Syracuse Orange down North Carolina State Wolfpack 88-72 - NCAA Basketball
Syracuse Orange have been the best team of NCAA Basketball Tournament 2011 so far.
They have crushed every team they have faced and just a night ago, in what was their first road game, they proved why they are the top contenders for the title, as they overpowered North Carolina State Wolfpack 88-72.
All their previous wins have come at home, and Orange don’t have a good track record playing away.Keeping that in my mind, this was an important win for the team- one that will take their confidence to whole new level.
Dion Waiters and Kris Joseph starred for the winning team.
Waiters scored his career high 22 points including 9 for 14 from inside the arc, while Joseph pounded 21 points on 4 for 4 from the charity stripe and pulled down 5 rebounds as well. Dion was pleased with how his team went about
this game.
"We knew they were going to come out throwing punches and we had to be ready to throw punches back. With the No. 1 team coming inside here, we knew it was going to be a hostile environment but we had to stick together as a unit,
play together and do everything we usually do in practice."
C.J Williams marshalled the Wolfpack with a game high 25 points including 3 for 5 from the downtown. C.J Leslie had 13 and 6 rebounds whereas Richard Howell accumulated 12 points.
The first ten minutes of the game belonged to the Wolfpack.
All the three top scorers for Wolfpack fired right from the very beginning and got their team off to a dominant 12-4 start. Joseph and Waiters then replied with a 9-4 burst in the next few minutes to bring Orange back on track,
however North Carolina boys were in aggressive mode. They kept attacking at the Orange basket regularly to get ahead by 7 points 24-17, midway through the first half.
What followed in the next ten minutes completely stunned the Wolfpack.
Orange changed gears on the offense and also strengthened their defence to complete a mind blowing, game changing 30-9 spurt to end the first half, dominating at 47-33.
The Wolfpack recovered quickly though and replied with a 21-5 burst of their own to go ahead by 54-52, minutes into the second half. The scores got levelled at 54 all, however after that, Waiters and Joseph upped the ante to take
Orange’s lead to double digits 74-63 with around six minutes remaining.
Wolfpack never managed to recover and failed to bring the lead down to even single digits until the end.
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