Men's Basketball

Fast Reaction: 3 observations from Syracuse’s win over Iowa

Sam Maller | Staff Photographer

Rakeem Christmas finished with 18 points and six rebounds in No. 23 Syracuse's 66-63 win over Iowa on Friday night.

NEW YORK In a sloppy consolation game, Syracuse beat Iowa 66-63 in the 2K Classic in Madison Square Garden on Friday evening. Here are a few quick thoughts from the third-place game.

1. Enjoy this

By this I mean Chris McCullough. Because if he hasnt already, pretty soon hes going to figure that he can be getting paid millions of dollars to do what hes doing right now.

Hes got plenty of growing to do, sure, but in both games he looked like Syracuses most comfortable player underneath the Madison Square Garden lights. Even his misses looked good against California and in each matchup he showed a varied enough skill set to be playing at the Garden in an NBA uniform next season.

He finished with 20 points and 10 rebounds and a late steal that helped the Orange seal the win.



2. Christmas plays, Christmas wins

It wont always be that simple, but Syracuse is straight-up dependent on its senior big man for points. He gets the gall and goes straight up every time and hes athletic enough that if hes not scoring hes getting fouled.

He worked himself into some foul trouble again Friday, but came back on with four fouls with about five minutes left and stayed in the game.

Christmas was tossed to the floor on a held-ball tie-up with Adam Woodbury with 1:55 remaining, but kept his composure before hitting the front end and missing the back end of a 1-and-1 with 5.8 seconds left.

3. A veteran kind of game

Trevor Cooney didnt look very good against Iowa. He never looked happy with himself, especially shooting 41.6 percent from the field   and passing out of the press where had a pair of turnovers. But he fought back the Iowa run with a short back-door layup with 1:19 remaining and made sure the Hawkeyes final, desperate shot was nothing more than a baseball throw that fell closer to the sideline than the basket.





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