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Message: [QUOTE="Waltdods, post: 2447483, member: 2932"] These have been a bad four years (for Syracuse). If that is the sole frame of a question, then I agree it's silly to argue that the Final 4 team turns this stretch into something different other than a bad run. But I don't think that's really the crucial question, or that one that's actually dividing people. The question is, or should be, what does that down stretch mean and what does it suggest for the future? And for that you need to open your frame wider, and look not just at these four years (which have been poor!) but at what's come before and what is coming after. And this is why I think a lot of the pessimism is misguided. Syracuse has had four-year stretches like this before. From 05-08, Syracuse didn't win a single tournament game, missed the tournament twice, and only made it the third time because of a near-half-court shot in the first round of the BET. And in 2008, there were countless posts here about how Boeheim had lost it, how the zone was passe, how the offense was terrible, how the recruiting had dipped from Carmelo Anthony to Andy Rautins. In retrospect, we see that run as a series of unfortunate events between a couple great runs of basketball. From 96-02, Syracuse mostly made the tournament but was never in the mix for a national championship and repeatedly started Billy Celuck in actual Big East basketball games. Then the next year the team won a national championship. Going into next year, Syracuse again has what is likely to be a top-5 recruiting class and will hopefully will return a bunch of talented guys who got good experience this year. To me, that looks an awful lot like 2002 or 2008/9 (not predicting a national championship or #1 seed, but I do think that looks like a return to top-4 seeds). For that reason, a lot of the sturm and drang here seems massively over done. This year's team has massive structural limitations, which was apparent from day 1. Some of these are the results of mistakes, some of bad luck, some even of good luck (Malachi having that crazy run in the '16 NCAAs, without which he almost certainly returns last year.) It happens. [/QUOTE]

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