SWC75
Bored Historian
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(as you can tell by the first paragraph, I started this a week ago but I just finished it tonight)
We started this season 25-0 and are now 27-5. Jim Boeheim has said publically that he’s pleased with the 27-5 record because it exceeded his expectations for the season. Maybe he’d be pleased with 27-6 for the same reason but I doubt it. How you got there matters and 25-0, then 2-5 or 2-6 isn’t very pleasing. What would it take to give this season a good, or at least acceptable ending? If we could make it to 6-6 after 25-0 and wind up 31-6, that would be pretty good. It would mean we made it to the Final Four. Anything less and we have a losing record after the 25-0 start. (33-5 would be nice.)
I decided to take a look at how our season have ended in the Boeheim Era, when there is a trend in one direction or the other. In the pre-Big East years, the whole schedule was like November and December is now: mostly teams we could handle form the Northeast, with an occasional game against a top opponent, either from the East or another section of the country. Of course, we had Louie and Bouie back then, so we had strong teams who usually had no trouble with anybody who wasn’t good themselves. With the start of the Big East, the script for each season was that in the November/December period we played teams we could usually handle with a couple of exceptions. Then we’d go into the Big East and play better teams that were familiar with us. We’d usually have a significant slump, generally in February and it would come down to whether we could pull out of that in time for a good post season run- exactly what has happened this year.
1976-77: We went 26-4 with the four losses well spaced: we had 7, 11, and 7 losses between them
1977-78, 22-6: We started 11-1, lost 3 of 5 between 1/14-30, then won 8 in a row. We then lost by a point to St. Bonaventure in the first round of the ECAC playoffs and by one point to Western Kentucky in our first NCAA game.
1978-79, 26-4: We won our first 6, then lost to Illinois and Kentucky in the Kentucky Invitational, then ran the table for the rest of the regular season, ripping off 18 wins in arrow. We got revenge on the Bonnies in the ECACS but then lost to Georgetown. We beat Connecticut in the first round of the NCAAs but then lost to Pennsylvania.
1979-80, 26-4: We bolted to a 14-0 record, lost on a shot that was actually after the buzzer at Old Dominion, then won 7 more in a row before John Thompson “closed” Manley. We won three more to go 5-1 in the Big east’s first, abbreviated season and beat UCONN but lost again the Hoyas in the first ever BET. We beat Villanova, (not yet a Big East team) in the NCAAs but then lost to Iowa. We basically never had a slump during the Louie and Bouie era, save for the mini one in January of ’78.
1980-81, 22-12: The Louie and Bouie show gave way to the Tri-Captains Era, (Rautins, Santifer and Bruin), which was not as good, both because we had no real center on the team and because the competition was better. The first team of this era won 7 of their first 8 games but had a very bumpy ride the rest of the regular season, going 7-10 the rest of the regular season The BET was played in the Carrier Dome for the only time that year and we won it in Triple OT against Villanova on the Rautins tip-in, SU’s consensus “greatest game” until the 6OT game 28 years later. There was no automatic bid yet and we got snubbed by the NCAA but continued the run to the Finals of the NIT, where we lost in overtime to Tulsa after the refs had fouled out 4/5 of our starting line-up.
1981-82 16-13: Jim Boeheim’s worst record. The team never really got going, never winning more than 3 in a row. It didn’t help to loose Leo Rautins for seven games in the middle of the season. We blew a 12 point lead to lose to BC in the BET opener and went 1-1 in the NIT. Just a forgettable year.
1982-83 21-10: The Tri-Captains finally got rolling with an 11-0 start. Then we got crushed at UNC and stumbled to a 10-10 finish, including 1-1 and both the BET and the NCAAs. The Tri-Captains three year record: 59-35. But the Dome was new and tans were excited.
1983-84, 23-9: Pearl and the A Team, (Addison and Alexis), took over. We still had problems at center until Rony Seikaly matured in the next era. We ahd an 8-3 start with another loss to UNC and Michael Jordan and losses at Marquette and in the Dome to Billy Tubb’s first good Oklahoma team. Then we won our first six Big East games until Georgetown cooled us down and we went 6-4 the rest of the regular season. We made it to the BET finals and lost in OT to the Hoyas, (the Michael Graham game). We then split two NCAA games.
1984-85, 22-9: We had an 8-0 start, lost 3 of 6, won 4 ina row, lost a one-pointer to BC and won another 4 in a row to go to 19-4. But we lost 3 of 4 to end the regular season and split two games in both the BET and the NCAAs.
1985-86, 26-6: We roared out to a 13-0 star with an average margin of victory of 26 points. Then we lost at Georgetown and Louisville. We won 9 of our next 10, lost to St. John’s in the Garden, beat UCONN to finished the regular season at 23-4, then lost to the Johnnies again in the BET finals on Walter Berry’s block of the Pearl’s lay-up. It was one of our best teams but after Michael Brown left and Raf Addison got hurt, (so did SeikalY0, we lacked a perimeter game and when we had to face David Robinson again, (we’d beaten navy by 22 in the Carrier Classic final), we had to go to the basket to score and the Admiral and the refs, (Navy wen to the line 33 more times than we did), wouldn’t allow that so we lost.
1986-87, 31-7: The “Powerhouse” Era” began with another dominating start- 15-0 with an average winning margin of 16 points a game. Then a loss at Michigan began a 4-4 stretch, including a 2 point overtime loss at Georgetown. They also beat up in the Dome by one and then by 10 in the BET Finals. Then we charged to the NCAA finals and lost to Maxwell Smart. Missed it by that much… But a 12-3 ending was pretty good.
1987-88, 26-9: We started out ranked #1 and lost to North Carolina and Arizona in the same week. We then won 10 in a row but then lost to Villanova, Connecticut and Georgetown in a four game stretch. Then we won 8 of 9, (the loss: Georgetown). Then we lost at Kentucky, 9the blue uniform game), beat Nova and lost to Pittsburgh. But for the second time we wrong the BET. We lost to Rhode Island in the second round of the NCAAs in a game where Sherman Douglas was so sick he lay down flat on his back during time outs. Still, the stretch run was 13-4.
1988-89, 30-8: Another wonderful start: 13-0, averaging 103 points a game and winning by an average of 25 points. Then came a stunning 4 losses in 5 games from 1/04-1/16 in which we averaged only 73 points a game. We put the wheels back on and went 8 in a row before losing to…Georgetown. Then we won 4 of 5 to end the regular season. The Hoyas beat us again in the BET finals. We went to the elite 8 and lost a close on to Illinois. The finish was 16-4, not bad.
1989-90, 26-9: We again started out ranked #1 but this time held onto it through a 10 game winning streak covering the first month of the season. It was another dominating performance as we averaged 94.5 points per game and won by an average of 24 points. Then we lost 3 of 5 from 1/6-1/20. We pulled ourselves together to win 6 in a row and then lost to Villanova and Notre Dame, (on Elmer Bennett’s shot). Then came another 6 game winning streak, ending in a loss to Jim Calhoun’s first really good Connecticut team in the Big East Final. We got to the Sweet 16 but lost to Minnesota in the Tony Scott debacle. But we were 14-4 after the January slump.
1990-91, 26-6: The last team of the Powerhouse Era avoided any regular season slump to win the Big east title outright but then had a post season slump that ruined everything. Again we came out of the gate like a house afire, winning 13 in a row by 17 points a gain while averaging 92. We did lose to Villanova and Pittsburgh, then won 13 of 15 and had a 16 point second half lead against Villanova in the BET opener. I remember Doug Logan and his color man discussing the next opponent while the Wildcats kept scoring. They eventually caught SU and beat us 68-70. I think the team was still in shock the next week as they sleep-walked through a loss to Richmond, the first 15 seed to beat a 2 seed. And with the that the Powerhouse Era came to an end. Despite what happened this season, I think the powerhouse teams simply had too much depth and talent to run out of gas at the end of the year. That would not be the case in many of the succeeding years.
1991-92, 22-10 The first team of what I’ll call the Prohibition Era, (nothing about speakeasies, please). We weren’t on prohibition year but were being investigated and it was impacting our recruiting. But we won our first 10 games. We ran into our perennial nemesis, Pittsburgh and got beat 74-93. But we still moved on to a 16-3 record before the slump hit. We lost four in a row and 6 of 8 to end the regular season. But we rallied to win the BET for the third time, over Georgetown, no less and beat princeto0n in the first round of the NCAAs before losing to Massachusetts in overtime.
1992-93, 20-9: We won our first 8 games, then lost our first three Big East games. But we didn’t lose consecutive games the rest of the year and went to the finals of the BET, where our season ended due to the probation.
1993-94, 23-7: We were eligible for the post season again but still affected by having been on probation. This was when the Big East experimented with some early season games and our first loss came at the hands of Boston College in game #5. We never lost consecutive games all season. We lost to Seton Hall by a point in overtime in the first round of the BET and made it to the Sweet 16 where we lost to Missouri in overtime after Adrian Autry’s shot from the floor was disallowed.
1994-95, 20-10: We lost the real last game in Manley to George Washington in overtime to start the season, (the Dome was unavailable for reasons I can’t recall). We then ripped off 14 wins in a row and rose to #6 in the rankings before going down 75-86 at rising power Connecticut. That led to an amazing collapse: a 6-9 finish, including the infamous Arkansas “time out” game.
1995-96, 29-9: We won 11 in a row before getting crushed by Massachusetts’s greatest team in the only game we’ve ever lost in Hawaii, 47-65. It began a rough stretch where we went lost 6 of 9. From there we won 5 in a row, lost a single game and then did that twice more, the last a loss in the national championship game. This certified our return to prominence, (we were never far from it), and ended the probation era. It’s interesting that only one of these five seasons featured a late-season and post-season collapse, even tho0ugh our talent and depth had to have been below normal.
1996-97, 19-13: I’ll call this the post-probation era when our recruiting amped up with the five man class of Winfred Walton, Etan Thomas, LaSean Howard, Rock Lloyd and Jason Hart. Too bad that only two of them stayed around for a full four years. This first team of the era just had too much reliance on the new players and never really got anything going. They split their first 6 games, won 5 of 6, lost 2, won 2, lost, won 3 in a row, lost 3 of 4, won 4 in a row an closed by losing 3 of 4, including a dismal first round NIT game vs. Florida State in a virtually empty Dome. The team didn’t collapse: it was just never that good to begin with.
1997-98, 26-9: We looked more like a Syracuse team, winning our first 11 games before getting crushed by one of the last good Michigan teams of that era in Puerto Rico, 61-93. It started a 9-7 stretch. But we ended the year winning 6 of 8 with the only losses being to Connecticut in the BET finals and to Duke in the Sweet 16.
1998-99 21-12: One of our most disappointing teams. They had basically the same personnel of the next year’s much more successful group. A 6-0 start including a win in the Maui Classic final over Bob Knight’s Indiana team got people excited. JB insisted: this isn’t a good team yet” but nobody would listen- until we started losing. We lost 3 of 4, won 4 in a row, lost 2 of 3, won 2, lost, won 2, lost 2, won 2, lost 2 of 3, lost to UCONN again in the Big East semis and sleep-walked through a 61-69 loss in an 8-9 game to Doug Gottlieb’s Oklahoma State team. Like the 1996-97 bunch, this team didn’t so much collapse as they simply weren’t very good. This was the team that achieved an all-time nadir of effort: they were behind providence in the Dome and began fouling to get the ball back. Incredibly, the Friars accommodated us by missing 9 straight free throws. Even more incredibly, we accommodated them by letting them get inside to grab the rebound all nine times. The Providence players were actually laughing at our players by the end of this and the Dome crowd was roundly booing the team for one of the only times I can remember. JB said after the game that he didn’t blame them.
1999-00, 26-6: A year more mature and probably embarrassed by what had happened the year before, basically the same team came out and set a school record by winning its first 19 games including an 88-74 demolition of defending national champion Connecticut in the Dome. Anything seemed possible. But the friction did seem to be building up a little: of the first 16 of those games, only one was not won by double figures. Then we had a couple of close ones and finally lost to Seton Hall and at Louisville. Then came 2 wins and a loss and 3 wins in a row. We closed the regular season by losing by 15 at Connecticut and then lost to Georgetown in the first round of the BET. We got to the Sweet 16 and took a 40-26 second half lead on eventual champion Michigan State before totally collapsing to a 58-75 final.
2000-01, 25-9: I’ll call these the “championship years” as they include the lead-up to and then our greatest basketball achievement. This first team was not as good as the previous year’s team but did a pretty good imitation, starting 15-1 before going thro0ugh a 5-6 stretch. Then we won 4 in a row, losing in the BET to a suddenly feisty Pittsburgh team 54-55 in OT in the game where Preston Shumpert got poked in the eye. We got crushed by Kansas in the second round of the NCAAs but the real slump was from 1/21-2/24. We were 5-2 after that.
2001-02, 23-13: This is the team that included the two classes that brought us the national title: Craig Forth, Mark Konecny, Hakim Warrick, Josh Pace and Billy Edelin. But Edelin was suspended and Konecny was a bust. The team as a whole wasn’t ready. But they started 9-0 before JB had his prostate surgery. We lost the two games he was out, the won 7 more in a row. 16-2. Then they completely fell apart, going 7-11 down the stretch. We did make it to the NIT “Final Four” but lost both games there, one in our practice uniforms.
2002-03, 30-5: Carmelo Anthony and Gerry McNamara joined Edelin, Forth, Warrick and Pace, (as well as Kueth Duany and Jeremy McNeil) to carry us to the national title. But we lost our opener to Memphis then won 11 in a row. We lost, won 2, lost, won 3 and lost again. Then we won 14 of 15 to finish the year, 9we never did beat Connecticut).
2003-04, 23-8: The championship era might have continued but Carmelo jumped to the pros so I’ll call this the post-championship era. I thought having had a taste of a championship and returning so many players form that team for multiple years, we would see more consistent success from the team because the championship players would know what it took and teach that to others. I also th0ought that our recruit would climb to a level that was second to none: after all we had the biggest arena in a town where college basketball was the biggest thing and we were in the best time-zone in the most populous area of the country. Instead, we slipped into mediocrity. We again lost our opener, in the Dome to Charlotte and again went on a long winning streak, 13 games. But then we lost 5 of 8. We rallied to close out the regular season with 5 straight wins. We got beat by Boston College to open the BET, then won our way to Sweet 16 where we got upset by Alabama. But we won 9 of our last 12 that year.
2004-05, 27-7: Our strongest team of this period. We won 20 of our first 21 games, then stumbled home 4-5 to end the regular season with an 18 point drubbing at Connecticut. But we won the Big east tournament for the first time in 13 years, only to embarrassingly lose to Vermont in overtime in the first game on the NCAAs.
2005-06, 23-12: Our weakest team of the period. It didn’t seem so when we blew away Bob Knight’s Texas Tech team, 81-46 in our third game. Surely our next foe, Florida, was intimidated. They weren’t and beat us and went on to win the next two national championships. We went on to lose to Bucknell, win 12 in a row, then lose 4 in a row and 9 of 13. But then we rode the wings of Gerry McNamara to the BE title but couldn’t beat Texas A&M in the NCAAs without him.
2006-07, 24-11: We won our first seven but then lurched through a 9-8 stretch before winning 5 in a row. We lost the finale to Villanova and beat Connecticut in the BET before losing to Notre Dame. We expected to go to the NCAAs but wound up in the southern regional of the NIT. We our first two, then lost at Clemson. But we’d won 8 of our last 11.
2007-08, 21-14: We started 12-3 with home losses to Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The injuries piled up we went 8-11 afterwards, ending in another home loss to Massachusetts in the NIT, where we blew a 24 point second half lead. At one point in this season we were down to 6 healthy scholarship players and one of them, (Scoop Jardine) had what turned out to be a stress fracture in his left leg that he didn’t even tell the coaches about because so many players had already been injured. It would have seemed comical if it was funny.
2008-09, 28-10: The second powerhouse era began with a healthier version of the previous year’s team. We started a stretch of virtually never losing before the conference season began. Cleveland State beat us on a 70 foot shot but that was the only loss in the first 17 games. Then we hit the wall, losing 7 of 10. We turned it around by playing almost fanatical defense. We won 7 in a row, including the legendary 6 overtime game in the BET over Connecticut. We led Louisville at halftime but succumbed to their press in what was, in effect our 4 ¾ game in four days. Then we won our way to the Sweet 16 and got dunked by Blake Griffin.
2009-10, 30-5: One of our greatest teams won 13 in a row, lost to Pittsburgh and then won another 11 in a row. We lost to Louisville game and won another 4 in a row, rising to #1 in the nation for the first time in 20 years. Louisville beat us again in the Kyle Kuric game and then we lost to Georgetown in the BET as AO went down. We again went to the Sweet 16 and lost to Butler. That was our third loss in five games but I wouldn’t call it a slump, considering the opposition and the injury.
2010-11, 27-8; We opened with 18 straight wins, then lost 4 in arrow and 6 of 8. We rallied for 6 straight wins before losing to eventual national champion Connecticut in the BET and to Marquette i8n the Round of 32.
2011-12, 34-3: We won 20 in a row. Fab Melo got suspended for two games and we lost the first, then won another 10 in a row to end the regular season and amazing 30-1, ranked #2 behind Kentucky, who was also 30-1. Cincinnati got hot form outside and beat us in the BET. Then we lost Fab again and lost in a regional final to Ohio State. We’ve won the Big East outright three times, won the BET 5 times and gone to the Final Four 5 times. 13 different seasons.
2012-13, 30-10: We got off to an 18-1 start, then tumbled to a 5-7 end of the regular season, ending in a dismal 39-58 loss at Georgetown. We again turned it around with fanatical defense, rolling to a halftime lead over eventual national champion Louisville in the BET final before giving way to fatigue and their press, then winning our way to the Final Four where we lost to Michigan.
2013-14, 28-6: We got off to an incredible 25-0 start and #1 national ranking. But the plug got pulled on our offense and we fell hard to a 3-6 finish that brought a lot of complaints that we always seem to fall apart at the end of seasons.
But do we? Looking over these seasons I don’t find a consistent pattern of teams running out of gas at the end of seasons. Most of our slumps seem to come in late January or February and we seem to usually rally from them to at least do better at the end of regular season or in the post season. I think fatigue impacts Syracuse- and everyone else in the conference tournaments where you can play up to 5 games in 5 days. It may be a factor towards the end of regular season but in a lot of years, late season rallies begin in the final games of regular seasons. I also don’t see a trend of Syracuse “hitting the wall” when the opposition gets tougher with the beginning of the conference season. When we do well in the pre-conference season, it usually carries over into the conference season. Then comes the slump if we have one. I don’t think that the theories that we are hurt by a weak pre-conference schedule or that Boeheim burns his teams out by not playing enough guys is borne out by the historical record.
We started this season 25-0 and are now 27-5. Jim Boeheim has said publically that he’s pleased with the 27-5 record because it exceeded his expectations for the season. Maybe he’d be pleased with 27-6 for the same reason but I doubt it. How you got there matters and 25-0, then 2-5 or 2-6 isn’t very pleasing. What would it take to give this season a good, or at least acceptable ending? If we could make it to 6-6 after 25-0 and wind up 31-6, that would be pretty good. It would mean we made it to the Final Four. Anything less and we have a losing record after the 25-0 start. (33-5 would be nice.)
I decided to take a look at how our season have ended in the Boeheim Era, when there is a trend in one direction or the other. In the pre-Big East years, the whole schedule was like November and December is now: mostly teams we could handle form the Northeast, with an occasional game against a top opponent, either from the East or another section of the country. Of course, we had Louie and Bouie back then, so we had strong teams who usually had no trouble with anybody who wasn’t good themselves. With the start of the Big East, the script for each season was that in the November/December period we played teams we could usually handle with a couple of exceptions. Then we’d go into the Big East and play better teams that were familiar with us. We’d usually have a significant slump, generally in February and it would come down to whether we could pull out of that in time for a good post season run- exactly what has happened this year.
1976-77: We went 26-4 with the four losses well spaced: we had 7, 11, and 7 losses between them
1977-78, 22-6: We started 11-1, lost 3 of 5 between 1/14-30, then won 8 in a row. We then lost by a point to St. Bonaventure in the first round of the ECAC playoffs and by one point to Western Kentucky in our first NCAA game.
1978-79, 26-4: We won our first 6, then lost to Illinois and Kentucky in the Kentucky Invitational, then ran the table for the rest of the regular season, ripping off 18 wins in arrow. We got revenge on the Bonnies in the ECACS but then lost to Georgetown. We beat Connecticut in the first round of the NCAAs but then lost to Pennsylvania.
1979-80, 26-4: We bolted to a 14-0 record, lost on a shot that was actually after the buzzer at Old Dominion, then won 7 more in a row before John Thompson “closed” Manley. We won three more to go 5-1 in the Big east’s first, abbreviated season and beat UCONN but lost again the Hoyas in the first ever BET. We beat Villanova, (not yet a Big East team) in the NCAAs but then lost to Iowa. We basically never had a slump during the Louie and Bouie era, save for the mini one in January of ’78.
1980-81, 22-12: The Louie and Bouie show gave way to the Tri-Captains Era, (Rautins, Santifer and Bruin), which was not as good, both because we had no real center on the team and because the competition was better. The first team of this era won 7 of their first 8 games but had a very bumpy ride the rest of the regular season, going 7-10 the rest of the regular season The BET was played in the Carrier Dome for the only time that year and we won it in Triple OT against Villanova on the Rautins tip-in, SU’s consensus “greatest game” until the 6OT game 28 years later. There was no automatic bid yet and we got snubbed by the NCAA but continued the run to the Finals of the NIT, where we lost in overtime to Tulsa after the refs had fouled out 4/5 of our starting line-up.
1981-82 16-13: Jim Boeheim’s worst record. The team never really got going, never winning more than 3 in a row. It didn’t help to loose Leo Rautins for seven games in the middle of the season. We blew a 12 point lead to lose to BC in the BET opener and went 1-1 in the NIT. Just a forgettable year.
1982-83 21-10: The Tri-Captains finally got rolling with an 11-0 start. Then we got crushed at UNC and stumbled to a 10-10 finish, including 1-1 and both the BET and the NCAAs. The Tri-Captains three year record: 59-35. But the Dome was new and tans were excited.
1983-84, 23-9: Pearl and the A Team, (Addison and Alexis), took over. We still had problems at center until Rony Seikaly matured in the next era. We ahd an 8-3 start with another loss to UNC and Michael Jordan and losses at Marquette and in the Dome to Billy Tubb’s first good Oklahoma team. Then we won our first six Big East games until Georgetown cooled us down and we went 6-4 the rest of the regular season. We made it to the BET finals and lost in OT to the Hoyas, (the Michael Graham game). We then split two NCAA games.
1984-85, 22-9: We had an 8-0 start, lost 3 of 6, won 4 ina row, lost a one-pointer to BC and won another 4 in a row to go to 19-4. But we lost 3 of 4 to end the regular season and split two games in both the BET and the NCAAs.
1985-86, 26-6: We roared out to a 13-0 star with an average margin of victory of 26 points. Then we lost at Georgetown and Louisville. We won 9 of our next 10, lost to St. John’s in the Garden, beat UCONN to finished the regular season at 23-4, then lost to the Johnnies again in the BET finals on Walter Berry’s block of the Pearl’s lay-up. It was one of our best teams but after Michael Brown left and Raf Addison got hurt, (so did SeikalY0, we lacked a perimeter game and when we had to face David Robinson again, (we’d beaten navy by 22 in the Carrier Classic final), we had to go to the basket to score and the Admiral and the refs, (Navy wen to the line 33 more times than we did), wouldn’t allow that so we lost.
1986-87, 31-7: The “Powerhouse” Era” began with another dominating start- 15-0 with an average winning margin of 16 points a game. Then a loss at Michigan began a 4-4 stretch, including a 2 point overtime loss at Georgetown. They also beat up in the Dome by one and then by 10 in the BET Finals. Then we charged to the NCAA finals and lost to Maxwell Smart. Missed it by that much… But a 12-3 ending was pretty good.
1987-88, 26-9: We started out ranked #1 and lost to North Carolina and Arizona in the same week. We then won 10 in a row but then lost to Villanova, Connecticut and Georgetown in a four game stretch. Then we won 8 of 9, (the loss: Georgetown). Then we lost at Kentucky, 9the blue uniform game), beat Nova and lost to Pittsburgh. But for the second time we wrong the BET. We lost to Rhode Island in the second round of the NCAAs in a game where Sherman Douglas was so sick he lay down flat on his back during time outs. Still, the stretch run was 13-4.
1988-89, 30-8: Another wonderful start: 13-0, averaging 103 points a game and winning by an average of 25 points. Then came a stunning 4 losses in 5 games from 1/04-1/16 in which we averaged only 73 points a game. We put the wheels back on and went 8 in a row before losing to…Georgetown. Then we won 4 of 5 to end the regular season. The Hoyas beat us again in the BET finals. We went to the elite 8 and lost a close on to Illinois. The finish was 16-4, not bad.
1989-90, 26-9: We again started out ranked #1 but this time held onto it through a 10 game winning streak covering the first month of the season. It was another dominating performance as we averaged 94.5 points per game and won by an average of 24 points. Then we lost 3 of 5 from 1/6-1/20. We pulled ourselves together to win 6 in a row and then lost to Villanova and Notre Dame, (on Elmer Bennett’s shot). Then came another 6 game winning streak, ending in a loss to Jim Calhoun’s first really good Connecticut team in the Big East Final. We got to the Sweet 16 but lost to Minnesota in the Tony Scott debacle. But we were 14-4 after the January slump.
1990-91, 26-6: The last team of the Powerhouse Era avoided any regular season slump to win the Big east title outright but then had a post season slump that ruined everything. Again we came out of the gate like a house afire, winning 13 in a row by 17 points a gain while averaging 92. We did lose to Villanova and Pittsburgh, then won 13 of 15 and had a 16 point second half lead against Villanova in the BET opener. I remember Doug Logan and his color man discussing the next opponent while the Wildcats kept scoring. They eventually caught SU and beat us 68-70. I think the team was still in shock the next week as they sleep-walked through a loss to Richmond, the first 15 seed to beat a 2 seed. And with the that the Powerhouse Era came to an end. Despite what happened this season, I think the powerhouse teams simply had too much depth and talent to run out of gas at the end of the year. That would not be the case in many of the succeeding years.
1991-92, 22-10 The first team of what I’ll call the Prohibition Era, (nothing about speakeasies, please). We weren’t on prohibition year but were being investigated and it was impacting our recruiting. But we won our first 10 games. We ran into our perennial nemesis, Pittsburgh and got beat 74-93. But we still moved on to a 16-3 record before the slump hit. We lost four in a row and 6 of 8 to end the regular season. But we rallied to win the BET for the third time, over Georgetown, no less and beat princeto0n in the first round of the NCAAs before losing to Massachusetts in overtime.
1992-93, 20-9: We won our first 8 games, then lost our first three Big East games. But we didn’t lose consecutive games the rest of the year and went to the finals of the BET, where our season ended due to the probation.
1993-94, 23-7: We were eligible for the post season again but still affected by having been on probation. This was when the Big East experimented with some early season games and our first loss came at the hands of Boston College in game #5. We never lost consecutive games all season. We lost to Seton Hall by a point in overtime in the first round of the BET and made it to the Sweet 16 where we lost to Missouri in overtime after Adrian Autry’s shot from the floor was disallowed.
1994-95, 20-10: We lost the real last game in Manley to George Washington in overtime to start the season, (the Dome was unavailable for reasons I can’t recall). We then ripped off 14 wins in a row and rose to #6 in the rankings before going down 75-86 at rising power Connecticut. That led to an amazing collapse: a 6-9 finish, including the infamous Arkansas “time out” game.
1995-96, 29-9: We won 11 in a row before getting crushed by Massachusetts’s greatest team in the only game we’ve ever lost in Hawaii, 47-65. It began a rough stretch where we went lost 6 of 9. From there we won 5 in a row, lost a single game and then did that twice more, the last a loss in the national championship game. This certified our return to prominence, (we were never far from it), and ended the probation era. It’s interesting that only one of these five seasons featured a late-season and post-season collapse, even tho0ugh our talent and depth had to have been below normal.
1996-97, 19-13: I’ll call this the post-probation era when our recruiting amped up with the five man class of Winfred Walton, Etan Thomas, LaSean Howard, Rock Lloyd and Jason Hart. Too bad that only two of them stayed around for a full four years. This first team of the era just had too much reliance on the new players and never really got anything going. They split their first 6 games, won 5 of 6, lost 2, won 2, lost, won 3 in a row, lost 3 of 4, won 4 in a row an closed by losing 3 of 4, including a dismal first round NIT game vs. Florida State in a virtually empty Dome. The team didn’t collapse: it was just never that good to begin with.
1997-98, 26-9: We looked more like a Syracuse team, winning our first 11 games before getting crushed by one of the last good Michigan teams of that era in Puerto Rico, 61-93. It started a 9-7 stretch. But we ended the year winning 6 of 8 with the only losses being to Connecticut in the BET finals and to Duke in the Sweet 16.
1998-99 21-12: One of our most disappointing teams. They had basically the same personnel of the next year’s much more successful group. A 6-0 start including a win in the Maui Classic final over Bob Knight’s Indiana team got people excited. JB insisted: this isn’t a good team yet” but nobody would listen- until we started losing. We lost 3 of 4, won 4 in a row, lost 2 of 3, won 2, lost, won 2, lost 2, won 2, lost 2 of 3, lost to UCONN again in the Big East semis and sleep-walked through a 61-69 loss in an 8-9 game to Doug Gottlieb’s Oklahoma State team. Like the 1996-97 bunch, this team didn’t so much collapse as they simply weren’t very good. This was the team that achieved an all-time nadir of effort: they were behind providence in the Dome and began fouling to get the ball back. Incredibly, the Friars accommodated us by missing 9 straight free throws. Even more incredibly, we accommodated them by letting them get inside to grab the rebound all nine times. The Providence players were actually laughing at our players by the end of this and the Dome crowd was roundly booing the team for one of the only times I can remember. JB said after the game that he didn’t blame them.
1999-00, 26-6: A year more mature and probably embarrassed by what had happened the year before, basically the same team came out and set a school record by winning its first 19 games including an 88-74 demolition of defending national champion Connecticut in the Dome. Anything seemed possible. But the friction did seem to be building up a little: of the first 16 of those games, only one was not won by double figures. Then we had a couple of close ones and finally lost to Seton Hall and at Louisville. Then came 2 wins and a loss and 3 wins in a row. We closed the regular season by losing by 15 at Connecticut and then lost to Georgetown in the first round of the BET. We got to the Sweet 16 and took a 40-26 second half lead on eventual champion Michigan State before totally collapsing to a 58-75 final.
2000-01, 25-9: I’ll call these the “championship years” as they include the lead-up to and then our greatest basketball achievement. This first team was not as good as the previous year’s team but did a pretty good imitation, starting 15-1 before going thro0ugh a 5-6 stretch. Then we won 4 in a row, losing in the BET to a suddenly feisty Pittsburgh team 54-55 in OT in the game where Preston Shumpert got poked in the eye. We got crushed by Kansas in the second round of the NCAAs but the real slump was from 1/21-2/24. We were 5-2 after that.
2001-02, 23-13: This is the team that included the two classes that brought us the national title: Craig Forth, Mark Konecny, Hakim Warrick, Josh Pace and Billy Edelin. But Edelin was suspended and Konecny was a bust. The team as a whole wasn’t ready. But they started 9-0 before JB had his prostate surgery. We lost the two games he was out, the won 7 more in a row. 16-2. Then they completely fell apart, going 7-11 down the stretch. We did make it to the NIT “Final Four” but lost both games there, one in our practice uniforms.
2002-03, 30-5: Carmelo Anthony and Gerry McNamara joined Edelin, Forth, Warrick and Pace, (as well as Kueth Duany and Jeremy McNeil) to carry us to the national title. But we lost our opener to Memphis then won 11 in a row. We lost, won 2, lost, won 3 and lost again. Then we won 14 of 15 to finish the year, 9we never did beat Connecticut).
2003-04, 23-8: The championship era might have continued but Carmelo jumped to the pros so I’ll call this the post-championship era. I thought having had a taste of a championship and returning so many players form that team for multiple years, we would see more consistent success from the team because the championship players would know what it took and teach that to others. I also th0ought that our recruit would climb to a level that was second to none: after all we had the biggest arena in a town where college basketball was the biggest thing and we were in the best time-zone in the most populous area of the country. Instead, we slipped into mediocrity. We again lost our opener, in the Dome to Charlotte and again went on a long winning streak, 13 games. But then we lost 5 of 8. We rallied to close out the regular season with 5 straight wins. We got beat by Boston College to open the BET, then won our way to Sweet 16 where we got upset by Alabama. But we won 9 of our last 12 that year.
2004-05, 27-7: Our strongest team of this period. We won 20 of our first 21 games, then stumbled home 4-5 to end the regular season with an 18 point drubbing at Connecticut. But we won the Big east tournament for the first time in 13 years, only to embarrassingly lose to Vermont in overtime in the first game on the NCAAs.
2005-06, 23-12: Our weakest team of the period. It didn’t seem so when we blew away Bob Knight’s Texas Tech team, 81-46 in our third game. Surely our next foe, Florida, was intimidated. They weren’t and beat us and went on to win the next two national championships. We went on to lose to Bucknell, win 12 in a row, then lose 4 in a row and 9 of 13. But then we rode the wings of Gerry McNamara to the BE title but couldn’t beat Texas A&M in the NCAAs without him.
2006-07, 24-11: We won our first seven but then lurched through a 9-8 stretch before winning 5 in a row. We lost the finale to Villanova and beat Connecticut in the BET before losing to Notre Dame. We expected to go to the NCAAs but wound up in the southern regional of the NIT. We our first two, then lost at Clemson. But we’d won 8 of our last 11.
2007-08, 21-14: We started 12-3 with home losses to Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The injuries piled up we went 8-11 afterwards, ending in another home loss to Massachusetts in the NIT, where we blew a 24 point second half lead. At one point in this season we were down to 6 healthy scholarship players and one of them, (Scoop Jardine) had what turned out to be a stress fracture in his left leg that he didn’t even tell the coaches about because so many players had already been injured. It would have seemed comical if it was funny.
2008-09, 28-10: The second powerhouse era began with a healthier version of the previous year’s team. We started a stretch of virtually never losing before the conference season began. Cleveland State beat us on a 70 foot shot but that was the only loss in the first 17 games. Then we hit the wall, losing 7 of 10. We turned it around by playing almost fanatical defense. We won 7 in a row, including the legendary 6 overtime game in the BET over Connecticut. We led Louisville at halftime but succumbed to their press in what was, in effect our 4 ¾ game in four days. Then we won our way to the Sweet 16 and got dunked by Blake Griffin.
2009-10, 30-5: One of our greatest teams won 13 in a row, lost to Pittsburgh and then won another 11 in a row. We lost to Louisville game and won another 4 in a row, rising to #1 in the nation for the first time in 20 years. Louisville beat us again in the Kyle Kuric game and then we lost to Georgetown in the BET as AO went down. We again went to the Sweet 16 and lost to Butler. That was our third loss in five games but I wouldn’t call it a slump, considering the opposition and the injury.
2010-11, 27-8; We opened with 18 straight wins, then lost 4 in arrow and 6 of 8. We rallied for 6 straight wins before losing to eventual national champion Connecticut in the BET and to Marquette i8n the Round of 32.
2011-12, 34-3: We won 20 in a row. Fab Melo got suspended for two games and we lost the first, then won another 10 in a row to end the regular season and amazing 30-1, ranked #2 behind Kentucky, who was also 30-1. Cincinnati got hot form outside and beat us in the BET. Then we lost Fab again and lost in a regional final to Ohio State. We’ve won the Big East outright three times, won the BET 5 times and gone to the Final Four 5 times. 13 different seasons.
2012-13, 30-10: We got off to an 18-1 start, then tumbled to a 5-7 end of the regular season, ending in a dismal 39-58 loss at Georgetown. We again turned it around with fanatical defense, rolling to a halftime lead over eventual national champion Louisville in the BET final before giving way to fatigue and their press, then winning our way to the Final Four where we lost to Michigan.
2013-14, 28-6: We got off to an incredible 25-0 start and #1 national ranking. But the plug got pulled on our offense and we fell hard to a 3-6 finish that brought a lot of complaints that we always seem to fall apart at the end of seasons.
But do we? Looking over these seasons I don’t find a consistent pattern of teams running out of gas at the end of seasons. Most of our slumps seem to come in late January or February and we seem to usually rally from them to at least do better at the end of regular season or in the post season. I think fatigue impacts Syracuse- and everyone else in the conference tournaments where you can play up to 5 games in 5 days. It may be a factor towards the end of regular season but in a lot of years, late season rallies begin in the final games of regular seasons. I also don’t see a trend of Syracuse “hitting the wall” when the opposition gets tougher with the beginning of the conference season. When we do well in the pre-conference season, it usually carries over into the conference season. Then comes the slump if we have one. I don’t think that the theories that we are hurt by a weak pre-conference schedule or that Boeheim burns his teams out by not playing enough guys is borne out by the historical record.
