Basketball
Articles by Robbie Gillies
Basketball
Orange uses Bucknell game as tune-up
The Orange played a fine game last night. They went about their business and methodically took care of a decent team in Bucknell. The team’s effort on defense seemed to be as lacking as the crowd attendance (officially just over 17,000 but actually much less) but the offense put together another efficient performance and SU improves to 12-0 with one game left before the beginning of Big East play.
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Orange looks like No. 1 team
If you were to look at some of the stats from last night’s game you would automatically assume a Syracuse loss. NC State shot 58-percent from the field, shot 50-percent from 3-point range, had twice as many assists as the Orange and held the rebounding edge. And yet, the Orange walked away with the win. This was the performance of a No. 1 team. It wasn’t that they played a perfect game. Far from it. But they battled through a hot start by the Wolfpack who prevented them from playing their typical game and still beat a solid team on the road by 16 points.
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Orange’s defense is its only offense
That was probably the most boring 6-point game I’ve ever watched Syracuse play. The Orange led wire-to-wire, it was never closer than 10 points from 14:23 in the first half until 4 minutes left in the second, and yet there was only a brief period where Syracuse actually executed well on offense. It has been the story of the season for Syracuse. The defense was tremendous but the offense had serious issues and the only thing that saved them was the points in transition, which of course, is a product of the defense.
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Syracuse struggles disconcerting, but end results not bad
Through the first 4 games of the season Syracuse dominated their competition. But with that competition being against the likes of Manhattan and Colgate it was difficult to draw any real conclusions. In the past two games they have struggled in the first half and then asserted themselves in the second and yet, it’s still difficult to draw any real conclusions about this team because it’s unclear how good their past two opponents are. Neither Virginia Tech nor Stanford is ranked but the polls are largely a joke this early in the season and the two teams are a perfect 9-0 outside of the losses to the Orange. In fact, Stanford was the only unbeaten team in the Pac-12 before last night.
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Real competition an acquired taste for Syracuse
I wanted to see Syracuse play against better competition. I wanted to see how they would respond. Through the first four games, the Orange had an average margin of victory of 32.5 points. You don’t learn much about a team from wins like that against opponents like Colgate and Fordham. Virginia Tech was going to be a real test. And through the first half Syracuse did not respond well. But luckily they played the 2nd half and the Orange responded to pull out the 69-58 victory.
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Orange treat Colgate like video game
Did you ever play Nintendo with the Game Genie? You’d put in Super Mario Bros. and make Mario invincible and be able to jump five times higher than normal. At first it was one of the most amazing things ever but slowly you started to miss the challenges of the normal game. Without the element of real competition it began to lose its appeal. That’s now how I feel watching Syracuse demolish its opponents.
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Cuse displays deadly depth vs. Albany
The Orange were simply too tall for Albany to deal with last night. Syracuse dominated the paint, outrebounding the Great Danes 47-29 and converting on bucket after bucket around the rim. After the game, Coach Boeheim expressed his displeasure with the team’s performance saying, “From the beginning, we weren’t really read to go … Tonight, we didn’t get any better.”