No hangover for Orange
The 10th ranked Syracuse Orangemen showed no ill effects from their recent poundings of two top 15 programs in defeating Cornell by 15 last night. Much like creating your pre-shopping list for Thanksgiving there were a number of items that were checked off the list.
For starters there was the top 10 ESPN worthy highlight, we got that compliments of Scoop Jardine to Kris Joseph alley-oop slam.
Next you had the steady senior leadership, thank you for that Andy Rautins, your efficient 18 points on 5-7 shooting from 3 and just 8 shots overall shows how valuable a piece to the puzzle you are.
(Via AP)
Solid point guard play, bingo ring it up Brandon Triche. Triche led all scorers with 21 points and knew that his opponents did not match up well physically so he did what he does best using his size to get to the lane. He even ripped the nets for 3-6 from the trifecta land. That kind of percentage will keep defenders honest.
How about the deferential teammate? Sure just check out Scoop Jardine. The guy who shined in New York was happy to defer to his teammate Triche as Scoop logged only 17 minutes, but didn’t cause a fuss. You gotta love this quote about Triche: “He’s a confident player and I just want to help him anyway I can”.
How about your star turned glue guy. Hello Wes Johnson, you got that right? Wes’ 10 boards, 4 assists, 3 blocks were indicative of his all-around effort which is quite contagious.
Of course you have to your yam like items on your list (who eats that stuff??) and this is Syracuse basketball after all. We’ll take a look at a couple of them at the jump.
How about the disappearing big man? Arinze that’s you pal. It’s pretty obvious to most Cuse fans that AO doesn’t exactly like the perimeter based teams and this game was no exception. He had just one board in 19 mostly invisible minutes – except from Coach JB who seemed intent on hooking him for courtside chats. Like I said, it’s not surprising so he gets a pass. He’ll be there for the big boys.
And lastly I guess we can check off malcontents off our list. What’s up with that Mookie Jones? Who do you think should be sitting so you can jack up 3s? It seems like there is always a bruised ego on this team and Mookie has grabbed that mantle. We’ll see how he responds going forward, but I’m not sure how much burn he’s going to get on a team that has such chemistry with their 7 man rotation.
I’ll close by wishing the CO readers a happy and safe Thanksgiving.
