Syracuse/Monmouth (Recap)

First, a bit of information about Saturday’s opponent, Monmouth.

Monmouth is in New Jersey.  I think.  If you want more you can probably Google them, I’m guessing they have a Wikipedia page.

Okay, on to the game.

In spite of the final score, 108-56, this game was surprisingly close for the first ten minues.  The guards were pretty sloppy off the bat with Triche forcing the action a bit, and MCW (don’t shoplift!) throwing a few ill-advised passes (mostly alley-oops that ended up about 5 rows deep).  Oddly MCW finished with only one first half turnover, even though I witnessed him throw at least two passes directly to the crowd.

At right around the ten minute mark the team exploded and went on a forty or fifty point run.  It wasn’t quite that much, but it felt like it at times.  Triche hit a couple threes, MCW hit a couple, and after starting the year cold as ice Cooney continued his hot streak from the past few games by burying five threes.  I was getting concerned that he was going to have a year like Southerland did as a Frosh, Sophomore, and Junior where you could tell he had the ability to shoot, but never was quite able to translate that form into succes from deep.  That concern is pretty much gone.

Speaking of Southerland, he’s gone cold from outside unexpectedly.  His form is so perfect I’m still rather surprised that he’s such a streaky shooter.  He finished with a pretty solid sixteen points, and hit some nice mid-range jumpers, but once again failed to drain a three.

The bigs played well, and Coleman continues to do well underneath.  I’m still a bit skeptical once he starts playing against people that can match his size better, but you can see improvement from him and that’s the big thing right now.   Fair had a nice game, highlighted by a thunderous finish on an alley-oop from Triche, and Rak continues to play solid.

Now on to the biggest issue, the walk-ons.   They are horrendous.  The worst group of walk-ons offensively I have ever seen at Syracuse.  They just can’t score – at all.  They seem able to get the ball beyond half-court, but after that they might as just hand the ball over to the other team because nothing good is going to happen.  They can’t even make free-throws.