First cuse game you remember watching?

[Cuse_1999]

I was about 11 or 12 and, living in NC, I was a Wake fan. Was sick and home from school. ESPN had a replay of the SU/Gtown game from the night before on. The crowd was rocking and then the oranges hit the backboard while Gtown was shooting free throws. I was hooked

 

[albanyorange]

My first game was at manley vs colgate in jan of 1965. A month later they almost lost to the same colgate but won in triple overtime. I know I saw th on TV earlier just cant remember what games they were.

 

[Jake]

The first game I remember watching was the NCAA IT loss to Oral Roberts in 1974. First game I attended, I don't actually recall. It was definitely in Manly and very likely against a scrub team.

 

[albanycuse]

First game i actually remember watching was the 87' NC game. I was heartbroken and things were never the same after that. I'm still pissed.


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[wadegarrett]

I started watching My first games in 95-96 season but the only game I vividly remember was the championship game. I was 10 years old and I cried myself to sleep. I'm 28 now and I would still cry myself to sleep if it ever happened again.

 

[Toga]

Bing's freshmen team playing against Lord knows who.

 

[Opus]

Mine was Kansas State in the 1975 tourney. I was very young but I remember those ugly purple shiny uniforms. That is all I remember about the game! I'll have to google it.

 

[TexanMark]

I started listening as a fan in 1970-71 season to Joel Mariness. This was when beating Manhattan, Canisus, Fordham were no sure things. Bill Smith was the star he dropped in 47 against LaFayette. We went 19-6 IRC in the regular season and drew Michigan in the NIT. The game was on NBC IIRC. It was huge to be on national TV then...very few games got broadcast. I don't remember seeing them on TV before. Anyways we played valiantly but Michigan was much better (coming off Cazzie Russell years) and beat us in the first round. Been a huge fan since then. Went to first game live a year later.

 

[rrlbees]

First game i actually remember watching was the 87' NC game. I was heartbroken and things were never the same after that. I'm still pissed.


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I thought you just said your first game was Colgate in '65

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[themole]

For me it was the championship game in '87. I was 12-years old, and I had watched/attended games before this, but this is the first game I vividly remember.
I will never forget staying up late on a school night and crying when Smart hit the shot. It's weird, but I recognize now that the painful moment when that shot went in was the exact moment when I became a Syracuse fan for life.
I have had other sports idols and a favorite teams, but I have never loved any team more than SU basketball.

ΔΔ This

 

[tptcuse]

Did SU win or lose? 77 they lost by one point, in the game where the Bona star had been arrested for shoplifting earlier in the day (Sibley's? McCurdy's?) and they allowed him to play anyway (Mike Sanders?). In 78, they beat the Bonnies by 10-15. Both in the Rochester War Memorial. I was in attendance for both.

It had to be 1977-78. I just looked up the season results and Marty Byrnes was definitely on the team. If it were 78-79, he would have been graduated. I definitely remember how freakin' tall Rosie seemed to an 8-9 year old---I was born in '69---a fortuitous birth year.

 

[Opus]

I started listening as a fan in 1970-71 season to Joel Mariness. This was when beating Manhattan, Canisus, Fordham were no sure things. Bill Smith was the star he dropped in 47 against LaFayette. We went 19-6 IRC in the regular season and drew Michigan in the NIT. The game was on NBC IIRC. It was huge to be on national TV then...very few games got broadcast. I don't remember seeing them on TV before. Anyways we played valiantly but Michigan was much better (coming off Cazzie Russell years) and beat us in the first round. Been a huge fan since then. Went to first game live a year later.

Ha I remember Joel Mariness. He used the catch phrases 'Dirty but good' and 'In again out again Finnegan'

 

[BlackKnight76]

The National Championship. I wasn't a Syracuse fan yet, but I vividly remember rooting for them, and all the G-Mac madness in the first half and, of course, the block. I definitely saw the team play throughout the tournament but that's the first game I can remember for sure.

 

[IthacaMatt]

i was born in '79, i vaguely remember the championship game in '87, but the first game i really remember watching was when michigan came to the dome in '88 when they had gary grant. even though i loved syracuse i remember liking gary grant. also 1 of the earliest games i remember watching was when we played at kentucky with the blue unis which i think was '88 as well.

Greg Kohls and Roy's Runts in the N.I.T. I'm pretty sure it was the year after Bill Smith left, because that's all I remember the announcers talking about, while this team of 4 guards and a forward pressed the opposition all over the floor and ran the floor like the Globetrotters. How could the NCAA games be as entertaining as this?

 

[IthacaMatt]

Mark Aguire Depaul games and the Joe Barry Carrol Purdue game. Got me hook line and sinker.

That Purdue game was something of a national coming out party. Prior to that, our '75 Final Four season was written off as kind of a fluke. This got Louie & Bouie recognized as national caliber players.

 

[IthacaMatt]

I was born in 1965 and remember watching a lot of games of Marty Headd, Dale Shackelford, Marty Byrnes and of course two Louis and Bouie. The games I can still remember being at are Pearls half court buzzer shot against BC (in 1985 I think) and the Navy game against David Robinson in 1986, which was 7 days after my father passed away on his way home from the BE tournament.

Oh, that's a tough memory. But for any real fan, if you were told by your maker that your last memory would be a Big East tournament at the Garden, I think a lot of us would take that.

 

[The General]

Born in 1974. First game attended/remembered is when UNC came to the dome with Jordan. Sonny Spera hit a half court shot at the end of the first half. I think we lost by 20.

Don't remember Jordan. But I sure remember Sonny Spera. 1983 maybe?

 

[IthacaMatt]

First game i actually remember watching was the 87' NC game. I was heartbroken and things were never the same after that. I'm still pissed.


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I took away a perverse pride and satisfaction from the 87 Indiana game, even though we didn't win. You may not remember, but Dick Vitale was screaming that the Final Four ought to be re-seeded, because Syracuse didn't deserve to play in the championship game. I forget who Indiana beat in their semifinal, but it was another blue blood program like North Carolina, if I recall correctly, while we got to play Providence.

So, I was pissed about that, and I remember how they openly mocked us in Sports Illustrated at the 75 Final Four, asking if we had recruited Ernie Siebert in a bar. The teams of Leo Rautins, Shack and Bruin were good, but underachieved a bit, and when we won that Big East tournament at the Dome in triple OT, it, too, was a fluke and the result of home court advantage and the Big East decided to never do that again (i.e. play on campus).

Then we get Pearl, we are all over ESPN and Big Monday. Al McGuire calls our games, loves the Pearl, and we become a national program - but then Pearl's last team craps out, losing at home on the Dome floor in the NCAAs (again, last time they would let THAT happen), he goes pro early (at a time when very few people did that) and here we are in rebuilding mode. Our star player is gone. When will we ever get another transcendant talent like that?

Greg Monroe and Howard Triche as starters. Sherman wasn't a legend yet. Coleman was still a skinny frosh until he brought down 19 boards in that game and became a legend himself. We thoroughly outplayed Saint Bobby Knight. Boeheim coached circles around him, literally changing defenses every couple possessions to keep them off balance at one point. We kicked their asses, and if it wasn't for Alford shooting lights out in the first half, we would have run them out of the building and the Keith Smart moment never would have happened.

After that game (during which I drank about 20 beers - literally - and did not get drunk, due to the excess amount of adrenaline flowing through my body), I felt like we truly could take on anybody, and beat anybody. There would be no more BS from punks like Vitale (how wrong was I about that??), but that we belonged among the elite. Like Knight said to Boeheim, "you'll be back" - I felt like he meant it, and I knew it to be true.

So that game never quite hurt me the way it hurt a lot of other fans, because I felt like that was the day we truly arrived as a program. And boy, did we go on a hell of a run from there.

 

[adk(roc)CUSE]

Indiana played UNLV in the other semi final in 87. Not quite a blue blood. But certainly a program that had a good run back then.

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[kcsu]

I was a young boy who would play basketball 24 hours a day if my parents let me. It was in December and really cold and my Dad took me to Niagra to watch Syracuse play. It was my first ever SU game and it was away which was really cool. Amazing game. Calvin Murphy scored a ton of points i think over 60 and the big young center for Syracuse scored a bunch as well. Bill Smith was his name. We lost but i was hooked forever.

 

[alibrat66]

Attended my first SU game before most of you were born -- and before Manley was built. It was December 1959 at the War Memorial, and the opponent was Cornell. We lost. And two seasons later, I was there for several games as we set what was then the all-time NCAA losing record. With only a couple of hundred folks in attendance. Totally different world.

Apparently, Joyce and I are among the dinosaurs on this board. I grew up in Syracuse. First game I saw was in the old Jefferson Street Armory. Think it was Jon Cincebox and Vinnie Cohen playing for the Cuse. I'm doing this without researching it. Anyway, it had t be around 1957 or so.

 

[alibrat66]

CTO, help my memory. I was one year ahead of JB and Bing. Could swear they were in Manley in 1962. I know I watched them then but was it in Manley?

I know they were playing at Manley my senior year, 1962-63

 

[orange79]

It had to be 1977-78. I just looked up the season results and Marty Byrnes was definitely on the team. If it were 78-79, he would have been graduated. I definitely remember how freakin' tall Rosie seemed to an 8-9 year old---I was born in '69---a fortuitous birth year.

Your parents had a head start on the Summer of Love

 

[mark79]

My first recollection was 75-76 (JB's 1st, Louie + Bouie were frosh) - the march thru the ECAC's (Niagara + St Bona) and win over Ernie/Bernie's Tenn club.

Like you Jaxcuse, my first season with the OrangeMEN was in 1975, my freshman year. Orleans sang on the quad along with Peter Frampton haha.

My first year there was the year Jimmy B took the helm. The stars during my time were Louie and Bouie with some Marty Byrnes and Dale Shackleford in there as well. There was a guy named James Bailey who played I think for Rutgers who used to kill us.

All my basketball games including the Magic Johnson game were at Manley and Joe Morris was the star of the football team.

I participated in two 24 hour muscular dystrophy dance marathons on campus in Archbold. Remember those anyone?
Ah the memories.

 

[albanyorange]

That was

I thought you just said your first game was Colgate in '65

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That was me albanyorange not albanycuse