Flashback Friday: The Freedom Hall Finale

Quick Hitters

-March 6, 2010. Syracuse comes into Freedom Hall ranked #1 in the country and with two losses in the regular season, one to Louisville already.

-Starters for Louisville: Edgar Sosa, Jerry Smith, Reginald Delk, Terrence Jennings, Samardo Samuels.

-Arinze Onuaku for Syracuse is the older brother of Chinanu.

-I put out a poll on twitter with four games to choose from for this next post, and the final game at Freedom Hall won pretty easily. I wouldn’t have minded re-watching any of the games I posted, but this one was obviously a lot of fun.

-Everyone knows this as the Kyle Kuric game, and for good reason. I told myself I wasn’t going to put all of his points on the film review, and I stayed true to that. But there are still several of his buckets, of course. Some of them actually did come from the flow of the offense and it was important to show, but also there were the bench and crowd reactions, and I mean come on…these flashback film reviews are meant to be informative but also show some good highlights and bring back good memories. You can’t see these Kuric plays too many times.

-Jerry Smith was great in the 13 minutes that he did play before injuring his hand. He had eight points, and those were the first eight for UofL. He also had four rebounds. He did anything but let his injury get him down when he was on the bench. He was SO fired up every time Kuric scored. Like I said, just watching that was part of the fun in watching this game again.

-Terrence Jennings played really well in this game on the defensive end. He was only credited with one block, but he had several deflections and hustle plays.

-Kyle Kuric entered the game for the first time with under four minutes left in the first half. When he came back in in the second half, there were less than 16 minutes on the clock and he had zero points. He finished with 22 points on 9/11 shooting and 4/6 from three.

-After Kuric’s first bucket, which was a dunk, Fran Fraschilla said “Kuric is not a great shooter so you have to concentrate on Knowles if you’re Syracuse.” Whoops.

-Fran also said that Samardo was a three- or four-year player so that UofL would have him for a while. He played two more games for the Cards in his career.

-If you were at this game, you know how special it was to be in the building. I was fortunate to be there and it is something I will never forget. The Freedom Hall atmosphere can not be matched, and it was on another level all day. All of the Louisville legends in attendance. Denny Crum. The flashback videos. The caramel corn smell one more time. Sean Moth. The number one team in the country coming to your building for the final game. It could not have been a better day.

-As always, thanks for checking this out. Go Cards!

Film Review