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First thing first, Jose looked better than any SU guard out there. Thanks for not recruiting him Jim.
2 minutes into the game I saw how Cuse was defending us, and like CuseJacket is about a press, I was telling anybody in my section that we need Lammers at the high post and Tadric in the short corner. It took forever to happen, and might of never happened if AD didn't go in to the locker room to take a Grayson Allen(What I thought at the time) which turned out to be a supposed ankle injury not a #2.
The biggest let down of the game was when SU fouled Tadric when we had a 3 on 1, which turned into a 2 on 0 when they called the foul. Jose was about to bring out the New York Jelly Fam, and go in-between the legs off the back board to Okogie for the dunk and the crowd go nuts!
Speaking of Okogie, if he doesn't learn how to hold onto the ball in traffic he will be eaten alive in the NBA (once/if he does make it). Even the worst defenders in the NBA(Harden, Kyrie, IT, etc.) are all still really good at poking the ball out on drives to the basket. He also can't miss all those wide open shots, could have easily dropped 30 tonight. Though, he still made big plays when needed and when you need to duck your head away from the rim like he did on that alley-oop, you know you're flying!
This is a game I thought AD might struggle offensively with and he did. They tried to do the same thing with AD as they did later with Tad- putting him in the short corner and having Lammers at the high post, but any time AD caught it, they immediately double teamed him and he was generally too slow to react. They didn't look to double Tad - maybe because he is shorter?, and he made his moves quickly once he got the ball and that made a huge difference. I was pleased that they did not fall into the trap of settling for alot of threes. The majority of the threes they took were good shots, not desperation ones.
Josh could have had a monster game last night if he had shot the ball well. He was only 7-20. He easily could have gone for 30 if he had a good shooting night. The losing the ball out of bounds at the end of the game was sort of symptomatic of his evening, even though he scored 20. He missed alot of really makeable shots last night and was the only GT player who had TO issues.
Pastner also pointed that out in his postgame radio interview. He was really pleased that GT had only 9 TO for the second straight game. Said 9 or fewer is the goal every game.
The crowd was definitely disappointed in that foul call on what was going to be a breakaway basket. At one point in the second half the fouls were 9 to 4 in favor of Syracuse. You could never get a sense of what the officials were going to call last night. they were definitely racking them up on GT in the second half though.