Syracuse students agree: Always good to start the year with a win.
Syracuse begins the 2013-2014 basketball campaign with a familiar foe in the Big Red from Cornell who take the short trip up from Ithaca to play Syracuse, who they have played 118 times before. Syracuse leads the all time series 87-31 and they own a 33 game win streak. Cornell is not that tall, or probably athletic of a team. They are replacing four starters, and had a less than stellar year in the Ivy last season. Syracuse, meanwhile, has a good core of experienced big men, but is trying out a freshman point guard in Tyler Ennis. He will surely make some freshman mistakes. Hopefully he does them against a team like Cornell. The only way Cornell will even get this game to within single digits in the second half is if they are draining three pointers like they study for a chemistry exam (early and often). Cornell is a smaller team and should be dominated inside by Syracuse, in both scoring in the paint and in rebounding. Syracuse should definitely get an even bigger rebounding edge if Cornell is throwing up threes. The question is how well the freshmen and specifically Ennis will be in defending the three point attack of Cornell. There were clear rotation issues shown by the freshmen in coming off the bench in the fake games Syracuse has played so far. Will that come to haunt Syracuse? Maybe in Maui, but not in the Dome tonight. Syracuse will roll in front of a nice Friday night crowd against the local Big Red by 34. This game is available tonight locally on the ACC Regional Sports Network, channels listed here. For the rest, you can see the game on Watch ESPN at 7:00pm tonight.
Labels: Basketball, Preview
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