Syracuse 85, UConn 67: George Blaney’s take

From George Blaney’s post-game interview on Saturday:

“It’s as good a team as I’ve seen Jimmy had. It’s certainly his deepest team. Whether its going to prove to be his best team, the rest of the season will tell you that, but I have not seen one of his teams be deeper than they are. When they get in trouble they can isolate so many different people that can just beat you. Dion Waiters and Scoop Jardine just had phenomenal games and we really had trouble guarding C.J. Fair – 14 points 12 rebounds was a monster games and he’s a bad matchup for a lot of teams including us. We had three different people play him, and none of them did much on him.

“I was really, really pleased with how we stuck together as a team, how we gave a tremendous effort. I was really, really excited about Andre Drummond finally going to the rim like know he can and, more importantly, about posting in a good position and deep and we were able to g et him the ball a number of times. He was phenomenal in how he did that, and he got a lot of rebounds in the second half, too.

… Probably Shabazz’s best game as far as his leadership is concerned, I  thought it was the best he’s been since he’s been with us. I thought he kept us all together, I thought he pushed the ball great when we got opportunities to go on the break.

“ And we got it to 63-61, and then we got a little careless both offensively and defensively and then it got away.”.

“One, I hope [Drummond's injury] is not serious, two, I hope it’s not the difference but it would have certainly been nice to have him for that stretch that he was out. When he came back, he came back good. He got a couple of rebounds and then he started limping on it towards the end.

“We talked about attacking the rim. That’s always been our mantra with big guys, going back to Emeka Okafor when I first got here. We really started it with all the bigs that we’ve had and Andre has been kind of reluctant to attack the rim. In the first half he did put up some soft shots, a couple of misses, and we started screaming at him. He’s got to go two-handed, full force and rip it down. He’s learning. He’s never had to c0mpete before. He has always been the biggest, strongest, most natural athlete in any game he’s ever been in. Now, he’s learning how to complete at this level.”

“I thought the 10 minutes at Louisville  was a real step backwards and I was really upset about it. I know anyone connected to Connecticut was upset about it. We’d played pretty well up to that point. In Seton Hall game, we had addressed that, not giving in, not allowing things to happen. Tonight, Syracuse is just real good. We had a couple of minute lapse. Jardine was played four or five times and he just made tough shots. Waiters is averaging 24 minutes a game and you could argue that he’s the best player in the league.

I would have like to  have had Jeremy a little more ready to pull the trigger. He passed up maybe four or five shots and I don’t think he thinks he’s shooting the ball well, and he’s kind of passing up to get a better shot. I don’t care, I want him shooting open shots. I don’t care if he makes them or doesn’t at this stage. I want him shooting open shots.”