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I Approve Of Mike Hopkins

The Orange finally hit the practice floor on Friday. Tyler Dunne of the D.O. Sports Blog was on hand and he made some casual observations about what he saw, including how a reconstructed Devo is looking, the focus of the drills and this note about the team size:
On first impression alone, it’s pretty clear that SU’s strength will be the backcourt. There isn’t much experience or size up front. Arinze Onuaku and Rick Jackson had a few good battles today, but other than the raw Sean Williams, Syracuse doesn’t have one player taller than 6-foot-9. With the guards working with Mike Hopkins on one end of the court and the bigs with Rob Murphy on the other end, there didn’t seem to be substantial size differential from the two groups.
Hopkins is obviously a huge part of the SU coaching staff, and unless you've been living under a rock or are DOCTOR Daryl Gross, you're glad to know he's one day going to be the head coach at SU. After reading some of his quotes from Media Day, you've gonna be even gladder...er. Such as his thoughts on Jonny's Flynn's maturation as a leader:
It’s like my seven year old son who was five used to throw food at the dinner table and now he’ll eat it with a fork. It’s like the little things. He’s still eating. He used to throw it and now he eats with a fork, which is nice. So those are the things you may not see in the stat book but you see as a person maturing.
Greg Robinson dreams of this kind of off-the-cuff goodness. But wait, there's more. How bout some thoughts on Paul Harri's finer qualities:
He’s got great braids doesn’t he? He’s first-team all braid. My son was just doing one of those you know find the end (mazes). I’m like Paul can my son get up there. Maybe put an ant in there (see if it can find its way out) It could be like a case study. You know Paul’s one of those kids, you know in high school he just dominated he was so big and strong. I mean can you imagine having that body. I mean I would never have a shirt on. I’d be like hey guys how’s it going. I would just paint the number ‘11’ on (me) with Harris above. He’s a freak physically and athletically.
Guy walks into my house doing schtick like that, I'd go play basketball for him too. Check out the rest of the piece for an anecdote about one recruit who thought Manley Field House was the Dome. Oy.