Let's be honest

[Consigliere]

we have beaten one good team on the road, UVA. yes, we have played well on the road and that counts for something, but as you mention, we don't have enough good wins overall, not even remotely close.

Define good.

 

[djorange1989]

Define good.

a team who is a slam dunk to make the tourney. UVA.

 

[FrancoPizza]

Accountability for what genius?

Most jobs come with performance evaluations and consequences for not meeting expectations. 6 years of underperforming in many categories, but I think the number that matters most to the AD is attendance so as long as fans keep renewing JB will get free passes. NIT doesn’t matter.

 

[Consigliere]

a team who is a slam dunk to make the tourney. UVA.

So setting aside. small conference auto qualifiers there are roughly 30 good teams out of over 320 D1 teams.
Guess I would consider at least the Top 25% to be good.

 

[djorange1989]

So setting aside. small conference auto qualifiers there are roughly 30 good teams out of over 320 D1 teams.
Guess I would consider at least the Top 25% to be good.

that's at least 85 teams, maybe I am being too picky but you are not being picky enough. DePaul would be considered top 25%(based on NET rankings), to use one example

 

[realorange]

The piece that hurt the most this year was not having a set team early in the season. Most thought we had a solid PG in Jalen. Unfortunately this didn't happen. After trying other options, JG3 was asked to do what he was never meant to do, at least this early in his first year.

A team that should have felt fairly solid particularly after a trip to Italy, struggled to find themselves and OOC teams took advantage of them.

Some promote stories of what might have been with better recruiting, coaching, etc., but just looking at what we have to work with this year, they have done about as well as could be expected and they, players and coaches, should be appreciated for that.

 

[GoSU96]

Most jobs come with performance evaluations and consequences for not meeting expectations. 6 years of underperforming in many categories, but I think the number that matters most to the AD is attendance so as long as fans keep renewing JB will get free passes. NIT doesn’t matter.

There's a final four and sweet sixteen and a top 10 final ranking in there. This year will be the best finish in the ACC regular season since 2014.

 

[SBU72]

There's a final four and sweet sixteen and a top 10 final ranking in there. This year will be the best finish in the ACC regular season since 2014.

People will tell you that it (finishing 5th) doesn't count as the ACC as a whole is down. Just like the last Final 4 and Sweet Sixteen are really aberrations and therefore don't count.

 

[DilemaCuse]

There's a final four and sweet sixteen and a top 10 final ranking in there. This year will be the best finish in the ACC regular season since 2014.

But were looking at 14 losses on the year...that's not the goal or expectation either

 

[Eric15]

Also, we can't have it both ways as SU fans.

Think of all the seasons in prior years where we dominated November and December -- often winning a preseason tournament and only having a 1 or 2 losses tops come conference play, and then went on our traditional February slump, but still finished with a high NCAA seed. In those seasons, we often hung our hats on those first two months as the meat of our resume.

So if we're saying JB is doing a good job this year for improving the team as the season goes on, does that mean he wasn't doing a good job in seasons where we had a February slump?

The season starts in November, everybody has young guys coming in, and you have to be ready to play.

 

[Col. Bleep]

After seeing the OK State debacle in person followed by the Penn State disaster on TV...I thought this team would be lucky to win 10 games.
They did start playing fairly well. (Unfortunately that came after the G-town game).
So, from that start, 17-13 can be viewed as some limited accomplishment.
With a big asterisk.

A great improvement would have meant that no teams late in the season come by and absolutely shred the zone the way Louisville and UNC did.

(I know, I know...they made shots).

 

[Briancuse]

I thought it would be really close. But let's be honest when you wear syracuse on the front of your jersey 17 and 13 isn't good enough.

 

[Jake]

Who here thought that this was the year that the streak was going to end. That at some time, most likely when the OOC schedule was done, that 16 wins may just have been the upper limit. I admit the thought had crossed my mind. I thought that with every win when the "eternal optimist" posted that they were seeing things with orange colored glasses. Paths to a 4th place finish in the conference really drove me bananas. But then when the pessimist posted with each lose they were they were just "gloomy gus". The 5 game win streak changed everything. So props to the team. They worked hard with mostly notable improvement. JB has done a good job. His detractors still have lots to complain about but a big challenge has been met and for that they should be cheered.

Yep. I thought it was toast.

 

[Cuse12]

I agree this team made good strides from beginning of the year to the end. However, I have realized the griping about if coach Boeheim can “coach” anymore was flat out wrong. It has nothing to do with his “coaching”. The reason we are a mediocre team as of late is simply one thing. Recruiting. Coach can coach. But we need some dogs on our teams. We have been missing dogs. And when I say dogs I mean a dog or 2 down low. That is the sole root cause of our struggles.

JB is an amazing coach. We are super lucky to have him for so long and to keep this winning streak alive. It’s amazing.

now I wish we could get top 25 classes on the regular again and watch where we would be right now

 

[Cuse12]

I thought it would be really close. But let's be honest when you wear syracuse on the front of your jersey 17 and 13 isn't good enough.

Exactly. I kind of believe when we hit double digit losses is when a season is looked at as more mediocre then not. I know there’s caveats to this rule in my head but idk just how I look at it.

21-9 looks so much better then 20-10.

 

[Fly Rodder]

People will tell you that it (finishing 5th) doesn't count as the ACC as a whole is down. Just like the last Final 4 and Sweet Sixteen are really aberrations and therefore don't count.

Whoo hoo! 5th place!

When do the t-shirts come out?

 

[SBU72]

Whoo hoo! 5th place!

When do the t-shirts come out?

Didn't say it was great. Just responding to the comment about it being the best conference finish since 2014

 

[Alsacs]

Nobody had real expectations to start this year.
That being said we have been mediocre because Elijah Hughes played out of his mind.
If I knew Hughes was this good before this season expectations would have been higher.

We are mediocre as a program nationally now. Mediocre is better than bad but the program needs to be better next year. I didn't think Hughes was leaving as it wasn't fairly obvious until this whole season has played out and he has nothing else to prove.

I don't think this season is worth celebrating. The team has won games and the coaching staff has done a solid job but its not going to get us to the Final Four without major talent increases.
The problem we have is we haven't been maximizing the talent we have had its been used to sustain us from bottoming out. I think fans would be okay with one season of what happened to West Virginia and now they back to being relevant nationally.

Our short rotation works when you have Hakim Warrick, Michael Gbinije or Elijah Hughes players stocked on the team.
Buddy Boeheim, Marek Dolezaj, Joe Girard shouldn't have to be 40 MPG players without foul trouble.
It's maddening. We don't use our depth to build depth.

 

[Eric15]

Just like the last Final 4 and Sweet Sixteen are really aberrations and therefore don't count.

They absolutely count in terms of adding to our historical legacy. Having six all-time Final Fours instead of five is a great thing.

But they’re absolutely aberrations in that we haven’t been winning games at our normal level in the two years prior to that Final Four and the four years after it. Sneaking into the tournament and hoping for miraculous results is not supposed to be the M.O. of SU basketball.

 

[Fly Rodder]

Didn't say it was great. Just responding to the comment about it being the best conference finish since 2014

by comparing a 5th place conference finish to a final four and a sweet sixteen?

 

[IthacaMatt]

Who here thought that this was the year that the streak was going to end. That at some time, most likely when the OOC schedule was done, that 16 wins may just have been the upper limit. I admit the thought had crossed my mind. I thought that with every win when the "eternal optimist" posted that they were seeing things with orange colored glasses. Paths to a 4th place finish in the conference really drove me bananas. But then when the pessimist posted with each lose they were they were just "gloomy gus". The 5 game win streak changed everything. So props to the team. They worked hard with mostly notable improvement. JB has done a good job. His detractors still have lots to complain about but a big challenge has been met and for that they should be cheered.

Oh, sure, when we were 8-7, I thought we were toast.
Then we started to play better defense and went on a 5 game winning streak to raise everyone's hopes that maybe Boeheim had put the pieces together.

Then we went and lost 5 out of 6 to pretty much kill our NCAA hopes. We are trying to get back on track, winning 3 of our last 4, but I think that second losing streak kind of did us in for this season.

 

[IthacaMatt]

We have seen doom threads in a few recent years in late December / early January.
I remember "Will we go 0-18 in the ACC"..

The team always recovers to some degree.

This is true, but it's equally true that we usually go through a slump almost every January / February.

 

[IthacaMatt]

we keep saying that but where is the accountability? It’s just all talk at this point unless Wildhack actually ties consequences to these results.

Boeheim's not leaving until Buddy graduates. There will be no accountability until afterwards. Hopefully he gets his gold watch and leaves a tremendous recruiting class for the next guy.

 

[Newhouser]

If we have the same record next year we won't be 5th in the league. We are slipping, and the next 5 years is going to be telling for this program.

 

[IthacaMatt]

This squad is fun to watch (it's great to watch guys drill open threes for a change), but they're not quite good enough to overcome the structural issues of the defense combined with the personnel.

As we went through the slump in February, it seemed that everyone has forgotten how to shoot. Our 3 point shooting has been terrible for a month now.

That makes the games a lot less fun.