Syracuse Breakdown
March 12, 2005 11:18 PM | General
Saturday, March 15, 2005
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In the four days up here in New York it was obvious that Syracuse is playing the best basketball of any of the teams in the Big East Conference. They proved it here tonight. They’re not tricky at all. They just have talented and skilled players at all positions and for West Virginia to stay in there after playing their fourth game in four days I thought the Mountaineers just gave a great effort.
People were asking me what I thought before the game and I told them to let me get to halftime. Well, at halftime I couldn’t see anything but certainly I saw it at the beginning of the second half. What I was looking for when the shots were not going was maybe stepping up on defense and the Mountaineers did that. But when you play against a zone like this you have to make your shots because West Virginia has been an outside-in team and Syracuse really gives you very little on the inside with their great ability to block shots.
Because of Syracuse’s great athletic ability from their players on the wings it made it very, very tough for West Virginia to get good shots. Even if you get the ball into the middle because they’ll invite you in there you can’t do anything with it because of their athletic guards and big, big front line. Being able to limit West Virginia’s three-point shooting was the key to everything because they controlled the rebounding on both ends of the floor by out-rebounding West Virginia 41-23.
After Syracuse shot so well in the first half making 58.6 percent of its shots, West Virginia was able to step up a little bit on the defensive end and actually outscored the Orange in the second half 28-27. The Mountaineers were more aggressive on defense in the second half and that is something they can certainly carry out of here and into the NCAA tournament.
Jim Boeheim in the post-game press conference after the Connecticut game was quick to say how talented and skillful John Beilein in what he’s been able to take and do with his team. Then when he got to discussing the championship game he made it clear that they had not set the world in fire in New York City and they wanted to win this tournament badly. He would worry about next week, next week.
But from West Virginia’s perspective, to be able to play against Villanova, Boston College and Syracuse in two days and a night and compete the way they did, that’s pretty darn good in my opinion.
Now we can look forward to the NCAA tournament when the selections are made Sunday evening.
