Syracuse- West Virginia

It's been a while since I did a basketball game recap here, mostly because it's been a while since I saw a whole game. Thanks to the DVR, I saw the whole Syracuse-West Virginia game today, in which Syracuse narrowly escaped Morgantown with a win. They had a ten point lead with two and a half minutes, but after Andy Rautins fouled out, West Virginia made a bunch of threes, and Syracuse made a bunch of minor errors, and the final score was a one-point win for the Orange.

The minute Rautins went out, I had a horrible flashback to Maryland blowing a ten-point lead to Duke in the final minute after Steve Blake fouled out, back in 2001. Happily, while Syracuse relies heavily on Rautins, they do have other guys who can handle the ball, so they hung on, but there were some rough moments there.

Miscellaneous comments:

-- The final play of the game saw Kris Joseph miss a free throw with 2.5 seconds left, which ended up as a desperation three-quarter-court heave by WV, because it took a second or so to get the rebound. I sometimes think that it would be worth a deliberate miss in some of these close games, to burn time that way. It'd be awfully risky, though.

-- Syracuse star Wes Johnson had the flu, and while he played most of the game, he was ineffective for most of that time. He was a big help down the stretch when WV was pressing/ fouling to stop the clock, but wasn't much of a factor other than that.

-- The officials were apparently using some sort of random number generator to determine block/charge calls, because I couldn't detect any pattern to them. Guys who were set get called for blocks, guys who were moving drew charges, and there was no consistency. This probably hurt Syracuse more than West Virginia, as they have more guys who try to drive to the hoop, but it wasn't biased, just bad.

-- ESPN kept going to some camera angle that looked like it was shot from a cell phone in the student section. Memo to ESPN: Cut that out. The one advantage tv has over seeing the game live is that there's no reason why my view of the ball should ever be blocked by some shirtless frat boy with a baseball cap on backwards.

-- Are there two coaches with better incredulous faces than Jim Boeheim and Bob Huggins?

-- Arinze Onuaku is shooting 44% from the foul line, which is five points better than his career average. Yikes.

A good win for the Orange. Johnson's illness slowed them a little, but the other guys mostly picked up the slack. Rautins committed a couple of really silly fouls, but otherwise played well, and Triche is more under control than some of the early-season games I saw. West Virginia led briefly early in the second half, but where some previous teams would've lost their composure, these guys stayed calm, and re-took the lead a few minutes later.

They get Notre Dame next, then the hated Hoyas. And the loss to Pitt is looking less bad than it did, as Pitt's playing really well at the moment. If they can stay healthy and keep their heads, they can have a really good season.