Requiem for the Orange

I'm too sad to compose any flow into this post, with complete paragraphs and transitions, so let's just go with bullet-points.

• (Apols. to Garrison Keillor...) It's going to be cold to start this week, with a flurry or two in the air - exactly the sort of weather the city would have shrugged off with the distraction of SU still playing basketball. In retrospect, maybe SU's play over the last month is to blame for everyone complaining so much about this winter that doesn't seem to end.
• Remember when CJ Fair was your favorite player. (That's a statement, not a question.) He's a phenomenal complementary player, not a star. Let's remember him at his best.
• At some point, doesn't Ennis deserve some of the blame for SU's offensive woes? He gets so much credit for being relaxed, cool-headed, and under-control but in the same breath we're criticizing the team for looking lackadaisical and seeming at times to play without passion. Doesn't the demeanor of the leader on the floor tend to spread to the rest of the team? The worst part of this final stretch of the season has been how un-fun SU has been to watch as they lose. Meanwhile, I'm writing this during the Wichita St.-Kentucky game. These Shockers run and gun and attack from all over the floor. They might not hold off Kentucky's talent, but they are a joy to watch play basketball.
• My biggest question about Ennis is whether he can play at a high tempo. We know he makes great decisions playing at a steady pace, but given a team with more weapons, can he raise the tempo and really get an offense to hum? My one memory of Ennis really pushing the pace is from early in the second half of the Georgia Tech loss. It seemed like he sensed SU needed a spark in that moment. The Orange looked good, but the game was too choppy for the Orange to sustain that style. I doubt Ennis will be back next year, so this is mainly speculation about what kind of NBA point guard he will be.
• Final Ennis thought...Ennis is a better pure point guard, but Michael Carter-Williams was a better college player than Ennis. (Better defender, better all-around scorer.) I think the same will be true in the NBA.
• Cooney and Ennis are very good but not great defenders at the perimeter of the zone. The 2-3 was still excellent this year, but it never churned out turnovers (and, thus, offense) with the same effectiveness as it did in the Triche et al era.
• SU played great pressure defense in the final minute to scrape back into the game. The flagrant foul (tough call, but correct based on the strict elbow rules) and the timeout granted to Dayton that should have been a travel or an out-of-bounds both sting in my memory.
• My brother asked me to rank the worst SU losses of the last ten years, so here goes...

 5. March 16, 2006 - Texas A&M in the NCAAs. With Gerry McNamara exhausted and injured after his "overrated" run to the Big East Championship, the five-seed Orange fall in the first round to the 12-seed Aggies. This was one of the least tournament surprising upsets ever, as Texas A&M was one of the best defenses in the country that year and everyone knew Gerry was spent. The Big East tournament run was SO worth this loss.

4. November 4, 2009 - LeMoyne in the dome. Hugely embarrassing in the moment to lose to the tiny school down the road. In retrospect, this might have been a useful jumpstart as SU went 30-5, reach number one in the polls, and earned a one-seed in the NCAAs.

3. Last night - Dayton in the NCAAs. SU was who we feared they were, and Dayton took advantage. The ceiling for the Orange this year was never as high as we hopped it might be. We'll always have 25-0 and the Pitt game... (But oh, if that last shot had gone in!)

2. March 25, 2010 - Butler in the NCAAs. SU loses as a one-seed in the regional semifinals to five-seed, eventual national runner-up, and general team of destiny Butler. This is the year (same season as the LeMoyne loss) everyone looks back on and wonders what might have been had Arinze Onuaku been healthy. A-O was probably my favorite center of recent SU teams. Hard to believe he wouldn't have made a difference in this agonizingly close loss to the Bulldogs. The champion that season, Duke, was beatable.

1. March 18, 2005 - Vermont in the NCAAs. For me, his one hurts the most. Hakim Warrick is my all-time favorite Orange. SU was coming off a Big East Conference Championship that had earned them a four-seed. I think the Orange had a chance to make a really deep run but they ran into a Vermont team that played the game of their lives, hitting crazy threes late. When the game went into overtime it seemed certain that the Orange would come out on top, but it didn't happen.

(Interesting note: I was watching the regionals in the Carrier Dome during the Butler loss and producing a webcast of the ECAC Hockey tournament during the Vermont loss, so I wasn't glued to a TV for either. Some higher power protected me from both of those painful memories...)