Nichols Nets 37

Syracuse held of a last minute surge from St. Johns to win 76-74 in a “must win” scenario for the Orange. Having gone 1-3 the four games prior to today’s game, I think they need to finish the regular season 6-0 (short of having to run the Big East tournament… again!). That would make the Orange 7-3 in their last 10 regular season games. They dug themselves a deep hole, and need to climb out of it.

Demetris Nichols was the hero of the day, putting up a career high 37 points on some outstanding shooting. 14 of 24 from the floor, and 7 of 13 from three point range. Probably more impressive for Nichols was that he pulled down 10 rebounds.

Nichols effort was the best for an Orangemen since Gerry McNamara torched Davidson for 38 in December of 2005. It was the most points ever for an Orangeman in a Big East game, breaking the previous team record held by Hakim Warrick. And the 37 point effort is tied (with many) for 17th place on the all-time Syracuse single game scoring list.

An interesting side note was that Nichols only made two free throws. The last Syracuse player to score 37+ points with two or less free throws was Dennis DuVal, who scored 37 against Bucknell on January 23, 1974 on 18-30 shooting, with 1 free throw.

Andy Rautins had a big day too, scoring 14 points on 4-5 shooting from three point range (5-7 from the field overall).

This years team has been one of the better Syracuse free throw shooting squads. Yet today, they went cold, 12-23, missing 11 free throws. The culprits? It was not the usual suspects. Darryl Watkins and Terrence Roberts shot a combined 7 of 11 from the free throw line.

Nope, the culprits were the free throw sharpshooters. Rautins, Eric Devendorf, and Josh Wright shot a combined 3 of 10 from the free throw line. Ouch. I do not think we will see that often.

Devo had a poor shooting day, but kept his finger off the trigger, going one for four, and a total of four points. I was concerned that he was shooting poorly and had four turnovers at the half… but he turned it around in the second half, played solid with his ball handling and ended up with 9 assists.

St. John’s is a team Syracuse should have buried. But it was good to see that they were able to come back from being down in the second half, and then hold off a late Red Storm charge. It’s also good to see that Nichols kept shooting down the stretch, and that Devo and Wright recognized that Nichols was the man to give the ball to.

It’s a win. A big one at this point.

RY

Stats Updated - Milestones revisited

The season is well into fold, so I thought I'd do a brief recap of where the players are in terms of career milestones.

Demetris Nichols has 1,127 career points, putting him #41 on the all-time Syracuse scoring list. Next in his sights is DeShaun Williams at 1,136, and the Martys (Headd and Byrnes) at 1,159. Terrence Roberts is at 898 career points, putting him at #56. He should make 1,000 by season end, unless he underperforms and the team tanks terribly in the post season.

Nichols is up to #7 on the all time three point shooting list with 167. For his career he is 167-473, for 35.3%. Next on his list is DeShaun Williams (again) at 175, and Todd Burgan at 178.

Eric Devendorf is climbing the three point shooting chart rapidly. He is now 90-233 for his career, 38.7%, putting him tied at #15 with Michael Edwards. Next on this list for Devo is Kueth Duany and Luke Jackson, both at 98.

Andy Rautins is 49-152 from the three point range for his career, or 32.2%. He is #23 on the all-time list, one behind Billy Owens and current assistant coach Mike Hopkins.

Darryl Watkins has 226 career blocks, putting him 6th all-time. Jeremy McNeil is next on the list at 260. Watkins recently passed Craig Forth who had 215.

Nichols has 912 points scored his junior and senior seasons. 22 previous Orangemen have scored 1,000 points their junior and senior season combined. The record is 1,406 points. You may be surprised who holds that record… I’ll save the answer for a little bit.

Devo has 752 points scored so far in his freshman and sophomore seasons; the Syracuse record is 1,101 by Lawrence Moten. Only two other Orangemen had 1,000 points by the end of their sophomore season; Billy Owens with 1,096 and Gerry McNamara with 1,001. Devo’s 752 points makes him the 11th most prolific player by the end of his sophomore season; John Wallace is at #10 with 770 pts, and Carmelo Anthony at #9 with 778 pts (course, he did it in one season).

Devo’s 90 three point shots are the third most for a player after his first two seasons; Williams is next with 104. GMac is well ahead at 190.

The answer to the most prolific scoring player at Syracuse during his junior and senior seasons? Mr. Preston Shumpert. He average 20.5 ppg to get to his 1,406 points.

Super Bowl XLI - Orangeman Style

Five former Syracuse Orangemen are part of this years Super Bowl Championship Indianapolis Colts. Marvin Harrison and Dwight Freeney are both starters, while Josh Thomas and Ryan Lacasse were reserves, and James Mungro was on the team, but on the IR all season. This is the most Syracuse football players in one Super Bowl, and bring the total to 27 former Orangemen on Super Bowl teams, 17 of which have won a Super Bowl Championship.

The list includes (alphabetically; asterisks indicate Super Bowl wins):

Dave Bavaro
Rob Burnett*
Mike Charles
Ken Clarke
Larry Csonka**
Paul Frase
Dwight Freeney*
Marvin Harrison*
Qadry Ismail*
Darryl Johnston***
Tebucky Jones*
Pat Kelly
Ryan Lacasse*
Dave Lapham
John Mackey*
Donavan McNabb
Kevin Mitchell*
Art Monk***
Keith Moody*
Joe Morris*
James Mungro*
Josh Thomas*
Stan Walters
Roland Williams*
Otis Williams*
Blaise Winters
Dave Wohlabaugh

Two of these players also played basketball for Syracuse university: Donavan McNabb and John Mackey. Also of note, the legendary Jim Brown played in three NFL Championship games (before the Super Bowl), winning one. And Brown also starred in basketball at Syracuse (along with several other sports).

As a side note, 19 former Syracuse basketball players have played in the NFL. Mike Waters had brought this up on his blog today, so I felt obliged to follow up on it.

Congratulations to all the Indianapolis Colts for their championship. Special note to Tony Dungy who was a class act in his post game interview, and to Peyton Manning for chasing away that terrible monkey that would’ve (unfairly) sat on his back.

RY

Dr. Jeckle Shows Up

The Orange snapped their three game losing streak with a big win against DePaul, bringing their good brand of basketball instead of their poor. The heartening fact was they did it despite poor offensive nights from Demetris Nichols and Terrence Roberts. The disappointing fact was that they once again couldn’t finish out a game, this time nearly blowing a 20 point second half lead before winning down the stretch. I’m sure antacid sales have been very high in central New York this year, and it appears that the need will continue.

Eric Devendorf had his career best effort for the Orange, and Andy Rautins had his first big game for Syracuse.

Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician made a good point the other day about Syracuse struggling when the big guns (Devo, DNic, and TRob) aren’t making their points; nobody does appear to be stepping up in those down nights. Well last night, Rautins showed he may be part of the solution. I had meant to put together some numbers showing the impact of the lack of scoring from the big three, but haven’t quite finished it yet; not really sure if it really stands out statistically as well as we all can intuit.

Coach Jim Boeheim’s post game press conference had some comments relevant to the big nights for Devo and Rautins. When asked about starting Devendorf, Boeheim replied:

"I just though he had given us a lift coming off the bench and just thought it would help him. It helped him and it helped Andy (Rautins). They had something like 27 points in the first part of the game. Both guys adjusted well to it and I thought Eric and Andy just had big games. It was a huge game for them and us. (Demetris Nichols) struggled today. When we have a game like that and Demetris struggles, it’s a heck of a good sign. Terrence (Roberts) and Mookie (Daryl Watkins) struggled. It’s a pretty big win when those struggle and we win.”

When asked about Rautins shooting performance he replied:

“Well we have to work the ball and help get him open. I thought we did that today. Our patience was better and we didn’t turn the ball over and we passed the ball better. We had 18 assists. I thought all that was good. Andy needs help, he needs screens. I thought one thing we didn’t do was when they started switching late in the game, we should have tried to get the ball inside more and that’s something we’re going to have to do.”

I’ll be curious which Orange team shows up Monday versus UConn. This is a game Syracuse should take, and should be able to win big. But will it be Jeckle or Hyde that shows up?

RY

It's Raining Threes (and that's not good)

I have no idea what to think of this team at this point after the lopsided loss to Notre Dame. I think Jim Boeheim may have been right in his 2006 'GMac Underrated' tirade; this team may not have won 10 games without Gerry McNamara last year. Consider that it's basically the same team this year with the addition of Paul Harris, and all the returning players are at the least marginally better than last year (some significantly better). Yet this year's squad has struggled to 15 wins.

Many fans have been clamoring for Boeheim to drop the zone defense in favor of man-to-man; last night he played extensive man-to-man from the start of the game, and it got shredded by a three point shooting barrage never seen before at the Carrier Dome. At one point the Fighting Irish went 8-11 from three point range. Go figure. The 103 points was the most the Orange has ever given up in the dome.

According to the halftime boxscore, Syracuse had only 4 fouls at the break, and Notre Dame only 2 turnovers. Any wonder why the Orange gave up 61 points? In the natural course of playing solid defense you're going to have fouls and generate some turnovers. Was anyone playing defense?

Andy Rautins’ defensive specialty is obviously the zone, which he is good at. Foot speed is not one of his strengths. He had to be removed because of the focus on man-to-man for most the evening, thus only 11 minutes of playing time, despite the fact he hit 2-3 three point shots.

Because of the man-to-man focus, Paul Harris got significant playing time, and got his 11 rebounds; he is absolutely a rebound machine. Lot's of turnovers (4), but at least he learned not to take the three pointers outside his range. 4-10 from the floor isn't good, but heck, if he makes one more shot, he's 5-10 and that's good. He plays with so much energy, so much hustle, that I think he's the rare player who actually has to turn down his aggressiveness to be effective.

Darryl Watkins got eaten up having to play man-to-man defense... it cost him five fouls and limited him to only 21 minutes of playing time. Even then, Watkins needed to play more aggressive.

Devo was just plain out awful from the floor. 0 for 11? Egad. I don't know what else could be said about that.

I've tried to be supportive of Josh Wright this year. I really have. But another 4 turnover effort. He has got to learn to take care of the ball, and to run the plays.

Demetris Nichols had 29 points. I've seen some message board posts where fans think that proves he's a big time scorer because he helped bring the team back. I would argue the reverse; because of the terribly lopsided score, there was no pressure, and he was able to get into a rhythm. I really like DNic, but his history has shown that the bigger the game, the less we'll hear from him.

Terrence Roberts played solid, though the Orange could have used more rebounding from him. He did go 4-5 from the free throw line, raising his season above 50% (he's now 44-87, 50.6%), and his career is now at 158-326, or 48.5%.

Isn't it ironic that this year's team is one of the better free throw shooting teams in recent memory (71%)? The one thing that has always haunted the Orange in the past is not an issue this year. Can you imagine what it would be like if they could not make their free throws?

The season is not over; there's still a lot to be played. I'm less concerned about the wins and losses, though that will come back to haunt them. I would like to see better overall play. Teams should be improving over the course of the season, and this team is still where it was in December.

Jim Boeheim Coaches #1000

Tonight, Jim Boeheim will coach his 1000th game for Syracuse University. Congratulations Mr. Boeheim on the milestone, and more importantly for 31 seasons of leadership that the Orange fans have been privileged to watch.

Fittingly the game is against Louisville, coached by Boeheim's first assistant coach back in 1976-1977, Rick Pitino. And of course, Bernie Fine will be by Boeheim's side tonight... his 1000th game as a Syracuse assistant coach. No small feat in deed.

Let's take a look at the numbers, as you know I am prone to do.

Boeheim's career record is 741-258 going into tonight, with a 285-155 Big East Conference record. He's the all time winningest coach in Big East history, and with no signs of retiring, and nobody else even close, that record will likely stand a long long time.

He has coached 31 seasons, winning 20+ games in 27 of those campaigns (surely to make 20 again this year), making the NCAA tournament 25 times, the NIT 4. He has reached the Final Four three times, and in 2003 showed the third time is the charm by winning the National Championship. He is already a Hall of Famer, inducted in 2005, and has the Syracuse court named after him. He has won 5 Big East Tournament Championships, been to the Big East Finals 13 times, and has been named the Big East Coach of the Year 3 times.

Stevie Thompson has the fortune (or misfortune, some may say) of playing more games for Boeheim than any other player, at 144. Derrick Coleman started more, with 142 to his credit. And Gerry McNamara logged more court time sith 4,801 minutes (averaging 35.6 per game for his career).

31 different players scored 1,000+ points on Boeheim's watch, six of those scoring 2,000+, and Lawrence Moten leading the way with 2,334. Before anyone writes me, yes, Dale Shackleford, Jimmy Williams and Marty Byrnes scored 1000+ points and played under Boeheim, but they did not score 1,000 while playing for Boeheim (Roy Danforth had some of those points).

168 different players had the opportunity to play for Jim Boeheim. 56 of them played 4+ seasons; Jeremy McNeil played 5 seasons (with the benefit of a medical redshirt).

21 of Boeheim's players have played in the NBA, 30 have been drafted by the NBA. Three were named Big East Players of the Year (Derrick Coleman, Billy Owens and Hakim Warrick), and four were named Big East Rookie of the Year (Pearl Washington, Derrick Coleman, Lawrence Moten and Carmelo Anthony).

Two Boeheim players have scored 40+ points in a game (Gene Waldron and Gerry McNamara), and five have recorded a classic triple double (Leo Rautins twice, Allen Griffin, Lazarus Sims, Derrick Coleman).

As mentioned previously, Lawrence Moten is the all-time leading scorer under Boeheim. Derrick Coleman is the leading rebounder with 1,537 (also a NCAA record). Sherman Douglas the all-time assist man with 960. Jason Hart leads the way with 329 steals, Etan Thomas with 424 blocked shots. Gerry McNamara had an even 400 three point field goals for Boeheim.

Boeheim is reaching is 1000th game as the head coach of Syracuse, but its not his 1000th in connection. He played for 76 games for Syracuse, and was an assistant coach for another 230 games. For those of you who are sticklers, that means tonight is his 1,306 game with Syracuse University; if my calculations are right, his 1000th game in association with the university occurred on January 21, 1998, on the road vs Notre Dame, in a game the Orangemen lost 83.63.

Congratulations to Coach Boeheim on this 1000th game. I hope the second 1000 are as wonderful as the first.

RY

Hall of Fame

Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician made a great argument earlier this month about Hall of Fames being watered down, and I've been meaing to compliment him on it. I don't want to rehash all his arguments, he made them well; please check it out yourself. I'm right on board with his perspective.

I think Hall of Famers should be the best of the best, no brainers. If there can be a lengthy debate with valid points on both sides of the argument, then the guy is not a Hall of Famer. That's not a slight to those who are not in the Hall of Fame. It just should be about greatness, immortality. It's not all about the numbers, though they play into it. It's about how great they were at the time.

When I was growing up, Steve Garvey and Nolan Ryan were my absolute favorite players. Ryan went on to absolute greatness; he was larger than life, mythical, with an over powering fastball, seven no-hitters. Clearly a Hall of Famer.

Garvey was a multiple year all-Star, one of the most popular players of his era, among the league leaders every year in hits and rbi's. One of the cornerstones of a tremendous Dodger team of the 70's and arly 80's. He's not in the Hall of Fame... and I don't think he belongs there. He's definitely better than many guys who are there, but I think being one of the best guys every year for many years isn't quite the same as being the best.

Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Henry Aaron, Willie Mays, Roger Clemens, Tom Seaver, Steve Carlton: guys you talk about with reverence and awe. Don Sutton was a very good pitcher, winning 300+ games, but does anyone ever say "I remember that day I saw Sutton pitch...".

Sandy Koufax, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Lefty Grove. Again, no contest. Phil Rizzuto? A nice guy, integral part of many Yankee championships, but again, no Hall of Famer.

I'm also against retiring numbers. Hey, if they guy is memorable enough, the number will speak for itself. Seeing #44 on the basketball court was always a great reminder to me of Jim Brown, Ernie Davis, and Derrick Coleman. Allowing the # to be something coveted by active players, now to me, that is the real honor. I know Syracuse doesn't actually retire the numbers; the ceremony is really more about hanging a jersey with a name on it. I hope they let the numbers be used again in basketball; I know its no longer going to be available in football, and that's a shame.

RY