(4) Wednesday Big East Games 12/21/16

[SJU1987]

What a game ! 3 years in a row we beat Syracuse. I wanted to go up to Syracuse ( I live on Long Island ) and see the game, my family didn't wanna go up there because of the bad winter up there . I have a hunting cabin and 12 acres of land about 30 miles South of Syracuse. Real angry I didn't go up there myself.
Syracuse fans want Jim Boeheim to retire. He just took them to the final 4 last year and they want him out ? spoiled rotten !

[billyjack]

I figured Syracuse would start their decline once Hopkins took over and sucked. This is happening 3 or 4 years ahead of schedule. This will be a great study in bandwagon fandom. The Orange fans in NYC with no actual ties to Syracuse are gonna start abandoning ship. Will be interesting to see the extent of fans bailing on them. Ghe crowd was relatively thin tonight.

Great win for St John's!!!!!

[Irishdawg]

Unreal, I saw the score on twitter from the St. John's twitter account and I still thought it was a joke. That'll definitely wake some teams up heading into league play (hopefully Butler). Johnnies fans I'm sure are enjoying the win tonight.

[adoraz]

Amazing game. Exactly what we needed. A loss would've made Christmas pretty depressing. I'd absolutely take this win over winning the prior 2. This season we're playing for pride and improvement.

Glad the conference is ranked #1, because I won't feel bad if we upset a few teams in conference.

[SJHooper]

Just unreal. College hoops, where the unexpected happens on a regular basis. Cuse was a 13 point favorite and we win by 33..AT the Carrier Dome! Boeheim was there, so they can't make that excuse like last year. Lydon played, so they can't make that excuse if he missed it. We are the ones missing Amar and Mussini, both of which were HUGE parts to the win vs. Cuse last yr. I know it's just one game and we are still going to finish 8th, 9th, or 10th, but man for one night that was epic. This had the same feel as last year. You just keep waiting for the other shoe to drop...or for Ashton Kutcher to walk up the screen and tell us we've been punk'd. This was the most complete game to date. Everyone had a part. To do so against Cuse and throttle them was so satisfying.

[stever20]

Ken Pom impact today....
St John's went from 136 up to 99
Syracuse went from 30 down to 45

RPI-
St John's from 264 down to 229
Syracuse from 173 down to 197

[Bill Marsh]

I don't think you will have to wonder too much. Amar is out and so is Mussini now (infection) for tonight (2 of the major reasons why we beat them last year). The game might be over at halftime if we didn't learn anything from PSU. FYI, if you live in the NYC metro area like me, the game is blacked out on ESPN3. If you don't have the ACC network, you can't see it (unless you find a shady streaming service which gives you viruses). This was a game I had circled before the season started. If we were 7-4 or 8-3 like we should have been by now, the build up to this game would have been pretty big. IMO no way Cuse can lose to us 3x in a row including twice in a row at home after losing 4 in a row to G'Town. Last year we didn't miss all game and they were ice cold (Cooney was red hot coming into the game). They will be looking for revenge. Let's just get this over with and move on to Big East play.

Cuse: 90
SJ: 71

Amazingly accurate on how many points the winner would score.

[Bill Marsh]

I wonder how Syracuse fans would take losing 3 games in a row to UCONN, Georgetown, and St. John's

They won't have to worry about this.

Isn't that what they said last year? Raining down 3's is a good way to beat a zone.

Add to that great ball movement. The Redmen had an incredible 27 assists tonight. Congrats to all SJU fans who keep rooting for their team to win in the face of adversity.

[Bill Marsh]

As we saw tonight, the Redmen actually do some things well:

- 2nd in the nation in total shots blocked
- 6th in the nation in total 3PFG made

[SJHooper]

I can't help but think that the Big East was part of Cuse's soul. Boeheim is leaving soon and they are no longer in the Big East. They are in real trouble. For SJ to beat Cuse 3x in a row with 2/3 coming at the Carrier Dome with some of our most inexperienced or terrible teams ever is really a testament of how far they have fallen. It's ironic how us SJ fans have been talking about our fall from grace, all while our friends near Canada have been in a freefall. People laughed at first when we said Cuse may regret moving to the ACC, and UConn focusing on football. Now it looks pretty clear those were dumb decisions. In the ACC you have UVA which has been a top 10 program for several years now, NC State has their runs, Duke, UNC, even FSU...they are going from being one of the top Big East teams as a national powerhouse to a second tier ACC team. Their Final Four run was obviously luck last year, anyone who saw them play during the season knew they weren't anything special. Nothing like when Melo was on the team. Never thought I'd live to see the day where we beat Cuse 3x straight, but glad I did. We used to get laughed at for saying we are NY's team, now we laugh at them and boy is it satisfying.

It was hilarious listening to the ACC announcers. The entire game they were implying that SJ was just getting lucky and they wouldn't do as well in the 2nd half especially shooting. I guess they didn't know we are one of the best shooting teams in the country. When we are hot, we are scorching. To go from being at the PSU game Sunday to watching this last night, it's like two different teams. If anything, last night proved to me that they quit on Sunday. Last night is an example of what can happen if everyone is on the same page, has a plan, let's the game come to them, and makes the extra pass playing with high intensity all night. On offense the plan was to keep passing and make them move around and as they shuffled their feet, one of our guards would shoot a quick pass down low to Yakwe or Owens in the 2nd half. This led to many dunks. It worked most of the time. Syracuse just looked dead out there. They looked like they either didn't want to be there or totally expected us to roll over.

Just a reminder, though this was a great win, if it was just an aberration, it will not be acceptable. I know we won't play like this every night, but I expect to see much improvement from this point on. We know what we can do now. If there's one clear thing I can give Mullin credit for, it's the team shooting. In Lavin years I remember thinking Harrison was a monster and he used to shoot 35-37% from 3. Everyone else clanked every shot. Well now we have tons of guys who can shoot 40%+ any given night. By the way, this was a great game for Freudenberg to come out and get confidence. You can tell he was confident. He usually shys away from the hoop but he was drawing contact...it was funny you could see on his face that he was thinking "There's actual contact here? Ugh I'm not in Europe anymore, guess I'll take it". The team stuck around late and they were really taking it all in, good for them what a great experience for the kids.