The Orange Empire Extends It’s Tenticles To Detroit

Last night the citizens of Detroit voted for a new head of their city. And these wise citizens elected the greatest of all Syracuse greats, Dave Bing as their mayor. This is the second best thing to happen in Detroit this year (the first being UConn losing in the Final Four).

In all seriousness Bing has a tough road ahead of him. The last mayor resigned and later went to jail for lying in a civil trial regarding an affair with a staffer. Not only that, but apparently the Detroit economy is having a bit of a rough patch. I believe it was in the papers.

By far the best quote about this election:

“I don’t like either one; it’s like tossing a coin. But I’ll give Bing a chance,” Bonnie Brookslee, 78, said after voting.

This sounds like the point guard situation for SU next season. Are we sure Bonnie Brookslee isn’t really Jim Boeheim?

So Syracuse now can claim both the Mayor of Detroit and the Vice-Presidency as it’s own. Maybe if our favorite lawyer/blogger gets his act together, he can take over the vacant seat on the Supreme Court.

Sweet Like Bear Meat!

…To quote Tracy Morgan.

Yes, Syracuse is back in the Sweet 16 after defeating Arizona State today. I don’t have time for a full recap of today’s game, but I wanted to look at the three keys to victory that I mentioned earlier on ASU blog House of Sparky. The Orange hit on all three today in their win:

1. Get Arinze Onuaku and Rick Jackson involved early.

This was obviously something that Coach Boeheim stressed to his players before the game, because the Orange had an inside presence from the beginning. The two big men combined for 10 of the first 20 Orange points, and both finished with double-digit scoring efforts. This was a key to getting open looks for Devendorf and Rautins against the ASU match-up zone.

2. Knock down some threes.

No problems with the outside shot today. Devendorf had five triples and Rautins added three threes of his own. 9-20 (45%) effort from long distance today, compared to the 2-16 showing in the first round. If the Orange shoot like they are capable of from outside, they can be a challenge to any team in the country.

3. Score, score, score!

I wrote that the Orange are 18-3 on the year when the reach the 80 point mark, and only 9-6 when they don’t. Well, they only got to 78, but against a team that was only giving up 60 points per game, 78 is a huge number. The Orange kept the pace where they like it and weren’t bogged down by ASU’s zone. Great offensive day for Syracuse.

Cory from House of Sparky was right on with his assessment on how to beat the Sun Devils. Pendergraph was forced out of the game with about ten minutes left (why did Herb Sendek leave him in there?) which eliminated any inside presence ASU had. While we did allow Kuksiks and Abbott to get open looks we kept the defensive pressure on ASU the eintire game, and limited the damage of James Harden. We also did a great job working inside-out on their zone.

All told, it was a very solid performance by the Cuse hoopsters. Next up is Blake Griffin and the Oklahoma Sooners.

Well, I Couldn’t Have Been More Wrong

After the six overtime marathon, I wrote that Syracuse had little to no chance to win in the semifinal against West Virginia. Actually, I wrote that the Orange had a 0.6% chance of winning. I’ve never been more happy to be wrong.

Syracuse survived another OT game against the Mountaineers, but luckily this one ended after just one extra session. Syracuse played very well in the first half, and when Eric Devendorf hit that 60 footer as the buzzer sounded, I thought they were going to come out guns blazing in the second half. West Virginia seemed to have other ideas, as they quickly erased their 7 point halftime deficit and forced Jim Boeheim to call a quick timeout to regroup his exhausted squad.

The second half was a battle, with each team going back and forth and nobody jumping too far ahead. Jonny Flynn looked completely gassed, and that might be the least shocking statement I’ve ever made. Dude played 67 of 70 minutes in the UConn game, and followed it up with a nice easy 45 minutes against WVU. That is ridiculous.

Luckily the Orange were able to somehow get it done again in the extra frame, setting up tonight’s final against number one seed Louisville. I don’t want to again predict that Syracuse is too exhausted to compete against the Cardinals, but how can they not be? I don’t think Jim Boeheim is going to change his strategy and suddenly give Kris Joseph more minutes to counter the fatigue of some of the other regulars. If he wanted to do that, last night was the game to do it in. So I guess I’d have to double our chances of winning tonight to 1.2% after this performance. I’ll keep it low since I don’t want to jink us.

Other random thoughts on the West Virginia victory:

-The Waffle was outstanding. 6 points on 3-4 shooting, 10 boards-including 7 off the offensive glass, as well as 4 steals. Not to mention a number of passes he got his hands on. The guy is instant energy off the bench and he seems to have responded well to Boeheim’s challenging of him earlier in the year.

-Interesting quote from Jonny Flynn in Dana O’Neil’s post game story:

“We knew nobody was giving us a chance,” Flynn said. “We like that. We’re all underdogs. None of us were really highly recruited. We’re all guys people have counted out and we like that feeling. We like when things are stacked against us.”

I like the sentiment, Jonny, and I’m sure the coaching staff is playing it up. But the fact is this is one of the most highly touted group of recruits that has worn the Orange in recent memory. Flynn wasn’t that heavily recruited, but he committed to the Orange before his junior season, the same time Paul Harris had committed (although it was Harris’ senior year). Flynn went on to be a McDonald’s All-American and surely had plenty of coaches from around the country trying to get him to renege on the Orange and go to their school.

And if you look at the other players on the roster, most of them were highly recruited as well:

• Eric Devendorf was a McDonald’s All-American, so he had offers from a number of big-name schools, including Florida, Louisville and Michigan State.
• Rick Jackson wasn’t as highly touted as hist 2007 classmates of Flynn, Donte Green and Scoop Jardine, but he was recruited by Villanova, Virginia, Virginia Tech and St. Joe’s amoung others.
• Freshmen Kris Joseph and Mookie Jones (who, by the way, looks like an alien) were both recruited by big name schools. Joseph by Georgetown and Maryland and Jones by Marquette and Kansas.

So while I like the idea of the Orange thinking they are the forgotten ones, and granted, they were underdogs against WVU (although that had to do with the fact that they played 1.8 basketball games 24 hours earlier), they are hardly castoffs and rejects and Syracuse is far from The Island of Misfit Toys.

– Some interesting tidbits from the great website StatSheet.com:

• Syracuse won while doing worse than it’s season averages for points, FG percentage, free throw percentage and rebounds (although West Virginia was noticeably worse in this category as well).
• West Virginia (54.7) had a better effective FG percentage than Syracuse (50.0), which doesn’t happen often to the Orange. Syracuse ranks 1st in the Big East and 18th nationally in eFG% (more on that here).