Syracuse vs. Notre Dame

I watched most of Syracuse’s win over Notre Dame last night. Two basketball games in the same week! Luxury!

The thing that really jumps out at me about this team as opposed to last year’s is that they’re calm. Last year Eric Devendorf in particular, and to a lesser extent Johnny Flynn, tended to panic a little when the other team would make a run. A ten-point lead would get cut to three or four, and Devedorf would respond by chucking up a thirty-footer, which would miss, and give the opponent a chance to tie, followed by another forced shot, and so on.

This group, on the other hand, doesn’t do that (or at least they haven’t in any of the games I’ve seen). Notre Dame made a couple of good runs at them last night, and they remained calm, ran their usual offense, and knocked down good shots to keep them at arm’s length. There was none of the knucklehead behavior I had come to expect from them in recent years, which was a pleasant surprise.

Miscellaneous game comments:

— Rautins’s elbow swing was a dick move, and he deserved the intentional foul. Bill Raftery wanted to shrug it off, but he deliberately swung his elbow head high, and that’s two shots and the ball.

— Luke Harangody is the king of what I think of as old-guy ball. He doesn’t really excel through set plays, but gets all kinds of buckets by just lurking around, and stepping into odd gaps to grab a rebound, or set himself up for a pass two feet from the basket. He does what I try to do playing pick-up, only with athletic ability.

— Tim Abromaitis can knock it down from outside, can’t he? Yeesh. Luckily, he was just about the only Irish player who could hit from outside.

— That 2-3 zone really lulls people to sleep. Notre Dame went at it as well as anybody in the first half, but in the second half, they started drifting farther from the hoop, taking worse shots, and Syracuse was able to keep them at bay. I have no idea how it manages to work as well as it does, but boy, does it work.

— Arinze Onuaku went 5-9 from the foul line. Woo-hoo! Any time he breaks 50%, it’s time for a celebration.

— I really like the McDonough-Raftery-Bilas announcing team. Raftery gets a little shticky, and they do sometimes start busting on each other to the exclusion of game analysis, but with the exception of last night’s joking role reversal, McDonough is actually pretty good at keeping things on track.

The Orange get Marquette on Saturday, then the hated Hoyas, both at home. This game capped off a three-game Big East road trip, which they swept. Not a bad start to the league season.