A Reaction, Albeit Belated, to the First Syracuse Loss of the Year

First off, any team with Rapelisberger in attendance and Dick Vitale gently massaging its balls on the mic is the equivalent of the O'Doyles in Billy Madison. And we all know what their hubris did to them:

That's right, they end up driving over the remains of Chris Farley's lunch and taking a ridiculous u-turn that sends them over a cliff. Pitt is good, and Pitt is in the driver's seat, but they beat a team without its best player who has said he was concussed while Syracuse says nothing officially.

Rick got roughed up a bit with more focus on him, and the other bigs need to get their heads in the game. James Southerland cannot take significant minutes and only grab one rebound. And Scoop needs to start taking care of the ball just a little bit more. A 4-13 shooting night plus 0-2 from the charity stripe is not good. He did improve his assist-turnover ratio to 4-2 after going 13-12 in the previous 2 games, but all of those dumb shots are the equivalent of a turnover.

CJ Fair and Dion Waiters were great for the audience they played in front of. CJ had his best game, albeit not the best shooting performance from the line. But he consistently went for the tin despite Pitt's intimidation down low. Waiters handled with confidence against tough Pitt guards. But for all his playing time, it made Triche disappear for a long stretch. If Triche isn't getting in the rotation, he loses some of the swag he needs to have games like he did against Cincinnati, St. John's, and Seton Hall.

And you know what? Better to lose in the middle of January than in March. This team can learn a lot, and Kris will definitely help solidify this group when he comes back.

To John Calipari, That Toilet Overflowing with Shit is also an Amateur

Kentucky's road to a national title will already be sticky enough with having to deal with Tennessee in the SEC East as well as being extremely dependent on the freshmen Terrence Jones, Brandin Knight (cannot be happier that he spurned Syracuse), and Doron Lamb (surprisingly not Israeli). How could things get worse? Well, Enes Kanter can never be an amateur again. Ever. In the eyes of the NCAA, whose standards may not be the highest for amateurism since they pocket billions off of these so-called amateurs. (Ed O'Bannon and every guy whose pro career didn't pan out the same as their college career agrees)
But Calipari's standards could be considered lower. For one thing Calipari may have gone to the Final Four with UMass and Memphis in 1996 and 2008, respectively, but NCAA history books don't remember it that way. The two players who carried each of his teams through those tournaments, Marcus Camby and Derrick Rose, each were found to have been ineligible ex tempore, as Camby had been in contact with an agent and Rose's SAT scores were invalidated by the ETS. Of course, Calipari being the stand-up man he is, was well on his way to Kentucky by the time anyone drew a whiff of his shit-smelling test of character, so what would he care. It remains to be seen how Calipari reacts when the tarp on one of his shit sculptures at Kentucky blows over before its completion. May I suggest a stint coaching in the Philippines? I'm getting sick of the oily hair that personifies you way better than any of your bullshit PR efforts.

Georgetown=Ivory Coast

Daddy said I COULD HAVE THE WHOLE SLEEVE OF OREOS!

I know this analogy is pretty outlandish, but bear with me here. In the Ivory Coast, outgoing president (well, president who lost the election) Laurent Gbagbo refuses to relinquish power to the rightful winner, Alassane Ouatarra, even blockading the road to his hotel so he can stay in the presidential palace. After stalling through five years of ineffective and downright crappy rule, he continues to stall the country's politics from moving forward. This is has led to appeals from national team captain and the undisputed best Ivorian footballer of all time, Didier Drogba, to ask both sides to stop the violence that has claimed hundreds of lives. Gbagbo can't accept these results for obvious reasons: he likes power.
And so do the Georgetown Hoyas. They love having a home court advantage in DC at the Verizon Center, which is also the home of the Washington Wizards (who really suck at using that home court advantage). And they will go to any measure to hold onto it, even when the 'Cuse rolls into town. So what's the best way to do that? Blockade Orange fans from buying tickets to the game and restricting purchases to Georgetown students and alumni. For only this game. One can overcome this barrier by donating $25 per purchase, all so Madeleine Albright can make it rain at the clubs. This is probably due to the 'Cuse alumni presence, but how vain can you be? Any other team coming to visit the Hoyas have a chance to bring a crowd with them. And with Georgetown's recent two-game slide at the hands of the Johnnies and Notre Dame, for whom Rick Jackson delayed Thanksgiving so he could give them 6 stuffings (one of them was Indian style and reminded me of Vindaloo), they need all the home court they can get, especially because Kris Joseph thinks it could get rowdy (around 8:15).
Georgetown's downfall will be its delusions, and it gets no more delusional than trying to shut out everyone who isn't a yes man. Take it down a notch, and stop making 'Cuse fans donate money to your already loaded school so they can enjoy seeing your team get whooped near home in front of Obama.

A few observations from the Richmond game and the parts of the UNC-UK game I could stomach

Syracuse-Richmond
-Arinze looked solid as hell. I don't care who it was against, he didn't even miss a free throw (he took one). His touch looks amazing.
-Devendorf didn't show much ill effect from the ACL, including his own personal 8 point burst near the middle of the 2nd half.
-Andy, however, just never looked comfortable out there and had an ofer from he field.
-I guess Mookie is considered a project? Hopefully he continues to get minutes in blowouts, or he stole someone's ID.
-I felt like Devo dropped acid for those 2 consecutive travels.
-Jonny, why can't you dunk ON people? You always can dunk with space, but when there's someone under you, you hit the back rim. So, Nancy Kerrigan asks:

Must be something really hard in the rim (of the color black?).
-So many instances of the Boeheim face that one could not count them on just the hands, they would need toes and maybe even ears.
-This morning on Anthony Gargano's show on WIP, the kings of sports talk in Philadelphia, they couldn't stop talking about how dumb McNabb was for not knowing there were ties in the NFL, as well as how Jim Boeheim declared he did not know about NFL ties, which led them to call Boeheim dumb too. My question for Mr. Gargano is not a question. It is a statement in bold: JIM BOEHEIM IS A FUCKING COLLEGE BASKETBALL COACH YOU FUCKING RUSTY TROMBONIST. SINCE WHEN DOES HE NEED TO KNOW THE FUCKING NFL RULEBOOK? MAYBE HE DOESN'T EVEN WATCH THE NFL YOU FREQUENT RECIPIENT OF CLEVELAND STEAMERS. I HOPE YOU GET RAPED BY A NARWHAL. THE HORN OF A NARWHAL YOU SHITBRAIN.

UNC-UK
-I bet His Airness suggested the non-button-down with the pinstripe suit for Psycho T to wear on the bench, except Hansbrough forgot the gold chain around the neck. Tyler should instead listen to another former Carolina player: Rasheed Wallace, who sits on the bench in uniform even if he is hurt.
-Patrick Patterson and Deon Thompson are 2 of the better big men in the country. The difference between the two? The guards on Patrick Patterson's team all play like they had their hands chopped off.
-When Dick Vitale starts verbally masturbating to players on Duke or UNC, it makes me write text messages that read like so:

"I want to punch Dick Vitale in the ovaries, then punch Tyler Hansbrough in the fallopian tube, and then bang EA."

Yeah, I'm fucking serious about this. emancipateusfromdickvitale.com coming soon?

That is all for now. I'll be back on Sunday with some power rankings, where I will take these and update them for this week and hopefully for every week the rest of the season. Until then, watch out for the Joe Biden experience...coming soon!