in and then play clueless on offense for the last 4 minutes to come away with yet another almost. Sorry, it leaves me nothing but disappointed and frustrated. I give credit where it is due and the team made a great comeback but they are far enough along where they should at least maintain the good play until the end, win or lose. The Cuse goes to Fair down the stretch, no question, SJU reverts back to passing around the perimeter and poking and hoping. Sanchez seemed afraid to assert himself down the stretch and Harrison got back to trying to do it by himself. For those who say I am being too negative I apologize but I didn't need another moral victory; I already knew we had talent but I have expectations that talent will translate into something real.
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Your right about being disappointed. We lose to Penn. St. and the Cuse. We don't have not a one quality win. Right now we are not a NCAA team, and that was the goal. How can you not be disappointed?
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If the season ended tosay, we would be a tournament team. If you can't accept a loss to the #2 team in the country, then you have to believe that we are #1. I'm disappointed but anyone who acts like this is an unacceptable loss is full of crap! (same goes for the Wisconsin loss)
 
Thread is hilarious. Anyways,

@jeffborzello: St. John's expects to have Isaiah Briscoe, Adonis Delarosa, Devonte Green, Kassoum Yakwe and Cheick Diallo on campus tonight.
Click to expand...

That tweet was from Midnight Madness
Click to expand...

Whoops :)

Ignore then por favor.

Briscoe was there. Spent more time on his phone than on the game.
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His Dad wore Red.
And his family embraced Mrs Lavin when they arrived 5 minutes in.
 
I don't think Hooper got off a shot today . Why was he running the baseline against the three trees in the Syracuse 2-3 . Put him up toward the elbow where he would be shooting against smaller players and getting more touches
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He didn't do a good job of getting open for a shot, which as you pointed out, is not going to happen with him running the baseline. He needs Branch or Jordan in the game with him so someone is looking to get him the ball, but if he can't get free, he need to sit. He'll get better as we go, but is still searching for his role.
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Hooper played 3:30 in the first half and 4 for the game. He was open 3 times in that span of the first half and Harrsion avoided him like the white plague and forced two misses of his own rather than pass to Hoop. The other time he was open Pointer threw the ball out of bounds two feet away from the open Hooper. Lavin put him in to take a 3 point shot....the guys that saw him as invisible should have sat at that point. As a result of ignoring him, SJ went from down 7 to down 12 in that span.
BTW, I gave you a -Karma for calling a fellow fan a Jacka*s!
 
I will be in the minority I suppose but 16 minutes of great basketball and 24 minutes of well, ugh...doesn't get me charged up. We make a great comeback from a deficit we should probably never have been in and then play clueless on offense for the last 4 minutes to come away with yet another almost. Sorry, it leaves me nothing but disappointed and frustrated. I give credit where it is due and the team made a great comeback but they are far enough along where they should at least maintain the good play until the end, win or lose. The Cuse goes to Fair down the stretch, no question, SJU reverts back to passing around the perimeter and poking and hoping. Sanchez seemed afraid to assert himself down the stretch and Harrison got back to trying to do it by himself. For those who say I am being too negative I apologize but I didn't need another moral victory; I already knew we had talent but I have expectations that talent will translate into something real.
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Your right about being disappointed. We lose to Penn. St. and the Cuse. We don't have not a one quality win. Right now we are not a NCAA team, and that was the goal. How can you not be disappointed?
Click to expand...

If the season ended tosay, we would be a tournament team. If you can't accept a loss to the #2 team in the country, then you have to believe that we are #1. I'm disappointed but anyone who acts like this is an unacceptable loss is full of crap! (same goes for the Wisconsin loss)
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We need to play very well in the Big East (Top 4 finish and a first round win in the conference tournament) to guarantee an NCAA bid. The only Big East team that should feel comfortable about their NCAA hopes is Villanova. (St. John's, Butler, Xavier, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence and Creighton) will be battling it out for three spots. Unless I was Villanova I would be very nervous finishing fifth. Sorry Seton Hall and Depaul.
 
I will be in the minority I suppose but 16 minutes of great basketball and 24 minutes of well, ugh...doesn't get me charged up. We make a great comeback from a deficit we should probably never have been in and then play clueless on offense for the last 4 minutes to come away with yet another almost. Sorry, it leaves me nothing but disappointed and frustrated. I give credit where it is due and the team made a great comeback but they are far enough along where they should at least maintain the good play until the end, win or lose. The Cuse goes to Fair down the stretch, no question, SJU reverts back to passing around the perimeter and poking and hoping. Sanchez seemed afraid to assert himself down the stretch and Harrison got back to trying to do it by himself. For those who say I am being too negative I apologize but I didn't need another moral victory; I already knew we had talent but I have expectations that talent will translate into something real.
Click to expand...
Your right about being disappointed. We lose to Penn. St. and the Cuse. We don't have not a one quality win. Right now we are not a NCAA team, and that was the goal. How can you not be disappointed?
Click to expand...

If the season ended tosay, we would be a tournament team. If you can't accept a loss to the #2 team in the country, then you have to believe that we are #1. I'm disappointed but anyone who acts like this is an unacceptable loss is full of crap! (same goes for the Wisconsin loss)
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There has not been a real meaningful came for this school since Hardy, DJ and the others graduated. And it was years before that. When we got up 2, we all must have thought that this was our day. So disappointment is natural. It's the lack of poise and the poor play the last few minutes that took all chance away. After the emotion settles, we can all be proud of the effort, which was there from start to finish. We also saw what this team excels at, which is the running game. We have a number of players that can finish, especially Dom, Sampson and Jordan. We can run with almost anyone. In truth, I wasn't as confident as some that we would be in this game at the end. Once we were, it would have meant a lot to this program if we could have pulled it out.
 
This was a great game to witness and only the final result was a disappointment.
Syracuse has three future NBA players on its team and Ennis and Fair were enough to beat us since both were head and shoulders better than anyone we had on the floor. I could see Ennis departing after one season as he is that good and is always under control.
This was a game where we needed Sanchez to assert himself but he preferred the role of Sancho Panza while leaving Harrison to play Don Quixote. If Harrison had a hot shooting game Syracuse would have gone down to a defeat. It was not to be as a leopard cannot change its spots so he went on to miss 2/3 of his shots.
Needless to say, the game was lost in the last 4 minutes when we turned the ball over or missed forced shots while Syracuse did all it could to hand us the game by missing most of its foul shots in the last 3 minutes.
I was surprised the game was not sold out as even the Orange fans did not buy all the available tickets but likely because they expected to win and St. John's is unranked and still not respected in its own back yard.
The St. John's fans that did show up were fantastic and loud.
 
Yep. You can give me all the stats in the world but this was a tie game with about 4 minutes left and they made the plays when it counted and we didn't. The air came out of the balloon when Sampson missed those 2 FTs
 
I don't think it was the free throw shooting or lack of execution down the stretch that cost us this game. I think it was those 3 baseline jumpers that Fair hit in critical points in the game. Actually, those may have been the biggest plays of the game. They were all solid defense by Dom, but Fair was a straight up stud and nailed those shots. The first one came with just under 7mins to go, after Jordan had just made two freebies to put us 2. We had all the momentum in the world, and he hit the shot to tie the game and silence the crowd. The 2nd was with 3mins to go to put them up 4 at 64-60. And the final one came at the 1:41 mark, which put them up 5 at 66-61. The last one pretty much put the game out of reach for us. He misses one or two of those, and its a different game.
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Maybe the free throw shooting didn't cost us the game, but you have to admit that Sampson's 2 misses which would have tied the game was big. To make matters worse, Obekpa had just missed one & Harrison then missed one right after Sampson's 2 misses. That's 4 points that we left on the floor in crunch time & we lost by 5. You can't win games like this when you are leaving points like that at the stripe.
 
I think Branch plays 1 speed above our guys right now. Holy shite he sees stuff Omar Cook Like before things develop.

Our problem once again was hitting shots.

We can beat these jack+asses. We just need to gel and we can be real good
 
I will be in the minority I suppose but 16 minutes of great basketball and 24 minutes of well, ugh...doesn't get me charged up. We make a great comeback from a deficit we should probably never have been in and then play clueless on offense for the last 4 minutes to come away with yet another almost. Sorry, it leaves me nothing but disappointed and frustrated. I give credit where it is due and the team made a great comeback but they are far enough along where they should at least maintain the good play until the end, win or lose. The Cuse goes to Fair down the stretch, no question, SJU reverts back to passing around the perimeter and poking and hoping. Sanchez seemed afraid to assert himself down the stretch and Harrison got back to trying to do it by himself. For those who say I am being too negative I apologize but I didn't need another moral victory; I already knew we had talent but I have expectations that talent will translate into something real.
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Your right about being disappointed. We lose to Penn. St. and the Cuse. We don't have not a one quality win. Right now we are not a NCAA team, and that was the goal. How can you not be disappointed?
Click to expand...

If the season ended tosay, we would be a tournament team. If you can't accept a loss to the #2 team in the country, then you have to believe that we are #1. I'm disappointed but anyone who acts like this is an unacceptable loss is full of crap! (same goes for the Wisconsin loss)
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Right I cant accept a loss to a number 2 team. We choked in the clutch today. We could have stepped on their throats and we let go. But I will say this. If we actually do get into the NCAA (and this is not a sure thing) and we play these fools in Orange again. We will win.
 
I don't think Hooper got off a shot today . Why was he running the baseline against the three trees in the Syracuse 2-3 . Put him up toward the elbow where he would be shooting against smaller players and getting more touches
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He didn't do a good job of getting open for a shot, which as you pointed out, is not going to happen with him running the baseline. He needs Branch or Jordan in the game with him so someone is looking to get him the ball, but if he can't get free, he need to sit. He'll get better as we go, but is still searching for his role.
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Hooper played 3:30 in the first half and 4 for the game. He was open 3 times in that span of the first half and Harrsion avoided him like the white plague and forced two misses of his own rather than pass to Hoop. The other time he was open Pointer threw the ball out of bounds two feet away from the open Hooper. Lavin put him in to take a 3 point shot....the guys that saw him as invisible should have sat at that point. As a result of ignoring him, SJ went from down 7 to down 12 in that span.
BTW, I gave you a -Karma for calling a fellow fan a Jacka*s!
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Not sure what game you were watching, but he was not open. And as for your last comment, "fan" is an interesting choice of words for some on this Board. By the way, reducing Karma for calling out others who do nothing but dish out constant negativity is puzzling, don't you think?
 
Also:

1) I've bashed Lavin recently, and impatiently, but he gets a +++10 for the decision to start Rysheed. Syracuse has superior athletes and it wasn't a game for Hooper and Marco. Jordan responded immediately to the challenge of playing the #2 team in the country and looked very much like he belonged on the court as an elite player. There will be plenty of game situations where Hooper/Marco will get a shot at lighting it up, just not today.

2) I saw a guy with a redmen.com t-shirt +10 for him, and plus 10 for all of our fans who not only showed up, but were loud. Our fans were outnumbered, but cheered longer and louder than Syracuse fans.

3) the guys on the floor for us were indistinguishable as starters vs. subs. We go deep, and we didn't lose very much at all when anyone subbed in.

Finally, if anyone is noticing, and soon people will, right now SJU basketball is the best ticket in town for the buck. Most of our fans didn't realize it during the Hardy led run a few years ago, and by then missed a lot of great games. Don't let it happen again, guys. Show up - the Big East season is going to be great.
 
Just got back from the Garden.

Any negative talk about this game is pure nonsense. They went toe to toe with the #2 team in the country for nearly the entire game. They fell behind in the 1st half only because of poor shooting, nothing more. They fought back and had the Garden rocking. They ran out of steam at the foul line, ironic because they were 17 for 20 when Sampson stepped to the line for two.

Nothing to be embarrassed about, and plenty to look forward to. Our team is just as talented as theirs. We will be playing in March.
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I didn't realize Norm was still posting here.

It was men against boys. Boy Lavin was schooled again by the Boeheim's of the world. Boy Harrison was 6 for 19.

This team has established an identity that will stick with us all year, no matter what Lavin speaks. We start weak against everyone (excluding Fordham). We wake up at some point. Then the better teams treat us like washerwomen in the final few minutes. Our three point shooting is abysmal. There are very few teams including low major that are worse. Yet, we make that the focus of our offense while keeping our one or two legitimate three point shooters on the bench. We went toe to toe with Wisconsin and Syracuse until they decided it was time for the smackdown. Plenty of boxers went toe to toe with Mike Tyson when he was in his prime. It's the outcome that matters.
 
Yep. You can give me all the stats in the world but this was a tie game with about 4 minutes left and they made the plays when it counted and we didn't. The air came out of the balloon when Sampson missed those 2 FTs
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You're correct, but I wouldn't bash Sampson, or call him a choker. He's a 64% FT shooter coming into today's game, and honestly, I was hoping he'd make one of two. We had multiple bad possessions after that, but it doesn't change the fact that we slugged it out with one of the top teams in the nation in the best basketball venue on earth.
 
I agree with everything Newsman13 says above except for his reference to "legitimate three point shooters being on the bench". Newsman please identify who these legitimate 3 point shooters are. Thanks.
 
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