Most disappointing moment as a fan

[sufandu]

Same. And I also convinced myself that after Burgan’s strong showing in the final four, he would become a Wallace like player as a senior and combined with the incoming class led by Winfred Walton and Rock Lloyd, we’d be back in the title game in 2 years.

Maybe I could list Walton, or the lack there of, as another sting. All the hype had him as the next DC.

 

[SoBeCuse]

Recently it would be:

- Bazely
- The UConn debacle in MSG a few seasons ago. Unacceptable level of basketball and ineptitude.
- The StJ debacle. They quit.
- Getting smoked by Cal in MSG in 2014
- Offensive system as of late.

Otherwise:

- Arinze injury
- Fab news
- Smart shot

 

[W'boro'Cuse315]

 

[supgs]

Following SU hoops since the 70's and seen so many; but the one which still hurts was our first UVA game in the ACC. March 2014. We had a shot at the ACC title, if we could beat 'em. I honesty thought our bigs... CJ, RAK, Jerami, & Baye would torch UVA. They combined for only 26 pts in the game & lost the boards. UVA scored 48 points in the 2nd half to easily win. Winning the ACC title in our first season... would have been savory sweet. The Tyler Ennis 25-0 start season failed so miserably, ending with a thunk in the tourney.

 

[FrancoPizza]

Following SU hoops since the 70's and seen so many; but the one which still hurts was our first UVA game in the ACC. March 2014. We had a shot at the ACC title, if we could beat 'em. I honesty thought our bigs... CJ, RAK, Jerami, & Baye would torch UVA. They combined for only 26 pts in the game & lost the boards. UVA scored 48 points in the 2nd half to easily win. Winning the ACC title in our first season... would have been savory sweet. The Tyler Ennis 25-0 start season failed so miserably, ending with a thunk in the tourney.

The only thing more disappointing than how that season ended is the number of fans who toot the 25-0 horn as if mid season trophies were handed out.

 

[FRANKIEFAN]

The only thing more disappointing than how that season ended is the number of fans who toot the 25-0 horn as if mid season trophies were handed out.

I thought it was a pretty good way to enter a new league.

We didn't lose to a 16 seed or anything. Ennis became a different player once he realized he'd be a first round pick. I am still furious at him for throwing up that three at the end of the Dayton game when he could have taken it to the rim to tie it up and force OT. Total punk move trying to be the hero. Kansas got bounced in the 2nd round too it would have been Stanford next not them. (I had regional tickets for Memphis and think I got 15 bucks each for them on stubhub.)

Of the 4 regular season games we lost only the previously mentioned UVA game was a blowout. BC was an OT loss and wearing mismatching shorts and cursed script jerseys doomed us. The GT loss was a close game that could have gone either way. We were ROBBED @ Duke in the jacket throw game.

That was a good season the real depressing heartbreaker is who ended up winning.

 

[Cheriehoop]

The only thing more disappointing than how that season ended is the number of fans who toot the 25-0 horn as if mid season trophies were handed out.

Yet so many of those same fans criticize lauding post season records when the regular season is lackluster. Dang if you do, dang if you don’t.

 

[Jake]

if I had a crystal ball I would have played Fab in the tourney and forced the NCAA to make a decision. They might have penalized us back to the stone age but who really cares what the NCAA does now. See UNC joke

 

[OrangeDW]

I thought it was a pretty good way to enter a new league.

We didn't lose to a 16 seed or anything. Ennis became a different player once he realized he'd be a first round pick. I am still furious at him for throwing up that three at the end of the Dayton game when he could have taken it to the rim to tie it up and force OT. Total punk move trying to be the hero. Kansas got bounced in the 2nd round too it would have been Stanford next not them. (I had regional tickets for Memphis and think I got 15 bucks each for them on stubhub.)

Of the 4 regular season games we lost only the previously mentioned UVA game was a blowout. BC was an OT loss and wearing mismatching shorts and cursed script jerseys doomed us. The GT loss was a close game that could have gone either way. We were ROBBED @ Duke in the jacket throw game.

That was a good season the real depressing heartbreaker is who ended up winning.

I also wasn’t exactly itching for an Ennis 3 there. It was an odd decision because he wasn’t a big 3 point shooter anyways and didn’t have a good shooting game.

That said, I can’t blame him for the loss. I think we made 1 or 2 shots outside of the paint that whole game. He wasn’t the only one who shot poorly. We were far physically superior to Dayton but when you go 1 for the game outside of 15 feet, you’re not going to beat many teams. We lacked wings. Great upfront with Fair, Grant, and Christmas. Great freshman PG. But on the wings? We had a soph. Cooney and a not ready for prime time Gbinije. And nobody else. Put Southerland on that team and we’re probably a final 4 team. Or even put a second half of 2014-15 Gbinije on that team and we’re final four bound. We just didn’t have the wing play. CJ was a 3 who was really a 4. And Cooney was a soph. and not ready to be the only real 2 Guard option.

 

[Cheriehoop]

I also wasn’t exactly itching for an Ennis 3 there. It was an odd decision because he wasn’t a big 3 point shooter anyways and didn’t have a good shooting game.

That said, I can’t blame him for the loss. I think we made 1 or 2 shots outside of the paint that whole game. He wasn’t the only one who shot poorly. We were far physically superior to Dayton but when you go 1 for the game outside of 15 feet, you’re not going to beat many teams. We lacked wings. Great upfront with Fair, Grant, and Christmas. Great freshman PG. But on the wings? We had a soph. Cooney and a not ready for prime time Gbinije. And nobody else. Put Southerland on that team and we’re probably a final 4 team. Or even put a second half of 2014-15 Gbinije on that team and we’re final four bound. We just didn’t have the wing play. CJ was a 3 who was really a 4. And Cooney was a soph. and not ready to be the only real 2 Guard option.

That bogus flagrant foul against Cooney drove me crazy. We really struggled on offense but going to the basket was our only real option - we made ZERO 3’s all game. I was at that game and Gbinije, Rak and Grant were our only decent scoring options against Dayton (9 of 13) while Ennis, C.J. and Cooney were 12 of 41. Ennis and CJ took 35 of those 41 shots - ball certainly wasn’t distributed that game.

 

[sufan4eva13]

As a 25 year old fan, there’s a few that stand out for me:

1. Arinze going down in 2010 was by far the worst example. That 2010 team was everything you could ever ask for in a Cuse basketball team. Yeah, in 2012 we had a better record, but for some reason looking back it still feels like 2010 was the better team. I remain convinced, especially since our side of the bracket cleared out big time, that if Arinze had been healthy we’d have won it all.

2. Fab being declared ineligible in 2012 was a huge kick in the nuts. It was another year where we had the goods to cut down the nets and were basically relegated to a team incapable of doing so as a result of losing our center. Obviously these two are the big ones for everyone recently, but being 25 they’re the standouts from my perspective.

3. This one has been mentioned by a few as well, but just the way we ended the 2014 season after starting 25-0 was a major disappointment. To understand why I think looking at it in the context of where we were as a program is best. We’d been on a run of being elite in the past several years, we’d ascended to #1 in the nation, that game when we beat Pitt at the buzzer to get to 25-0 was probably the high point of our programs reputation pre sanctions looking back. Once we hit 25-0, everything went to crap. Yeah, we made two final fours, but the notion that we were building into a true elite program hit its apex at 25-0. I hope we can get back to that point.

 

[moqui]

The only thing more disappointing than how that season ended is the number of fans who toot the 25-0 horn as if mid season trophies were handed out.

other people finding joy in something cuse-related is the thing that disappoints you most
this is the platonic ideal of a francopizza post.
it should be frozen in amber and displayed in perpetuity in the syracusefan.com hall of legends

 

[HOFCeluck]

I’m not doing to give anyone sht for enjoying that 25-0 start. It was pretty awesome in the moment. But for me 25-0 and 3-6 are two sides of the same coin. And it’s hard to look back positively on a season where a Syracuse team that at one point was number one in the country lost in the first weekend while seven seed uconn wins it all.

 

[MSOrange]

I’m not doing to give anyone sht for enjoying that 25-0 start. It was pretty awesome in the moment. But for me 25-0 and 3-6 are two sides of the same coin. And it’s hard to look back positively on a season where a Syracuse team that at one point was number one in the country lost in the first weekend while seven seed uconn wins it all.

Agree and unless I'm getting the wrong vibe, I don't think anyone is blowing off how the season ended. It seems to me like most people are saying the end of the season was so disappointing because of the 25-0 run . I still look back fondly on the streak but yeah, overall it's hard to look back and not feel disappointed it ended with such a thud.

 

[FrancoPizza]

other people finding joy in something cuse-related is the thing that disappoints you most
this is the platonic ideal of a francopizza post.
it should be frozen in amber and displayed in perpetuity in the syracusefan.com hall of legends

It’s not joy - it’s a delusional sense of accomplishment. That 25-0 was a house of cards and we all knew it deep down. The 20-0 and 19-0 starts had a much different feeling by comparison.

 

[sufan4eva13]

The notion that we “all knew” that 25-0 was a “house of cards” is revisionist history. For 3 months and a week of that season we were in the top 4. We were preseason top 10 and remained top 10 for the first 4 and a half months of the season until we dropped out in the final two weeks of the regular season. That was, by far, the regular season where our program was perceived as most dominant in recent history, with the possible exception of 2012. That team won Maui, demolished Indiana in the ACC-B10 challenge, destroyed #8 Villanova by 16 points, 5 of those 25 wins came against top 25 teams, including teams like Duke, Pittsburgh (twice, and while they were top 25), Villanova, Baylor & Indiana. Also, I was on this forum at the time, I remember how things were. This is just a false take.

 

[OttoMets]

Following SU hoops since the 70's and seen so many; but the one which still hurts was our first UVA game in the ACC. March 2014. We had a shot at the ACC title, if we could beat 'em. I honesty thought our bigs... CJ, RAK, Jerami, & Baye would torch UVA. They combined for only 26 pts in the game & lost the boards. UVA scored 48 points in the 2nd half to easily win. Winning the ACC title in our first season... would have been savory sweet. The Tyler Ennis 25-0 start season failed so miserably, ending with a thunk in the tourney.

Great post, this is probably at the top of my list in the last five years. The wheels hadn't fallen off before that game, but we got crushed by what I considered a much worse program. And everyone had been planning for the East Regional in New York for a couple years...any chance of that happening slipped away during the second half.

 

[MSOrange]

That bogus flagrant foul against Cooney drove me crazy. We really struggled on offense but going to the basket was our only real option - we made ZERO 3’s all game. I was at that game and Gbinije, Rak and Grant were our only decent scoring options against Dayton (9 of 13) while Ennis, C.J. and Cooney were 12 of 41. Ennis and CJ took 35 of those 41 shots - ball certainly wasn’t distributed that game.

I remember the offensive ineptitude from outside against Dayton - and that's being kind. But I'm drawing a blank on the Cooney flagrant foul for some reason. Can you refresh my memory on the details?

 

[FrancoPizza]

Maybe not "all," but I remember a growing bunch of people who thought that the record didn't match the quality of play. I was one of them, and I think SoBeCuse was another.

The team was playing to its level of competition after the Duke game

I would even go back as far as the Saint Mary's game at the Dome. I was there, Section 311 Row A. Saint Mary's was in it right till the end. It was just a completely underwhelming vibe - the sense that they were going to be exposed sooner or later. If the laws of probability were followed, we were playing more like a 19-6 team vs 25-0. Still pretty good, just not some holy grail of perfection. Maybe if we played a more exciting up-tempo offense that season would be remembered in a more positive light. Too many of those games were rock fights or snoozers. Little did we know it was just beginning.

 

[kirbivore]

if I had a crystal ball I would have played Fab in the tourney and forced the NCAA to make a decision. They might have penalized us back to the stone age but who really cares what the NCAA does now. See UNC joke

SU suspended Fab during reg. season and tourney which the NCAA never gave them credit for.

 

[kirbivore]

I remember the offensive ineptitude from outside against Dayton - and that's being kind. But I'm drawing a blank on the Cooney flagrant foul for some reason. Can you refresh my memory on the details?

That was one of those concussion point of emphasis rules where you couldn't clear space with your elbows. The Dayton guy had Cooney trapped on the sideline and was chin to chin with him. Trevor pivoted to make some room and the guy flopped.

 

[PhatOrange]

Mine would have to be AO getting hurt. I believed we were going to win it all that year.

 

[HOFCeluck]

Maybe not "all," but I remember a growing bunch of people who thought that the record didn't match the quality of play. I was one of them, and I think SoBeCuse was another.

The team was playing to its level of competition after the Duke game, we had ugly wins against NCSU and Clemson, Baye was hurt, Cooney was seemingly doing nothing right after his one-man win against Notre Dame, defenders were cheating against C.J.'s left hand and increasingly shutting him down, and Ennis was way less effective distributing the ball while continuing to slow the pace which (in the opinion of some) allowed some mediocre teams to hang around. For the first ten or so conference games, that didn't bite us. With BC and Georgia Tech and NCSU in Greensboro and Dayton, it bit us.

I don't know what all was wrong, but that team was so flat for the last six weeks (ironically, the Duke game in Durham was maybe the best performance) and there were definitely some people here concerned about the regression even during the streak.

Some were. Others were still on the GREAT TEAMS FIND WAYS TO WIN bandwagon even after CJ Fair sibglehandedly won that game vs NC State.

 

[two3zone]

[

I would even go back as far as the Saint Mary's game at the Dome. I was there, Section 311 Row A. Saint Mary's was in it right till the end. It was just a completely underwhelming vibe - the sense that they were going to be exposed sooner or later. If the laws of probability were followed, we were playing more like a 19-6 team vs 25-0. Still pretty good, just not some holy grail of perfection. Maybe if we played a more exciting up-tempo offense that season would be remembered in a more positive light. Too many of those games were rock fights or snoozers. Little did we know it was just beginning.

I sat with bballbeadle for that game not far from you, probably section 309 or so or A or B, the sentimate was exactly the same. It seems like we got exposed. We did have some impressive victories and we won games pretty handedly but it was seemingly the stretches we would have in every game or a bad first half that just showed that this team could run into major issues.

As soon as Clooney went from greatest shooter of all time to Mr I shouldn’t shoot at all we stunk.

 

[two3zone]

I remember the offensive ineptitude from outside against Dayton - and that's being kind. But I'm drawing a blank on the Cooney flagrant foul for some reason. Can you refresh my memory on the details?

Not sure we hit a shot outside the paint that game.