Syracuse 63 - West Virginia 61: The Sun Rises, The Sky Is Blue, Referees Suck

I guess SU can take this as payback for the awful over and back call on Jardine to end our season last year. We had one coming to us.

that was Karl Hess’ 21st day of work in 28 days. I know this doesn’t sound like much for normal people, but add in travel time and that’s a lot of work for one person.

I don’t think this was as bad a that though.

The got manhandled on the boards, had plenty of calls go against them in the course of the game, shot poorly from 3 and won the game. That’s it. The refs blow, we all know that. BUT – this team needs to shoot better – they’re awful from 3 and start getting some boards. Fab…….

how long have you been sitting on that lifeguard story for the perfect time to whip it out and use it to illustrate a specific set of circumstances involving a Syracuse basketball game?

Those are some bobos right there

the team still had LOADS of wide open 3s that they missed yesterday. I know they haven’t been shooting great from 3 this year, but it just seemed really out of character to seemingly mist almost all of them.

That had nothing to do with Fab. The team HAS to hit some of those 3s if they expect to win games. As Sean said, I think it’s rather amazing that Syracuse walked away with the win yesterday despite how poorly they played in some aspects.

WVU put itself in that position to NEED that call to go right to win, as people have said above.

But really, it was a poorly officiated game all around, with some bad calls going both ways. As shocked as I was to not hear a whistle on BMK’s obvious goaltend, no foul call on WVU’s on the ensuing loose-ball dive from Joseph was almost as bad.

The refs seemed to be mostly letting ‘em play and not calling a ton of fouls, but some of the fouls the Cuse big men picked up were pretty soft. The one that really got me was calling a foul on BMK when he’d tied a guy up. I do hate that rule (where hooking someone who has established possession of the ball is always called a jump ball and not a foul) but the fact remains that is ALMOST NEVER called a foul.

And I don’t remember who was handling the ball but a WVU player committed about as blatant a double dribble as I’ve ever seen at the top of the key during the second half.

It wasn’t as close a game so its lack of coverage is understandable but there was no outcry when Syracuse was ultimately jobbed out of a key possession against ND because Burr wasn’t looking. I’m not saying there’s an anti-Syracuse crusade, I’d just say to a WVU fan or anyone else upset about it, look, this happens. The Marquette game last year. Or to use a football example, the two bullcrap calls the Giants had to overcome in Green Bay a few weeks ago.

The D-bags at SNY felt that women’s basketball was the better programming option. Fail. I saw the highlights and, of course, the blown call at the end. It is what it is; a W, if an ugly one. I will say, though, that I agree with Sean’s comment that, unsightly and controversial as it may have been, it is sort of an impressive victory. The Orange are obviously missing Fab big time and WVU was able to kill Syracuse where they were weakest. It’s a credit to the Orange to be able to grind out a W. Key stats.

Triche, 18 pts, 7-12 FG 2-4 3pt 2 ast, 2 stl, 1 TO. The spinning wheel of “So and so stepped up and led the team to victory” landed on Triche’s number for this one. For all the talk about his inconsistency and him disappearing, I’m beginning to think that Triche simply waits for his opportunity to shine, rather than trying to force his way into the spotlight (ahem Dion ahem). Whatver the reason, he seems to step up when needed, so I’ll take it.

KJ, 5-5 FT. Not having seen the game, I can’t speak to KJ’s assertiveness in getting to the rim, but 5 FTs seems like more than the usual for him, so I’m going to assume he was in attack mode. He needs to keep it up.

Syracuse, 6 TO. Outstanding. Prolly the reason they were able to win the game.

Deniz Kilicli- 5 points, 2-10 shooting (should have been 7 on 3-10). I’m not gonna try to make Kilicli out to be Lew Alcindor or anything. But he’s a double-wide body and a killer on the boards. 10 FGA tells me a couple things. For one, WVA was going inside to him on purpose. He only had 2 OReb and he averages 5.1 FGA/gm. Huggy Bear tried to exploit Fab’s absence by forcing the ball inside and the Orange were able to stand. Holding him to 30% shooting, not to mention shots where he was fouled and didn’t convert is good. Again, Kilicli isn’t Wilt, or even Herb Pope, but knowing that the paint isn’t going to be an open bar for opposing bigs is good.

Syracuse- 4-20 3pt. 20 attempts it too many. Way to many, especially when you consider Southie only played 17 minutes. This team should top out at 15 attempts and preferrably be in the 10-12 range. The story of the last few games has been poor shooting and a lot of it has to do with shot selection. They’ll have one more game against St. John’s to figure it out, but then the last half of the BEast schedule is a gauntlet. They need to tighten things up if they want to escape with less than 2-3 losses.