(7) Saturday Big East Games 12/2/17

[DeePhence]

Hey Deephence,
Pretty sure XU's "YTG" for Cronin stands for "Yellow-Toothed Gnome".

Ouch. A little personal...no?

Let's hope Cooley doesn't get on the bad side of XU fans - I can't imagine what they would come up with to say about his hair.

[BEXU]

Mack totally outcoached the YTG. His opening set crushed the UC "vaunted" defense. Mack's play-calling out of timeouts has got to be the best in the nation. Just uncanny how he can get his team 4-8 pts. a game with great calls.

[ChelseaFriar]

URI is certainly not a bad team but they are a team I’d expect PC to handle with tons of seniors. Remember, PC was said by many to be top 25 worthy.

Would you have expected a ranked Seton Hall team to handle URI? They didn't. And SH just beat Louisville today.

This PC/URI game to me was a complete toss up this year, with or without Holt. URI can beat just about anyone on a given night this year .They'd finish in the top half of the Big East this season.

[MullinMayhem]

URI is certainly not a bad team but they are a team I’d expect PC to handle with tons of seniors. Remember, PC was said by many to be top 25 worthy.

Would you have expected a ranked Seton Hall team to handle URI? They didn't. And SH just beat Louisville today.

This PC/URI game to me was a complete toss up this year, with or without Holt. URI can beat just about anyone on a given night this year .They'd finish in the top half of the Big East this season.

URI is good, I know. But they are still an A-10 team mid major and many people expected PC to be able to handle them I suspect. As for URI finishing top half in the Big East, I highly doubt that. Again, not a bad loss, but PC has some work to do to get back on track with their pre-season projection of being ranked in the 20's somewhere. To me, that's where they should be given their talent/experience/depth.

[stever20]

URI is certainly not a bad team but they are a team I’d expect PC to handle with tons of seniors. Remember, PC was said by many to be top 25 worthy.

Would you have expected a ranked Seton Hall team to handle URI? They didn't. And SH just beat Louisville today.

This PC/URI game to me was a complete toss up this year, with or without Holt. URI can beat just about anyone on a given night this year .They'd finish in the top half of the Big East this season.

URI is good, I know. But they are still an A-10 team mid major and many people expected PC to be able to handle them I suspect. As for URI finishing top half in the Big East, I highly doubt that. Again, not a bad loss, but PC has some work to do to get back on track with their pre-season projection of being ranked in the 20's somewhere. To me, that's where they should be given their talent/experience/depth.

stupid labels are stupid.

[DeePhence]

URI is good, I know. But they are still an A-10 team mid major and many people expected PC to be able to handle them I suspect. As for URI finishing top half in the Big East, I highly doubt that. Again, not a bad loss, but PC has some work to do to get back on track with their pre-season projection of being ranked in the 20's somewhere. To me, that's where they should be given their talent/experience/depth.

A lot of us feel the same way. The loss of Holt was big for us, and our defensive rebounding is especially showing how big a loss it was.

We had big hopes going into this season. Making UConn look the New Jersey Generals in the hurricane benefit helped fuel the optimism. Until it turned out that UConn sucks ass.

The URI loss sucks - first time Cooley has lost to Hurley, first time in 8 years PC lost that game. But URI was favored at home by a bucket. It's the way we lost. 11 missed FTs, 21 TOs and Cartwright was basically AWOL. Still, Seton Hall, justifiably everyone's darling also lost to URI in a neutral site game, and they don't suck. It's not an awful loss, just one that stings given the performance - and it was still a one possession game with a minute or two left. URI almost beat Wichita State (ugh - talk about dilemmas in that game - do you root for Alien or Predator) last year, and yes, I believe they would be in the top tier of the BE this year. (Hurts to say).

Still PC has no bad losses (although we could have lost to both Belmont and Rider, and had to sweat until the end to beat Washington), just no marquee wins.

I still think Cooley gets his teams to play their best in February, and with the talent and depth we have this year, if we did reach our potential, I think we could beat anyone.

So, am optimistic, if so far a bit unimpressed at the moment.

[BEhomer]

Mack totally outcoached the YTG. His opening set crushed the UC "vaunted" defense. Mack's play-calling out of timeouts has got to be the best in the nation. Just uncanny how he can get his team 4-8 pts. a game with great calls.

it's uncanny how they get easy basket after every timeout. he doesn't get enough credit.

[Xudash]

Hey Deephence,
Pretty sure XU's "YTG" for Cronin stands for "Yellow-Toothed Gnome".

Ouch. A little personal...no?

Let's hope Cooley doesn't get on the bad side of XU fans - I can't imagine what they would come up with to say about his hair.

We wouldn't say anything about him like that. Cooley is a class act. Cronin is a complete tool.

This isn't about Xavier fan behavior. And it should mostly be about Cronin's behavior. As Mack said, he was jawing at a JP the whole game. He received a technical foul for good reason.

JP could have handled Saturday differently. Then again, there is not one person here who knows what it's like to participate in that rivalry and, in this case, be exposed to the childish behavior of a very insecure, pathetic opposing coach.

[MullinMayhem]

JP could have definitely have handled it differently. Steve Lavin was talking on TV about how one of our recent former players D'Angelo Harrison had anger issues on the court that often got the best of him. He was sent to a specialist to work on his anger and he came back a totally changed man and exited St. John's a legend. He's our #3 all time scorer and a great person. Maybe he could help JP? By the way at the same time, JP is 22 years old and Cronin is 46. You'd expect a 22 yr old to be a bit more immature than a 46 yr old, not that it's excused either way. Cronin should know better than to jaw back and go after a 22 yr old college student.

[X-man]

JP could have definitely have handled it differently. Steve Lavin was talking on TV about how one of our recent former players D'Angelo Harrison had anger issues on the court that often got the best of him. He was sent to a specialist to work on his anger and he came back a totally changed man and exited St. John's a legend. He's our #3 all time scorer and a great person. Maybe he could help JP? By the way at the same time, JP is 22 years old and Cronin is 46. You'd expect a 22 yr old to be a bit more immature than a 46 yr old, not that it's excused either way. Cronin should know better than to jaw back and go after a 22 yr old college student.

Nice story about Harrison. He was a fabulous player for St. John's, and I loved watching him play. That said, it's a stretch (I think) to argue that Macura has "anger issues". JP has never gotten into a physical altercation on the court that I am aware of. He did get in trouble for mooning someone at a bar in Cincinnati last year, but that's it as far as I know. I don't view his Gator chomp at the Wiscy student section as anything more than getting back at them because they were screaming profanities at him all game long (the chomp was hilarious, BTW, and if anyone at that game had anger issues, it was the Wiscy students).

As far as the Shootout "incident", this was all on Cronin (aka the YTG). There are eye-witness reports that YTG was screaming at JP during the first half, before and during the technical assessment to JP, a UC player, and YTG. I probably would have told the YTG to "F*** off", given what transpired. At the game's end, it was the YTG who decided not to shake several XU players' hands. One was JP, who told YTG to "F*** off" again. But like the Wisconsin game, the only one demonstrating anger issues was the YTG who screamed "You want a piece of me, you "m***f***?" and charged at JP. YTG had to be restrained by an official and one of his coaches. JP ignored him. The sequence at the end of the game happened right in front of me, so I can vouch for what happened.

I get that JP is one of those guys you hate unless he's on your team. But he's a warrior, as Coach Mack said in the presser, and his "antics" generally involve running his mouth just like everyone else does on the court. JP is just better at it.