Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="omniorange, post: 2560946, member: 636"] In my opinion, expectations are the result of how one views the program's "historical status"; how it has performed in recent history; and are there any mitigating circumstances within the coach's/coaching staff/athletics department control that have led one to believe there is cause for major concern with the direction it is going. This current decade, even with one major injury (Onuaku) that impacted our post season success in 2010; a concern academic violations would mean vacated wins resulted in our BE Defensive Player of the Year (Fab Melo) sitting out the 2012 tourney (which in hindsight may have been a mistake considering it did little to mitigate sanctions); and of course ultimately being badly crippled by ridiculously harsh sanctions from 2014-2015 until now - a great case can be made that this has actually been our most successful tourney decade ever, and we still have one more year to go. Unlike football where we have fallen off a cliff (while we wait for HCDB to get us back to at least winning football) or men's lacrosse which had seen three championships in the 80s, three in the 90s, and five in the 00s but is in danger of being bageled in the 10s in terms of championships (but doing fine in terms of final fours in that sport) - men's basketball remains the one constant in SU athletics. I know we all wish the program had won 3-4 championships by this point in time (87, 03, 10, and/or 12), but perhaps that is an unrealistic expectation given the history of how much has happened to this program throughout the years. Twice hit by sanctions in the last three decades, first 2 seed to lose to a 15 seed, the long getting beyond the Sweet 16 curse. We are what we are, not what we want us to be. And amazingly that is still elite. And we at least will not be the first 1 seed to lose to a 16 seed (thank you Virginia)! ;) Without Bazely, it won't be as easy to win that second championship next year, but there are enough good players on the roster (assuming everyone but Battle returns and they are all reasonably healthy) that I wouldn't say it is out of the question. I am expecting a Top 4 seed in the tourney next year, again assuming no bad breaks. End of long rant. Cheers, Neil [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?