A little information for our friends on the boneyard

[cuseattle]

When the committee says they weigh the entire season equally at least in 2006 that was BS. SU was probably on the outside of the bubble before that BET. So by winning those four games they move up from a 12 seed all the way to a 5? 4 games gives you a 25+ bump in the S curve? I think not. Vegas also told the story about that ridiculous 5/12 game with A&M favored by tip time.

And Gerry was hurt.

 

[pfister1]

The stink of the Richmond game was starting to wear off and then SU got sprayed by Vermont. The casual fan only knows those two upsets and that creates an unfair perception.

I feel like that perception of Syracuse as a poor NCAA performer existed long before the Vermont loss.

I think it was created by a general sense that we underachieved in JB's early years, and then was cemented by the Richmond loss. I think we had started to put it behind us by Vermont, but that breathed a little bit of life back into it.

Hoops was funny in the 70s and early 80s before the Big East. We had some pretty terrific records, but didn't really play anyone. I think in that era it was harder to know whether a team with a terrific record was truly good or had just gotten fat on cupcakes. We may have gotten fat eating cupcakes in those early years and might have actually performed as well as we should have in the NCAAs, but that doesn't change that we often had gaudy records and were ranked, but lost early to Charlotte, W. Kentucky, Iowa, Penn, Ohio State, UVA, Navy, Rhode Island.

In JB's early years we didn't win more than 1 game in the NCAA tournament until the 86-87 tournament when we went to the final four. We then came back the following year and lost again in the second round to Rhode Island. I truly believe that if you could put our tournament performance prior to 86-87 out of mind, the perception of our performance in the tournament would be much better, eliminate Richmond or Vermont as well, and it would probably be terrific.