Syracuse Dunks the DePaul Blue Demons

Dion Waiters and his SU teammates dunked all over DePaul
Photo: Orange Update

Happy 2012 everyone. We hope your New Year's celebration was festive. It certainly was for the Syracuse Orange as they started off 2012 by throwing a dunk party in Chicago and beating the DePaul Blue Demons 87-68 in the process.

DePaul coach Oliver Purnell likes to press for 40 minutes a game -- unfortunately for Oliver Purnell, Syracuse has experienced guards that don't turn the ball over, a ton of athletic wings and big men that can really run the floor. When you take those three things and add in a healthy dose of superior overall talent, the Blue Demons didn't stand much of a chance. I personally think the way you beat this SU team is to slow the tempo down, make the Orange run half court sets and turn the game into a rock fight. Running and pressing is asking for an ass-kicking and DePaul got one.

I'm not going to lie, I didn't watch the game intensely. I actually spent most of the first half putting together a Pack N play, which, when I was a kid, was known as a playpen. I have no idea why these things aren't still called playpens.  Playpen worked just fine. It was an accurate description of the apparatus. If I had to guess I'd say a focus group told manufacturers mothers didn't want their kid in something called a "pen" and boom -- welcome to the world of pack N plays.

So you'd think putting something like this together would be rather simple. Basically all you'd have to do is take it out of the box. That's what I thought anyway -- but au contraire, how wrong I was. It turns out these things have changing tables, bassinets and different levels all built in -- and you need to assemble all these various items. Then you need hook them up to various battery packs that all require different sized batteries, once you unscrew the battery compartment. Since I'm a mechanical moron, all of this took three times as along as it should have. Not that you care, but here's the exact model.

There's more to playpens than their used to be

I was doing this because my wife is due with our first child in a few days and I've spent the last few weeks getting the house ready while we wait for our little bundle of joy. The fact that I struggle to put together a playpen does not portend well for the one million other things I'll have to put together over the next 20 years. To put it succinctly, I am screwed - and my kid better be very careful using anything daddy puts together since there's a 60 percent chance that thing is falling apart.

So while I was distracted by baby furniture and impending fatherhood in general, I did pay close attention enough to the game to know this:

• Kris Joseph bounced back in a big way after being held scoreless last game
• Fab Melo keeps rolling. He's got 16 blocks in two conference games.
• Dion Waiters would average 25 ppg if he played Jonny Flynn minutes
• James Southerland did more than just shoot threes
• DePaul has a way to go before the are competitive in the Big East, but I can tell you this, in a few years the DePaul - SMU game will be bananas.

We were also audibly assaulted by Dickey Simpkins for the second game in a row, which should be illegal. He is easily the worst broadcaster working today -- and given the fact ESPN alone has about a million people calling games, this is actually something of an accomplishment.

In no particular order, here are people that are better basketball broadcasters than Mr. Simpkins:

• Jay Bilas
• Sean McDonough
• Bill Raftery
• Gus Johnson
• Jimmy Dykes
• Bob Valvano
• Charlie Brown's Teacher
• Racist Alf
• Beaker from the Muppets

Syracuse's next game is Wednesday against Providence. The Friars played Georgetown tough this past weekend, but are still ranked dead last in the latest ESPN power rankings, so the Orange have a very good chance of still being undefeated when they take on Marquette on Saturday.