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Orange Washes Long Beach State Ashore
Perhaps Paul Harris said it best:
“People don’t realize, when you go through things, this is the only place where you can just let everything out, in basketball. This is what you love to do. It’s a game, you want to have fun. Everything that happened off the court can be off the court.”
It was once again a tale of two halves for the Orange Saturday afternoon. Despite leading by seven going into the locker room at halftime, you got the feeling that perhaps Eric Devendorf’s extracurricular activities were on the minds of the players, or maybe it was rust from a ten-day layoff. After breaks like these, teams either come out shaky and tentative after going so long without playing a game, or they sparkle due to extra time in practice. For SU, it looked like the former in the first half and the latter in the second.
After staying within arm’s reach the entire first half, Long Beach State shot itself out of the game in the second half as much as SU shot itself to a blowout. The Orange stormed into the second half with an 18-4 run. After SU’s tear, LBSU got desperate and went into panic mode with 13 minutes remaining. The 49ers chucked 21 threes in the second half and made only two. Perhaps coach Dan Monson felt Syracuse needed more bricks for the new practice facility. To see a team give up like that was just pathetic, but I’m not complaining.
Thanks to the poor shooting night, SU cleaned the glass especially well, posting a season-high 48 rebounds. Even Jonny Flynn had five rebounds and Mookie Jones had five in only 14 minutes. On offense, AO was fed the ball often, sinking all seven of his shot attempts and is nearing 80% shooting on the year, though he continued his well-chronicled struggles from the free throw line. Rick Jackson filled in wonderfully for the big guy, totaling 11 and 9, plus three blocks in only 19 minutes. He’s now put together strong lines in three of the last four games.
Flynn and Harris, like most of the team, sleepwalked through the first half. Flynn seemed to wake up later on, while Paul went on to have a more quiet performance. Finally, “Free” Eric Devendorf put together an average line of 13 and 5 assists, with no big indication that his judicial proceeding are inhibiting his play.
There’s now a quick turnaround, as Cleveland State comes to town on Monday night. Long Beach State was the ideal opponent against whom SU could shake off some rust, and I’ll be looking for a more “well-oiled machine” look than what we saw this afternoon.
