Cuse Owns Nova

There can't be more than half a dozen people in the country who don't know all about last night's game. And it's not like any of my readers might be among that obscure minority. Still, I need to post for no reason other than it's the last day of February, and I don't think there's ever been a month without a posting since the establishment of this blog.

I took time off, mainly in observance of the period of shloshim, the thirty days since Helen's passing. In truth, the period is not quite up, but four weeks have gone by, and wouldn't my folks have loved to have been in the dome last night? Especially Lew. Last night reminded me of the great big east games from the eighties, before every basketball game was accessible somewhere on TV, or on the web, and thirty thousand strong would come out every time UConn, or St. John's, or the Hoyas would come to town. I recall sitting next to Lew and being unable to communicate with him, the place was so loud.

I know the Orange won by 18, but I prefer to consider the final 31 minutes of the game all by themselves. Over that stretch, Cuse outscored Nova 81-54. Not even close. And they did it without much in the way of outside shooting. Wes was way off from the field; no one lit it up from outside. The key was that they committed only two turnovers during that stretch. So I figure if they can control their turnovers, even if they don't shoot that well, they should be able to handle anyone. The converse, however, is that they retain the ability to beat themselves on any given night. Can they go six straight without giving the ball away?

One reason to love this team is the unselfish play. They're still second in the nation in assists per game. Twenty-one last night. And six guys in double figures. In fact, they had six guys in double figures when they got to Taco Time; that's 75 points for the uninitiated. Jay Bilas says that Cuse is so tough because their go-to guy is the guy that's open. All seven guys have been the leading scorer in one or more games this year.

Another reason to love the team is that they excel on both ends of the court. Tops in the nation in field goal percentage; still pretty high in points per game. But also fifth in the nation in steals per game, and seventh in the nation in blocks per game.

And in case anyone is wondering, it was loud last night. Real loud. Real freakin' loud. Deafening. And once they started to come back from nine down, thanks to the energy of Joseph and Jardine off the bench, it stayed loud from then on. We stood more than we sat. I wasn't sure I was going to like the towel waving thing, but once they got Nova down, and began running out to a lead, it was wild to see 34,616 maniacs jumping around, arms in the air, waving those Orange towels. How Orange was the dome last night? The other crazy thing was how no one wanted to leave. Larry and I got up with under three minutes to go, and the lead almost twenty, because we had a long drive home. We were like the first people out of the dome. In fact, the buses weren't running yet. We took a South Campus shuttle and it dropped us off at Manley. Even so, we didn't get home till almost one. I'm guessing they poured a lot of beer in Syracuse from midnight on.

So the good news is that Manny's back on line, and the Orange keep winning. Let's hope we have much to post on for the remainder of March. Go Orange.