By now, those who didn’t watch SU lose to the LeMoyne Dolphins Tuesday night have heard about it, whether they wanted to or not. Yes, it’s an exhibition game, maybe the team learns from the exposure of several of its flaws (including but not limited to inexperienced guard play, AO still isn’t near 100%, and in the interim, the team has no go-to scorer outside of Wesley Johnson), but teams as storied and tradition-rich as Syracuse don’t lose to Division II teams, even in a down year - at least, they have no business doing so.

There are some rumblings that Jim Boeheim coached this game differently than he would a regular season or postseason game. For instance, going with man-to-man defense for extended periods of time, and calling a timeout after making the go-ahead basket with 17 seconds left in the game, giving LeMoyne a chance to set up a final play. The theory is that in doing so, Boeheim challenged his players on defense, serving them a nice plate of humble pie and brought them back down to Earth. Time will tell if that lesson was effective, but generally, don’t teams wait until after the first 15 minutes or so of the game when it is a blowout with the outcome out of doubt to do things like that? 

For now, the front desk has made the wake-up call, but will the players answer the phone? Do they jump out of the bed and get ready for the day or do they hang up the phone as quickly as they pick it up and reach for the snooze button?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 12:14 pm by Brian G. . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.