January 5, 2009 – 3:29 pm
Syracuse has reached the dizzying heights once again in the new Coaches poll, sliding into the #9 perch — one spot higher than predicted thanks to a jump over a certain team from Washington, DC. I’m sure at least one blog will take note of that. In the AP poll, we moved up to the tantalizing #11 spot.
In other news, my dreams for the Big East have been realized in both polls. West Virginia and Marquette picked good weeks to surge, and Louisville picked a good week to hang on by the skin of its teeth (nice win over Kentucky yesterday afternoon) — and now our esteemed conference has set a record that will likely never be broken: 9 ranked teams at once. Both the AP and Coaches poll are on board. In the Coaches, in fact, the Big East controls 9 of the top 22 spots. Either way, the league now owns 36% of the top 25. That doesn’t exactly leave a lot of breathing room for the five other major conferences or the five to six mid-major conferences that are used to having at least one of their teams hovering around the rankings.
The only mitigating factor is that the one conference putting up any kind of a fight this year is — of course — the Godless ACC. In fact, the new poll has the ACC taking control of the #2, #3, and #4 spots in both polls, bracketed by Pitt at #1 and UConn at #5. This was predictable but is still annoying. The ACC also has an undefeated Clemson lurking at #11/#12, and newcomer Boston College riding the strength of its UNC upset to #17/#24. No other conference is even trying to compete (no one else has more than 3 teams, the Pac-10 has just two, and the SEC in has just the lonely Tennessee, desperately clinging to 25th place in the Coaches poll; oh how the mighty have fallen).
The mid-majors are getting squeezed out as well. There were a bunch of “Year of the Mid-Major” in the early and mid 2000’s, but this isn’t shaping up to be one. Powerhouse pseudo mid-majors like Memphis and Gonzaga have already been bounced from the rankings — and only Xavier remains from the Big Three. Among true mid-majors, only Butler appears in the rankings, with ingenue Davidson long since kicked to the curb. Great teams like Dayton, St. Mary’s, Illinois St, and UNLV are knocking on the door, but there’s just no room this year. The Big East is sucking up all the oxygen. We’ve reached the plateau for the league though — at no point this year will there be dominance any greater than right now.
By Syracusan
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Posted in ACC, Big East, Clemson, Georgetown, Louisville, Marquette, Memphis, Pac 10, Pitt, Rankings, SEC, UConn, West Virginia University
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January 4, 2009 – 9:05 pm
When the new polls come out tomorrow afternoon, SU will almost certainly be ranked in the top ten in the Coaches poll (perhaps not the AP poll quite yet). Purdue and Notre Dame both lost their last game, giving us exactly the opening to move from an 11th place tie to alone at #10. Georgetown also lost that brutal game at home to Pitt, but I doubt they will drop below us considering what they did to UConn — and that Pitt will be the new unanimous #1 team in America in both polls.
Pitt moving to #1 is the point of this post. Some fan/blogger reaction to the prospect of Syracuse landing a spot in the national top ten has been met with skepticism. Is this team really that good? folks ask. Isn’t it a bit of a stretch to say we’re legitimately top ten material? Yes we’re pretty good, but lets not kid ourselves.
I completely disagree with those doubts, and here’s why: North Carolina just lost at home to an unranked Boston College, which is why Pitt will be #1 on Monday. Lost at home! My point? Other teams are not as good as Syracuse fans think they are. Other teams are just as flawed as we are. No one is sitting at some towering height way beyond our level. The top ten is not a lofty list of elite, unassailable teams. I grant you, Syracuse does not look like the Celtics out on the court, but neither does anyone else. Every team has their area of weakness, their boneheaded plays, their letdowns at key moments. Oklahoma lost at home to an unranked team earlier this week. In the top ten, UConn, Georgetown, UCLA, and Duke have all looked like shit at least once already this year. Today UNC couldn’t buy a bucket or play competent defense. Heck, next week the entire SEC might have zero ranked teams. Above us, only Wake Forest and Pitt have handled all comers. Pitt will be #1.
Do you know who Pitt is? Pitt is the exact same team — with the exact same set of key players — that last year’s weakened SU team handled for 99% of the game, until Paul Harris’ inexplicable turnover under the basket in the closing seconds. That’s who Pitt is, and those dudes will be the #1 team in the country tomorrow. I’m not disputing their ranking or their stature. What I’m saying is that SU is certainly within striking distance of that Pitt team, which means we belong in the top ten as much as anyone else.
January 3, 2009 – 4:50 pm
The USF game is over and behind us. 2-0 in the Big East is 2-0 in the Big East. 14-1 is 14-1. A road win is a road win. What happened in the second half of that game is inconsequential. How unbelievably horrendous we looked is inconsequential.
For those concerned about our team, consider this: #10 Notre Dame lost by 6 points this afternoon at St. John’s — possibly the second worst team in the league after USF. There is no such thing as an easy road game in conference play, no matter the caliber of your opponent. And there is definitely no such thing as a “bad” win, especially not a “bad” road win.
Now let us move forward and never speak of this game again.
*****
In other news: there’s a bump coming for SU’s RPI thanks to Kansas’ win over #18 Tennessee today. Tennessee is the class of the SEC, and they couldn’t handle KU on the road the way we could. Also: Georgetown just proved the inevitability of the Big East’s top teams cannabilizing each other with their home crapper against Pitt today. A few days after looking like world busters against #2 UConn, they shit the bed in their own house against #3 Pitt, getting outrebounded by an emasculating 43-17. I’m almost ready to guarantee no Big East team gets a 1 seed in the NCAA this year. But that’s OK. We may nearly sweep the #2 and #3 seeds.
By Syracusan
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Posted in Big East, Georgetown, Kansas, Notre Dame, Pitt, RPI, Rankings, Rebounding, SEC, South Florida, St. John's, UConn, Wins
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January 3, 2009 – 11:07 am
December 31, 2008 – 4:23 pm
First off, anyone who thinks SU’s demolition of Seton Hall isn’t that impressive because the Pirates aren’t particularly good should take this into consideration: with nine minutes left in the 2nd half this afternoon, #3 Pittsburgh was losing to Rutgers. Rutgers. And it wasn’t even that surprising to see, because that’s life in the Big East. Pitt ended up taking care of business, of course, but not by much. If we had beaten the Hall by 5 points I would have been satisfied. But we won by 24 — and led by more than 30 for a while — and that means something. Don’t doubt it.
In other news, Andy Rautins has 55 points over the past two games. Five-Five. I think Pitt, UConn, Georgetown, or Notre Dame should give me a ring the next time Jermain Dixon, Kemba Walker, Jessie Sapp, or Luke Zeller drops 55 in a two game span. Until that point, I’m about ready to declare SU the best offensive team in the conference.
According to ESPN, “In the past five games, the Orange have shot 40-for-91 on 3-pointers, nearly 44 percent.” That’s a Fighting Irish type percentage, and this from a team that has Arinze Onuaku, Rick Jackson, and Paul Harris operating in the paint — a troika that could win games by itself if it had to. Syracuse is peaking just in time for conference play, Jimmy couldn’t have worked this out any better. And we should all be very thankful to the appeals committee for giving Devendorf his second chance. His presence is the extra weapon that gives us nearly perfect depth in our roster and an overwhelming number of offensive options.
By Syracusan
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Posted in Andy Rautins, Arinze Onuaku, Big East, Eric Devendorf, Georgetown, Jim Boeheim, Notre Dame, Paul Harris, Pitt, Rick Jackson, Rutgers, Seton Hall, UConn, Wins
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December 30, 2008 – 9:09 pm
Yeah, this year’s gonna be a lot of fun.
December 30, 2008 – 1:10 am
As promised, here’s the second half of my survey of the Big East “preseason” results. For the first eight teams, see my previous post. This post will cover the exploits of the 8 teams predicted by the coaches to finish in the top half of the league. I’ll quote myself from the last post to explain the concept: “This will enable us to get a feel for who’s been better than expected so far, who’s crapped out a bit, and who’s right on pace. I’ll look at how each school handled opposition from other BCS conferences, how they handled the tougher mid-majors, and whether or not they had any disturbing cupcake losses. Then I’ll give a little interpretive blurb of varying length, depending on whether or not the team in question did anything interesting.”
So, without further ado:
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December 29, 2008 – 7:21 pm
Polls are funny things. Syracuse has moved right back up to nearly its highest point of the season in the national rankings: 13th in the AP and 11th in the Coaches. That Coppin St win will echo throughout history, apparently. West Virginia has also moved up to 26th and 27th, respectively, making the Big East dangerously close to putting nine teams in the top 25. There’s going to be too much internal violence in the league for the season to wind up with nine teams still ranked, so this is probably our only shot. If Marquette and WV can get a couple early wins, next week could be the moment. It’d be nice to set that record, just for the fun of it. It would probably never be broken.
December 29, 2008 – 3:10 am
I did this last year, and it was a bit of hit, so I’m going to do it again. Here’s the concept:
Now that it’s go time for conference play around the nation, I thought I’d take a look at how the 16 teams in the Big East fared in the “preseason”. I’m going to provide a very quick snapshot of each team, going from worst to best according to the officially predicted finish provided by the coaches back at Media Day in October. This will enable us to get a feel for who’s been better than expected so far, who’s crapped out a bit, and who’s right on pace. I’ll look at how each school handled opposition from other BCS conferences, how they handled the tougher mid-majors, and whether or not they had any disturbing cupcake losses. Then I’ll give a little interpretive blurb of varying length, depending on whether or not the team in question did anything interesting.
Here’s the bottom half of the league, according to the preseason poll, going from 16 to 9. I’ll do the top 8 in the next day or two:
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December 28, 2008 – 5:33 pm
Being members of the Chosen People, Christmas is generally a low key affair at Chez Syracusan during my holiday visits to Syracuse. In between trips to the movie theater and dinners at Chinese restaurants, momma Syracusan and myself have found the time to volunteer at the Samaritan Center soup kitchen each Christmas day for the last 5-10 years. It’s located in the basement of St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral downtown. The Jews of Temple Concord have an established relationship with the Center wherein we staff the entire operation on Christmas. That way the usual workers and volunteers can spend the day with their families and the Center can remain open for the poor and homeless folks that need a hot meal on Christmas.
This year, for the first time I can remember, the local press was on hand. Due to the horrendous economy, there was a lot of interest in charity this holiday season. A camera man from the local NBC network was milling about with a reporter, interviewing the people in charge and taking panoramic shots of us serving meals. Naturally, when I got home I switched on the 6 o’clock news hoping to catch a glimpse of myself on TV. Indeed, one of the lead stories was about helping the needy, but instead of the Samaritan Center they started talking about the Rescue Mission — and guess who’s ugly mug pops up on the screen instead of mine? This guy: Read More »
