C's Fall Short vs. Cavs Again: Cleveland 103-Boston 97

[wfcooper@tiac.com (Bill Cooper)]

	Chuck's little brother, Wesley, did it to the C's again,
making up a 5 point Cleveland deficit with 6:30 to go in the game.
=46rom there on out the Cav's collapsing defense, together with the
efforts of Kemp and Ilgaukas, pulled Cleveland through to the victory.
All of this despite a new franchise high in turnovers with 32 (also
the Celtic high this season).  The Celts activated Bruce Bowen for
this game and sent John Thomas to the injured reserve list.  Travis
Knight couldn't play tonight do to a deep thigh bruise.  Rookie Brevin
Knight couldn't play for the Cav's.

	Recognizing that the Cav's were without any kind of point
guard this evening the Celts went to the pressure early and often and
got results all evening long.  Cleveland turned the ball over on 5 out
of their first 7 possessions as the Celts took a 10-2 lead.  Fratello
got his guys calmed down, and the Celtics failed to take advantage of
many of the Cav turnovers to allow Cleveland back into the game.  Over
about 5 minutes of playing time, the Cavs outscored the C's 22-13 to
take a lead (24-23).  The Dee and Dana came of the bench to hit 3's to
put the C's back on top.  Boston led at the end of the quarter 31-26.

	The Celtics started out the second quarter cold, as the Cavs
grabbed a 32-31 lead.  Behind some nice play from Danny Ferry the Cavs
went on a 13-4 run to take a 46-40 lead, with about 5:00 to go.  The
C's tightened up the D and held the Cavs to just 4 points over the
remainder of the period, as they closed to within 2 (50-48) at the end
of the half.

	The Celts built themselves a quick 58-53 lead at the start of
the 3rd, converting on some more Cleveland turnovers.  The Cavs struck
back with a 12-0 run of their own (Ilgaukis 6 points from the free
throw line) to take a 65-58 lead.  The Celts battled back, and after a
Bruce Bowen lay up from Tyus Edney, trailed by 3 (72-69) going into
the 4th.

	The Celts got some offense from a fairly unlikely source as
Walter McCarty chipped in with 8 points (2 threes!) to help the Celts
to an 85-80 lead with 7:00 to go in the game.  That's when Wesley hit
the two consecutive threes to make up the lead and give the Cavs an
86-85 lead.  The Cavs added three more before the C's could score
again.  Despite Pitino calling timeouts every 4th possession the Cav's
built the lead to 6 at 92-86.  The closest the Celts could get after
that was 94-91, but Kemp came back to hit a tough J to keep the Cav's
lead stable.  The final was 103-97.

	Very weird stats in this game.  You have your choice of
conundrums (connundra?): How did a team with 32 turnovers win a game?
or How did a team that shot .438 while allowing it's opposition to
shoot .583 even get close?  The Celts "only" committed 19 turnovers of
their own and outrebounded the Cav's on the offensive boards 13-8
(honestly it should have been more, after all the Celts missed 45
shots while the Cavs missed just 22).   The Cavs went to the free
throw line 44 times (while attempting only 53 shots) and hit 36.  One
more strange number from the game.  No Cav's player attempted more
than 9 shots.

Lineups:
Celts: Edney, Mercer, McCarty, Walker, Ellison
Cavs: Anderson, Person, Henderson, Kemp, Ilgaukas

Players:
Walker: His stat line from tonight's game will undoubtedly cause much
wailing, rending of garments, etc, among the masses.  He shot 9-29,
for 24 points, had 7 boards, 4 assists, 4 steals and 1 turnover.  he
was the only Celtic who tried to get anything done in the low post,
but fell victim to the excellent collapsing Cleveland defense.  I
can't honestly say that if Walker had taken fewer shot, that it's
likely that his teammates could have hit any more.  I would have liked
to see him face up and drive in from the outside more, though.  Once
the Cleveland defense got set up the C's had serious problems all
night long.  Walker played a little center again tonight as the Celts
lost DeClercq and McCarty to fouls and nearly lost Pervis.

Edney: a relative bright spot, as he scored 13 points, and had 7
assists, 4 steals and 2 turnovers in 29 minutes.  His biggest drawback
is that he continues to get called for touch fouls, that keep his
playing time down and send opposition players to the foul line.

Mercer: had a hard time finding good opportunities, with just 11 shot
attempts in 36 minutes (made 5).  Scored 14 points, and had 3 assists
and a steal.

McCarty: the only Celtic who really shot well in this game as he
scored 15 points on 6-9 shooting.  Just had 2 boards: also 3 assists
and 2 steals in 28 minutes, before he fouled out.  Walter, for all his
quickness is a little vulnerable to one-on-one drives to the basket.
Saw that several times tonight.

Ellison: A non- factor in tonights game.  He played for 24 minutes and
had 5 points, 6 boards and 2 blocks and 2 steals.  Perhaps he had to
play more carefully with Knight out.=09

Dana: hit 2-3 from beyond the arc, but couldn't get anything going
closer as he scored 7 points on 2-6 shooting, had 1 assist in 17
minutes.  While Edney's drives down the paint where fairly successful,
the Cav's shut down Dana's expeditions along the baseline completely.

Bowen: it was nice to see Bruce back.  He had a little trouble with
turnovers early, but settled down and made a nice contribution with 6
points, 2 offensive boards and a steal in 14 minutes.  He's wearing
one of these clear masks.

DeClercq: Got extra minutes due to Knight's injury and managed to
stretch his 6 fouls over 15 minutes.  He scored 6 points but didn't
get a rebound in his 15.  He got matched up against Ilgaukas, who has
more skills and 5 inches of height and Andrew was a tad overmatched.

Brown: Another poor shooting night for Dee (2nd in a row) at 2-8.  he
did have 5 assists, 1 steal and 3 turnovers to go with his 7 points.

Minor: only got 5 minutes.  Not sure why.  Greg at least might have
crashed the boards in this one.

Billups: Also got 5, on the plus side he had 1 assist and 0 turnovers.

Coaching: A fascinating battle between two defensive gurus with
totally opposite philosophies.  Pitino wants to contest all 94 feet,
while Fratello just wants to play out to the 3 point arc.  And both
defenses were successful at what they wanted to do, as the Cav's held
the Celts to just .438 shooting, and the Celts caused 32 Cav turnovers
(including 2 5 second violations).  At this point, you have to say
that Fratello won because his talent is a little more developed.
Though I'm sure Pitino would say that his team shouldn't have
committed 19 turnovers against the moderate Cleveland pressure.
	For the second game in a row, Rick ran out of timeouts, long
before crunch time.  Tonight he used his last one with 3:49 to go.  I
guess that we'll know that Rick thinks the Celts are ready to compete
in close games when he actually has some timeouts left in the last 30
seconds.

Bill Cooper
wfcooper@tiac.com=20