Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Pittsnogle vs. McNamara

SU pulled off a big win over West Virginia, 60-58. That should be enough to get them into the tournament. If they beat Georgetown and DePaul and win one game in the Big East they could even get a halfway decent seed. Thanks to the new Big East (and the success of Bucknell and Florida) SU has an incredible strength of schedule rating.
Anyway, Pittsnogle had another good game, hitting some big shots. McNamara of course had another horrible game.
He scored the fewest points among the starters but took the most shots. He was 2-14 and 1-8 from 3. He did however have 9 assists and only 2 turnovers.
Watkins and Roberts had great games and Devendorf continued to provide hot shooting and fire.
The end of the game was very interesting and epitomizes the Gerry McNamara era.
After 50-something team fouls in the game against Louisville, there were only 14.
WVU had committed only 3, so when they needed to start fouling with 6 seconds left, they had to foul four times to get SU to the line. They fould McNamara.
So he's at the line for one and one to seal the game. My dad is on the phone saying he's just like Allan Houston. He never misses, until it really counts. So of course G-Mac missed, but he got the rebound and the crowd went nuts. The white girls screamed and the fans charged the court.
Wonderful.
Except that no one noticed that the best free throw shooter in Big East history missed the front end of a 1 and 1 with 2 seconds to play and a 2 point lead.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gerry McNamara gets love cuz he's white. Plain and simple. He was
understandably exhausted after running around and trying to get open at the end of the game when WVU was fouling. But I was telling Alison before he shot the FT, he was sucking wind and tired and needed to slowly walk to the line to get some air. He didn't and as Paul, Paul's dad, me and maybe 1 other smart person in the world predicted, he missed it.


We gave WVU at least 5 opportunities to tie or take the lead at the end of the game. I think they hit a 3 with under 1:30 to go cut it to 2, but then WVU got all those lose balls, offensive rebounds and McNamara threw up that terrible
shot on the drive when the previous 2 trips we gave it down low to Roberts and he was money. WVU had no one big enough to match up with our front line and
that's why they played so well. Same thing happened at St. John's. It's that simple. As Boeheim pointed out after the game, WVU had no inside presence and
that's why we were finally able to extend the zone and limit the 3s. They still picked the zone apart with passes. WVU is too good of a passing team and we were
lucky that they turned it over as much. Our D was better, but WVU should have won.

I was SOOOOOO ANGRY with Billis' interview after the game with Boeheim. They
said he had heart for grabbing the rebound on the missed FT. HE MISSED THE F-IN
FREE THROW!!!!! WVU players just stood there and the ball came to him. I F-in
hate Gerry McNamara! Paul and I aren't the only ones because Alison sees our
point to. Go ahead Mike, defend your boy.

Paul said...

Announcers try to hard not to criticize, especially ex-players like Bilas. If you want to be taken seriously you have to be fair, which includes calling out a 90% shooter who misses a game clinching free throw.
I'll never forgive SU fans for voting G-Mac the MVP of the title team.

Mike said...

A win against Georgetown and we going Sizzler. I think if we win out and win a game or two in the big east tournament we may even get a 4 or 5 seed. The Big East is tough.