Syracuse 52 - Louisville 51 - Jim Burr 50: Orange Overcome Whiteout

is still a W. I was starting to think we were cursed, or Pitino was possibly dabbling in black magic.

I’ll take it.

surprising me. Jump shots against uconn, knocking down free throws. Pretty soon he’s gonna knock down a 3.

C.J. Fair has been absolutely clutch these past few games.

Card Chronicle is some good sh….stuff.

See you in March, I’ll be in the Carrier Dome

I had to watch on DVR tonight thanks to living in Oklahoma and hence a 6pm tip. The last minute of the game, all I could think was that I was just an hour behind all of you in having watched a horrid game end in an all to familiar fashion. But lo and behold, that stupid Col. Sanders looking fool will be the sad one tonight!!!!

EFG vs UConn – 68.5
EFG v L’ville – 35.2

But more importantly

Wins vs. UConn – 1
Wins vs. L’ville – 1

40-37 (Louisville) on the boards… not bad.

Forced 16 TO, only gave up 8.

And that was the worst officiated game this season. Phantom calls, missed calls, shooting fouls that were not shooting fouls. All in both directions. If I were on the receiving end of a foul where the ref that blew the whistle had to check the monitors to see who it was on, I would blow a gasket.

Goes to Carchronicle for this thread

“He’s their Eric Devendorf.” Had an amazing game at times and could score at will, but also made some horrendous decisions with the ball.

No MCW this game.

JSouth looked good (when he wasn’t shooting 3’s).

Melo was Fab.

Triche looked someone stole his puppy when he was sitting on the bench next to JB in the 2nd half.

Bad Scoop showed up in the 2nd half.

Dion needs to make FT’s late in the game.

Officiating was ridiculously awful.

Fair is going to be a star.

A win is a win, even as ugly as this one was.

and read some of the comments – now my eyes are bleeding. Ugh.

Any word on whether or not he’s in trouble? It was a tough game and Rakeem was yanked after 2 minutes, so maybe nothing to see here. But given the “altercation” last game, one has to wonder…

I believe Digger said right after the game the how we ground out a win is why he’s so ‘impressed’ with Syracuse.

As for shooting, Louisville is a very good D and I refuse to believe that Southerland has forgotten how to make 3s.

When he gets hot, it’s going to be a helluva trip back to the mean.

With Dion on the line and 1.7 seconds (from memory) on the clock, he clanks one off the rim. Dion then proceeds to somehow touch the rebound without fouling any of the four Louisville players also going for the ball. The ball bounces off Dion’s hand and into Louisville’s possession, where the player proceeds to call timeout. The refs then reset the clock to 1.1 seconds.

My mathematical deduction powers reveal that Dion’s touch, ball bounding in the air, Louisville’s grab of the ball, and signaling of a timeout took only 0.6 seconds. WTF?

ESPNU showed a brief replay and it seemed to me that a very generous clock analysis would have given Louisville AT MOST 0.6 seconds.

Is it physically possible for the above touch, bounce, grab, signal to happen in 0.6 seconds or even the entire 1.7 seconds? Not.

I understand we could have been “homered” by the slow flick of the timekeeper’s switch, but the refs even looked at the replay and STILL came away with 1.1 seconds?

It ended up not being an issue, but if Louisville got off a shot and (heaven forbid) made it, I think we would all be looking at the clock keeping a little more closely. Just add it to the (extremely long) list of officiating mistakes that occurred this game.

Glad the game was over by 9pm +/- so my blood pressure had time to go down before it was time to turn in for the night.

I’ll be in the Dome on March 3rd to witness the rematch in person.

the whole time I felt like well heres our second loss. It just felt inevitable. All the hype, everyone mentioning how UofL has our number. Kept thinking how sick it would make me to see their fans rush the court. Our depth bailed us out. 26 points from the bench to their 2. What a tense last few possessions though

“You’re going to get in games like this in the tournament. I don’t care who you are. You’ve got to be ready to be able to make those plays at the end of games. If they make a play, hit one shot, the end, we lose. In the tournament, you go home and you’re going to play teams like Louisville and teams just as good or better.”

“You can either give the defenses credit or say it was a bad offensive game. We’re going to look on the bright side and say it was a real defensive struggle tonight.”

This might be the best, maybe “most important” is a better term, win of the year. I’m going to agree with Jim B and chalk this one up to just two great defensive efforts rather than simply poor offensive play by the Orange. Sure, mistakes were made, bunnies were missed. But I credit the D on both sides. Being able to win games with defense is critical to a deep tournament run. The Orange have shown they can win close games against good teams. March will be very exciting. Key stats.

CJ, 13 pts, 5-12 FG, 3-4 FT 5 reb. Saving the Orange’s bacon once again. Love this kid.

Fab, 11 pts, 3-3 FT, 6 boards. A solid effort and he stayed out of foul trouble. I did notice him watching the ball on a few rebounds instead of getting a body on someone, though. That needst to be corrected in a hurry.

KJ- 6 boards. I like that he always finds a way to contribute. He didn’t score a lot, but he was good on the glass. I just wish he’d have more games where he does both.

Syracuse 8 TO/L’Ville 16 TO. 5 games in a row with under 10 TO while forcing 10+. Syracuse might typically be outrebounded, but they make up a lot of that with their TO margin.

Syracuse 37 reb(16 Oreb)/L’Ville 39 reb (16 Oreb). Speaking of rebounding, even though it seemed like Bahanan was killing them on the glass, the Orange didn’t do all that poor of a job, considering some of their recent efforts.

Syracuse, 61 FGA/L’Ville, 49 FGA. A pretty significant disparity in a game this close.

Kyle Kuric, 3 pts, 1-8 FG. Kuric was obviously the key to Jim B’s game plan. Not only is he L’ville’s leading scorer, but he’s had a habit of torching the Orange. But they knew where he was at all times and he never really got any clean looks. Well done.