You are Jim Boeheim! Choose Your Own Adventure!

You are head coach Jim Boeheim. Duke-Syracuse II is coming down the wire. The Orange are down by two. You call a play that gets the ball in the hands of your best scorer, C.J. Fair, a guy who can score from anywhere on the court. Fair attacks the rim along the baseline. Duke's Rodney Hood slides over to get into position. They collide, but Fair smoothly banks the shot in for the tie, except official Tony Greene blows his whistle, calling a charge on Fair. No basket. Duke ball, up two with ten seconds left. You think it was the wrong call. You have two options:

A.) You curse loudly, but bite your lip when Greene glares at you. You spin around and complain to your bench. Then you turn back to the court and scream for a timeout, calling Greene over for a frank, 30-second conversation about the call, being careful not to antagonize him so much that you draw a technical foul.

OR

B.) You curse loudly. You keep cursing loudly. You try to tear off your coat, thinking briefly about whipping it across the court. It doesn't come right off, and, besides, you realize that tossing your coat at Greene, or perhaps using it as a sort of exclamatory whip...that might be a mistake. Instead, you stride across the court, still cursing, heading for Greene. You continue to curse as you get in Greene's face. Greene finally warns you that he will eject you if you curse at him again. You curse at him again. Greene gives you a double-technical and tosses you out of the game. You hang around long enough to clarify your thoughts a few more times, heavily spiced with more cursing. Then you close your mouth and head through the gauntlet of Cameron Crazies taunting you. You reach the locker room and watch the remaining seconds on TV as your team drops its second straight loss of the season.


OPTION A - You keep control and don't get kicked out.

ESPN's cameras focus on you as the timeout ends. You have a wry smile on your face and you shake your head sadly as Greene walks away. You wave your hand dismissively at him and give your team a few quick instructions. ESPN replays the Fair-Hood play for the sixth time, with Bilas and Vitale alternatively sympathizing with Syracuse, marveling at Fair's sweet finish, and generally hedging their opinions about whether or not it was the right call. Ultimately, Vitale thinks the refs should have just let them play, while Bilas insists, "It was either a block or a charge. There's too much contact to be a no call. Ultimately, it's a judgement call, and the judgement went against Syracuse."

Duke inbounds the ball to Rasheed Sulaimon, an 80% free throw shooter. Tyler Ennis immediately fouls him. With 8.5 seconds on the clock, Sulaimon hits the first but misses the second. Down by three, you take a timeout. You set up a play that gives Ennis the ball, with multiple options on the perimeter depending on the defense. Dan Shulman alludes to the Pittsburgh buzzer-beater, but Duke, as they have all game, plays Ennis tightly and forces him to give up the ball. He finds Cooney who comes off a high screen for a decent but off-balanced three. It misses. Jabari Parker rebounds and is quickly fouled with just under 2 seconds to play. He hits both free throws and the game is effectively over. Duke wins, 63-58.

After the game, there is some second-guessing about the late charge call. ESPN breaks it down at length during the post-game show. Most recaps, however, focus on Duke winning round two and Parker's double-double. They also highlight the poor shooting of Ennis and Cooney. In Syracuse, fans bemoan the refereeing, but also start to vocalize creeping doubts about the team's ceiling. Among the Syracuse players, there is much frustration over how they are playing. They are motivated in practice, but a certain naive confidence they had carried before the two defeats has evaporated. You hope to use this as a teaching moment and a chance for them to get better, but of course, you know they'll either take the next step forward in time for the post-season, or they won't.

Overall, the narrative has shifted. Syracuse is not the uber-elite team people were starting to think they were.


OPTION B - You flip out and get kicked out.

For a few moments, all hell breaks loose in Cameron Indoor. In the locker room, you try to remember the last time you were thrown out of a game. Was it ten years ago? (In fact, the one and only time you have ever been ejected was in an exhibition against St. Rose back in 2005.) On ESPN, Bilas criticizes you heavily, saying, "The game is over...when he gets a technical." Indeed, Duke ends up winning 66-60. After the game, (in one of your greatest press conferences) you call it, "the worst call of the year." All of the post-game coverage focuses on the charge call and your ensuing tantrum. Some people think it was the right call. Some people think it was a terrible call. Some people think it could have gone either way. Some people, Duke fans mainly, point out that this evens things up after the suspect officiating in the first meeting.

In Syracuse, it is unseasonably warm, and its hot inside every SU fan's house. Elderly women curse Greene's name. Children burst into tears, wondering why he would make such an obviously bad call. Almost everyone agrees, though, that your ejection was one of the most incredibly awesome things they have ever seen you do. #FreeBoeheim trends number one on Twitter. Freeze frames of your jacket not quite coming off are used for profile photos, and .gifs of your tantrum appear almost immediately. Your approval rating around town is as high as any moment, other than April 2003. People love you.

As your players file into the locker room. They are somber, eyeing you warily. You can guess their thoughts. They are bitter about the loss. They each think about one or two key plays they could have made that might have changed the result. But they all are certain of one thing; if the correct call had been made, they would have won the game. Fair, especially, is certain that Greene made the wrong call. There isn't a doubt in his mind. He knows he made a great play to tie the game. Ennis has his head up. He shot poorly, and yet Syracuse STILL played Duke to a draw in the most hostile environment in college basketball. Keita, puffed up after collecting 8 offensive rebounds, claps his hands enthusiastically. "That was our game! They took it from us!" he shouts, speaking aloud what everyone believes.

Heading into two tough road games, the Orange are eager to get back onto the court and play better. They want to take one more step, improving so that when the next break doesn't go there way, it won't matter. They'll be winning by too much.

You, Jim Boeheim, are waging a campaign.* Getting tossed out was surrendering an already lost battle with an eye set on the greater war. When your best player, your senior, makes a fantastic play to tie the game, but the officials wipe it out with a tough call, you back your best player up. You back your team up. And, if you re-watch the replay in the locker room and realize the call was a lot closer than you thought, you go out to the press conference and call it, "the worst call of the season." You know your team has a lot of ways they need to improve. You know SU's offense is streaky. Your freshman point guard looked a little - just a little - out of sorts against Duke's frenetic man-to-man defense. Your shooter's confidence is up and down. Little injuries are starting to crop up, though you've dodged the big ones thus far. The post-season is just around the corner. The ACC regular season title is slipping away, but it's all about who gets hot in March. The two game losing streak could either be a warning sign or a turning point. In taking the attention onto yourself and onto the one, pivotal call, you hope you've improved the odds that this loss is the latter.

Overall, the narrative has shifted. People don't think Syracuse is the uber-elite team they looked like a week ago. But the Orange players know differently.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Bilas was correct in saying the technicals, not the charge, ended the game. Syracuse had a tiny chance to pull out a miracle if they were only down two, ten seconds to play, Duke's ball. Syracuse had essentially zero chance to pull out a miracle down five, ten seconds to play, Duke's ball. But that tiny chance was worth throwing away.

I'm not sure if Boeheim fully thought out all the ramifications of getting ejected. But for a coach who has never been ejected from a non-exhibition game, and who has only grown more mellow in the twilight of his career, it's hard to believe he didn't know something about what he was doing. Now we'll see what happens.

I am sure of this: as a fan who gets extremely down after SU loses, I was never more fired up after a defeat than I was after this one. Love you Boeheim. Love you CJ. Love you Orange.


*Totally stealing the "campaign" perspective from Michael Davies, one of the two brilliant Men in Blazers, who cover soccer in my favorite podcast.

What Makes a Champion - Thoughts before SU at Pitt

Syracuse plays in Pittsburgh in a couple hours. The Orange have a miserable recent record against Jamie Dixon, especially when the Panthers are hosting. It's very possible Syracuse will lose its first game of the year tonight, and it would be a respectable loss. However, I'm feeling better about SU's chances in Pittsburgh than I have in a very long time. This Orange team plays is comfortable playing slowly and patiently on offense than any Boeheim team in recent memory. They score efficiently. They score from anywhere on the court. And they are an excellent offensive rebounding team, which cuts into Pitt's defensive rebounding advantage, a hallmark of a Jamie Dixon team. I also think this SU team is a just plain tough matchup for this Pittsburgh team. Pitt doesn't quite have the man to man defenders to matchup well with SU's well-rounded attack. (At least, I didn't think they did after the first meeting this year.) This is probably the toughest non-Duke matchup of SU's regular season, but I am predicting a victory with a similar scoreline to the first meeting. Say...55-51 Syracuse.

The larger question posed in my post before the incredible SU-Duke game was whether Syracuse truly is a title contender. Clearly, the answer is yes. In part, I've been persuaded by SU's consistency and its increasingly vaunted steadiness in crunch time. Plus, this SU team is very good in many different ways, better than anyone in a few ways, and much better than most in a lot of ways. If the Orange stay healthy and out of off-court trouble, anything less than a Final Four appearance will be disappointed.

I'm also realizing that championship basketball teams look differently than they did even a decade ago. I'll always judge Syracuse teams against the 2003 roster, and that team's ceiling is out of reach of this team's. But because the most talented players head to the NBA after one season even more often than they did back in the early 2000s, the most talented teams are also young teams. And young teams are inconsistent. Kansas is the most talented team, but they are far from a lock. Kentucky is incredibly talented too, but their title chances feel remote. If Syracuse wins the title this year, it won't be simply because they have plenty of experience on their roster. It will be in large part because of their game to game consistency and their moment to moment steadiness, both of which are boosted in part by the experience of their players, in part by the personality of their coach, and in part by the style of the collective parts, from Ennis to Fair.

Into the Deep Blue: It's Time to See What the Orange are Made of

This afternoon SU goes for its best start ever, and it hosts the famous Duke Blue Devils for the first time as a conference opponent. And maybe, just maybe, I'll figure out how good the Orange really are.

It's not that we've played a horrible schedule, although this year's ACC is a huge step down from the gauntlet that the Big East was for the last 15 years. SU beat Villanova (#9) fairly easily for its best win of the season. The neutral site victory over Baylor was mildly impressive and it's always good to beat Jamie Dixon's Pitt (#19).

But in terms of talent on the roster, I'm not quite sure how good we are. When I look at the #1 Arizona Wildcats, for example, I see an unmatchable balance of talent, from big Aaron Gordon on out to leading scorer Nick Johnson. Kansas has the exceedingly good Andrew Wiggins and the increasingly frightening Joel Embiid, plus six wins over ranked opponents. Michigan State has been banged up, with only three guys playing in every one of their games this season, but they've still only lost twice. (What would SU's record be if Boeheim had to deal with injuries to anyone besides DaJuan Coleman?)

I think that Arizona, Kansas, and Michigan State are all better than Syracuse. I'm quite certain about that, actually. Not that we can't beat them (that's why they play the game, etc.), but those guys have more talent.

Then there is a pack of teams that may or may not be better than us. Florida, Wichita St., San Diego St., Oklahoma St., Kentucky, and probably a few more. Duke is in that group, too, which brings me to today's opponent. Would Syracuse still be undefeated if we played Duke's schedule? No way. Duke lost to Kansas and Arizona, and then dropped two road games in the ACC. A win today would be a giant step for the Orange to go undefeated at home, but they'll lose on the road eventually, at Pittsburgh and/or at Cameron Indoor and/or at Virginia and/or at somewhere more surprising.

Duke will have the best player on the court in Jabari Parker. I'm rather excited to see him play. Quite excited. Trying-to-quiet-my-latent-inner-Duke-fan excited. The Carmelo Anthony comparisons started early, and I think it's very possible that this Duke team might be the equivalent to the 2003 Syracuse team if Jabari goes nuts in March. Parker's averages - 18.8 PPG and 8.1 RPG - suggest he's at best a poor man's Melo - 22.2 and 10.0.

Duke also has Rodney Hood, a guy who can score from anywhere on the court, and who would definitely crack SU's starting five (bumping Cooney). And Coach K has his usual supporting cast of above-average jump shooters: Dawkins, Sulaimon, and Thornton. Their weakness, especially against the Orange, is their height. In recent years, K has just thrown a Plumlee brother in the middle and called it a night, only his current Plumlee (Marshall) is crap. Look for Christmas to have a decent day on offense, and the rest of the Orange attack should be able to attack the rim if they can beat the pesky Coach K man-to-man defending.

OK, I've gone long enough without saying anything nice about the Orange. I do love this team. Tyler Ennis plays PG like Don Draper drinks whiskey: smooth, elegant, and confident. He's the best pure PG to step on the court for the Orange since Jason Hart. His quiet command of the team reminds me of Billy Edelin during the championship run, and his sense of when it's time for him to get to the hoop reminds me of Allen Griffin, only he's WAY more talented than either of those guys. Also, Louie McCroskey has nothing to do with anything, but I just thought I'd mention his name here, because he once groined Hilton Armstrong in the face.

C.J. Fair's midrange game is awesome, and Jerami Grant's shooting is improving there as well. Fair would be a deserved ACC player of the year. And don't look now, but Chad Ford (ESPN Insiders only) has Grant going ahead of Ennis in the NBA draft.

SU is very, very good. But they don't yet have the feel of a true contender, at least not to me. And they have some flaws, glaring ones that pop out at me every time I click on their ESPN team page. Those four basic per game offensive stats listed in big black numbers are not impressive at all: 188th in PPG, 147th in RPG, 192th in APG, 116th in FG%. I always see those bad rankings when I click on my link. I wish there was some way I could make the default stats be SU's defensive numbers, because when you click on that tab, they pop off the charts: 6th in points allowed, 284th in RPG (oops, not that one), 50th in BPG, and 10th in SPG. It's no secret that's the end of the court where we make our hay.

Our defense will carry us far, but it'll be tough to win the title unless our offense improves. Championship teams tend to rack up blow-out victories over the course of the season. SU has only broken 70 once during ACC play, while Duke has results like 95-60 (NC St) and 78-56 (FSU). I'd like to see a few score lines like that.

So we will learn a lot about the Orange this afternoon. And I do think the Orange will win this game. I think the zone plus the dome will suppress Duke's attack enough for SU to pull things out late, as per the usual. The Orange will need to score better than their 71.4 average to do it, so let's say 73-68 final, SU wins. But Duke snags a 2-seed by the end of the year and makes the Final Four.