Pitarresi: Oops. SU prediction blows up

Well, so much for that good feeling I had about the Syracuse basketball team yesterday.

That idea blew up in my face after Oklahoma’s 84-71 South Regional victory over the Orange. Really, it splattered all over the place about five minutes into the game, and my whole theory was obliterated about the time Blake Griffin ran over Jonny Flynn like a freight train with a minute to go in the first half.

I did say that the Orange would have trouble with Griffin – trouble wasn’t the right word, I guess – and that the Sooners weren’t a one-man team and that the Orange would need a good game from their guards. They didn’t get that good game for the most part.

Jim Boeheim said afterward his teams wasn’t going to be able to control Griffin and needed to play well offensively to win and didn’t. Boeheim breaks down a game as well as any coach, and that is about as succinct and correct an analysis as you’re going to get.

I had to laugh the day before the game when a national columnist wrote that Griffin might have trouble with SU’s 2-3 zone and hadn’t played against defensive players like Arinze Onuaku and Rick Jackson. What? First of all, few defenses of any kind have stopped Griffin this season. Secondly, truly outstanding defensive players are rare in college basketball. Onuaku and Jackson are getting better all the time as finishers around the basket, and they block shots and rebound pretty well, but they are not at this point outstanding defensive players. Neither of them individually is going to stop Griffin, and, no insult intended because I like both of those kids and they have some big-time skills, the two of them together probably aren’t, either.

Boeheim has taken a little bit of heat for using the word “idiot” in referring to sports writers asking about Jonny Flynn’s possible departure to the NBA, something like “anybody who asks him that right now is an idiot. An absolute idiot. Not a journalist. He’s an absolute idiot.”

Three things:

One, the guy was bushed and downcast after watching his team get hammered.

Two, he said it in a mild tone with a smile on his face.

Three, he followed the comment by adding something like, “but that’s okay. There are some players and coaches who are idiots, too.”

So, that’s Boeheim. His bark mostly is worse than his bite, and I think he can be forgiven for venting a little, especially after that loss.