re: 2015-16 Men's & Women's BB I WBB vs. Syracuse - L 72-80

There. I liked it again for you.

John Roche ... I was a student at the time.

I really hope y'all can experience what that was like - in those days. Roche, Ribbock, Owens, Traylor, Carver, Joyce, Manning, Dunleavy, Galloon, Eidlette, Cremins, Winters, English ... star after star after star.

It can be done again. We're getting there. Our fans will support it. Us old timers will pack the place ... because we remember those days. Visiting teams feared our place. It was incredible.

How good were we back then? Every game was televised either by a network or by a local station. And that was in the early 70s. The world shut down in SC for Gamecock basketball.

Students would camp out for tickets in the freezing rain .. for days. Groups had shift systems down ... TV crews would film the lines before the big games especially. And the who's who of college basketball got their asses beat at our place.

We were basketball royalty.

I truly hope y'all get to experience that ... along we me, in coming seasons.

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If Carolina could make the tourney on the men's side, and if Dawn could beat UCONN at home.......

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Our men making the tourney would be huge for Frank going forward. Proves that a winner can be built at SC.. recruits would see the work Frank put in to build up SC.

SC WBB beating UCONN WBB would shock the world. Nobody is supposed to be able to beat UCONN this year. SC would take off after a win like that.. especially if another final four trip came after it..

My thoughts:

A pretty sloppy game, especially in the first half. We cleaned it up a bit in the 2nd half until the final 2 minutes or so when it looked like we started relaxing and Allen kicked it up a notch and started stealing the ball away from us. We heavily rotated most of our youngsters so I can understand the sloppiness, although a number of our veterans were just as wild. I can see now why we scheduled such a weak OOC slate: we'll need those types of opponents to learn how to play under more control of ourselves.

We totally dominated in size and height, so the outrageous rebounding edge doesn't surprise me. I am however much pleased with Eric Cobb: he is the legit, true, real-deal, authentic back to the basket post player that this program hasn't truly had it seems for a hundred years. I saw several tuck-up-over-under post moves from Cobb of the Kevin McHale sort - many of which he missed, but it at least shows he knows the moves, or at least is trying to learn them. Moves which would be like learning Japaneses for 99% of our "post" players over the past 5-10 seasons. He also doesn't look hampered by weight at all - he is 6-10 and not 6-4 or 6-5, but he also doesn't look towards 290 like several reports when he came in. He actually looked under 270 to me. But he's a big rebounding CENTER who looked like he knows what it's all about!!! The world has changed....

I also liked Silva's efforts in the post and rebounding. Liked that Thornwell looks healthy and ready to play. Also pleased that Blanton looks like he can be a contributor this season, and looks like he has a high IQ and can do a lot of things on the floor.

Our shooting was lousy today: have that kind of size advantage and shoot 30%: another one of the reasons why we racked up a ton of rebounds. But it was a start and we did look much cleaner out of halftime, so it's progress.....