Email to Chris: Syracuse Post-Mortem
I was writing this as an email to Chris, who I spoke with on the phone after leaving the scene of another Orange debacle. It turned into a blog post. My basic point is we need to keep things in perspective before we declare this season a massive failure and/or declare that Boeheim sucks. Please comment if you think I'm wrong.
I was musing on your comment earlier; if I may paraphrase, "why do we suck when other good programs don't?"
I think we need to step back for some perspective here. Just a glance at the teams who have won the title this century shows how hard it is to stay on top. Along with us, Maryland, UConn, and Florida have missed the tourney at least once since winning it all. Michigan State hasn't missed, but they play in a much easier conference (I think we'd have made the tourney this year if we played in the Big 10). The other champions are North Carolina and Duke.
Even those schools and other powerhouses have hard seasons every now and then. UCLA and Georgetown have only recently seen a resurgence to the upper echelons. Kentucky is a little down. Kansas has won 1 title in 50 years, and they're supposed to be a powerhouse program way above us.
Yes, teams are winning with young players, but they also have a mix of experience. It's worth saying one last time before we put this season to bed: out of our 7 main players, only one of them played for us last year! Maybe Boeheim deserves the blame for some of the departures the program has seen, but two junior guards going down with ACL tears is pretty brutal.
So I don't really think our program is underachieving. I think it was a job well done by Boeheim to have us on the bubble at the end of the season. I think the team consistently played poorly at the end of games, whether it had a large lead or was in a battle down the stretch. I think that is at least partly due to fatigue, and at least partly due to youthful inexperience, and at least partly due to youthful panic.
So let's take a deep breath and start getting excited about next season.
-Paul
I want to get back to being hated, like we were after the Championship. Chris once pointed out to me that in sports, to be hated is to be envied and feared. I get the sense people kind of like us right now. We got a raw deal last year, and this year we suffered through some injuries. People feel a little sorry for us. Next year we'll take a major step towards making the Orange an annoyingly good team again.
I was musing on your comment earlier; if I may paraphrase, "why do we suck when other good programs don't?"
I think we need to step back for some perspective here. Just a glance at the teams who have won the title this century shows how hard it is to stay on top. Along with us, Maryland, UConn, and Florida have missed the tourney at least once since winning it all. Michigan State hasn't missed, but they play in a much easier conference (I think we'd have made the tourney this year if we played in the Big 10). The other champions are North Carolina and Duke.
Even those schools and other powerhouses have hard seasons every now and then. UCLA and Georgetown have only recently seen a resurgence to the upper echelons. Kentucky is a little down. Kansas has won 1 title in 50 years, and they're supposed to be a powerhouse program way above us.
Yes, teams are winning with young players, but they also have a mix of experience. It's worth saying one last time before we put this season to bed: out of our 7 main players, only one of them played for us last year! Maybe Boeheim deserves the blame for some of the departures the program has seen, but two junior guards going down with ACL tears is pretty brutal.
So I don't really think our program is underachieving. I think it was a job well done by Boeheim to have us on the bubble at the end of the season. I think the team consistently played poorly at the end of games, whether it had a large lead or was in a battle down the stretch. I think that is at least partly due to fatigue, and at least partly due to youthful inexperience, and at least partly due to youthful panic.
So let's take a deep breath and start getting excited about next season.
-Paul
I want to get back to being hated, like we were after the Championship. Chris once pointed out to me that in sports, to be hated is to be envied and feared. I get the sense people kind of like us right now. We got a raw deal last year, and this year we suffered through some injuries. People feel a little sorry for us. Next year we'll take a major step towards making the Orange an annoyingly good team again.
Labels: Syracuse Orange basketball
posted by Prof. A at 9:38 PM
1 Comments:
You don't get annoying by making a tournament run once every six years. You get annoying by being there, year in and year out, and making seriously deep runs on a regular basis.
You have to be ranked constantly, or at the very least consistently, and you have to play everybody tough even when you're down and dominate some fools when you're good.
Playing Georgetown tough all year keeps us annoying for fans from D.C. Unfortunately, playing NIT games makes us soft and cuddly to the rest of the country.
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