You aren't happy with making the tournament and getting to the sweet sixteen with all the challenges this team faced? Would you have been happier to be, let's say, UVA? Great regular season that crew. You think they're bragging about getting results this off season?
So it’s Boeheim’s fault that the kid didn’t get the job done? Lol. The same Boeheim that led this ragtag bunch to the sweet 16, and has proven to be quite effective at his job(Hall of famer and all)? Cmon.
Always ‘funny’ when debating simple logic triggers the ‘loyalists,’ who then don’t bother to deal with the actual arguments.
Not sure how you can insist upon having it ‘both ways’ all the time. You said, “Jimmy knows how to coach” in response to Cuse Action’s statement that “Moyer is attracting offers from a lot of quality programs. Interesting that they see something in the kid.”
So, Jimmy initially also ‘saw something in the kid.’ But, then what happened? Jimmy knows how to coach, but couldn’t get
that something out of the kid? Or, are you blaming the kid? Oh, and then you proceeded to insult the OP, because he said JB ‘ran moyer out.’ So, which is it? When JB has a success, it’s all from JB. When there’s a player ‘failure’—performing below (our) expectations, a transfer, early NBA stuff—that’s all on the player. And even though there have been an inordinate number of such ‘failures’ with our program, they’re never on JB, right? Another example: Marek. Marek really developed those last few games. Boeheim apologists will assert that "JB gets the most out of a player." But, to concede that, you have to believe that that player could not/should not have been better an an earlier stage. I/others might suggest that those simple things that Marek began to be competent at, he should have been competent at much sooner. Perspective.
And again—so it’s clear, because it’s obvious you either don’t understand or don’t care—i’m debating logic, not facts, because there are no facts. Not that we will actually know. This, to me, is about objectivity, perspectives, and the psychology of it all.
Back to Moyer. Moyer was good enough in High School to be a recruiting target for us. Wasn’t he Mr Basketball in Ohio or some such? He’s a high character kid. Very intelligent. But, somehow, uncoachable now?
So, now to your deflections and spin. You laced them all together into one simple conglomeration of ‘perspective,’ i can’t answer them that way.
Am i happy with making the tournament. I wouldn’t call it ‘happy.’ Relieved, maybe? Glad, definitely. But, no, not “Happy” to see us on the bubble. Again. Discussed ad nauseam in the media as being a bubble team again. Not happy to see us in a Play In Game(!). I felt like Jim Mora.
Play In Game? Play In? We’re talkin’ about a Play In Game? I always thought of play in games as being for teams like South by Southwest Cactus Tech. But, Syracuse in a play in game? Oy. And before you completely absorb your panties, don’t get me wrong. Again. Getting in is better, of course, than not. But, a play in game doesn’t make me “happy.”
Next.
UVA. Let’s get this out of the way. Yes. I’d have been happier being UVA. And here’s where ‘perspective’ comes back in. This site is its own bubble. Of all the people i know who are SU Alums and basketball heads, most don’t think the way the JB Loyalists do here. So, don’t think that this site always represents objectivity, truth, or the full demographic. Anyway, yeah, i think UVA had the better season. People here used “Sweet Sixteen” to feel better about the season. I don’t need to ‘feel better.’ I want to feel ‘accurately.’ And maybe i just have different objectives than you do.
My ‘objective’ (as if i had anything to do with it) is to have a team that is good enough to win a National Championship. The second ‘bar’ is not so much a standard as an accomplishment. A team that reaches the Final Four is a ‘bar’ for me. Sweet Sixteen isn’t one. Seems like a cute bit of marketing business. But, whatever. So, we won a play-in game against another team that had a not very successful season. How did i feel about that? Again, relieved. Glad. But, i didn’t take it as some great sign of success. We should have won that game. Right? Then TCU. They had the same number of wins as us, but in a lame(r) conference. So, again, relief, gladness, not a sense of tremendous accomplishment. We did what we should have done. MSU. That was a big win. Again, relief, and a bit of happiness, i guess. But, watching the actual game, and not relying solely on their seeding or yearlong rankings? I didn’t see a great team in them. We can say ‘the zone shut down their two stars.’ I’ll concede that. But, they had no guard play. To me, it’s incredibly surprising that they were so good all year, but whatever.
The perspective thing again…. In those three games, commentators harped on the fact that we play a zone. And any time it did anything, they’d pounce on another threadbare opportunity to mention that we play zone, and how much it has been stifling the opponent. Even after the first game(?), they were ranting about it. And then they showed the stats. On my (bad) memory, it was something like we held them to 38% FG percentage for the game. Whoa! Amazing defense! But, then, right next to it was the stat that
they held
us to 36%. And no one ever mentioned that they were doing it with M2M…. Same with the second game, and the third….. That’s the way it is. Commentators throw out that simple nugget because it’s simple and easy to recognize and digest, but other teams are defending us better than we’re defending them, and because M2M is the ‘industry standard’/default, it’s invisible somehow. One of those first two teams held all three of our three highest scoring players under their averages, and no one mentioned it. Battle was pretty well contained, and no one mentioned it….
What percentage of the Final Four's teams' defense is zone? When we reach a FF, it's because of the zone, but for everyone else, it's not because of M2M? Where's Duke right now, with all of their superstars, using their stolen zone?
Okay, so back to UVA. To me, a Sweet Sixteen is a nice thing. It’s a couple of weeks of enjoyment for our fans. But, it doesn’t indicate the quality of the team. UVA had a team that was good enough to win the entire thing. We didn’t. So, to assert that we had a better ‘season’ than they did because they happened to go out in the first round seems odd to me. I get it—that if your primary objective is to win the Championship, then each step along the way is a ‘credit,’ and they earned no credits. And now they’re also a footnote and commentators will be talking about them being the first to lose to a 16. And each time they do that, they’ll be mentioning that they were a No. 1 seed. While, honestly, i don’t believe anyone outside of our bubble really gives a damn that we made the Sweet 16. It’s not going to be impressive to recruits—who will also look at our 11th place conference finish. And bubble status. So, i asked,
how do you reconcile the season? It's a question, not an assertion, but so many of your are so sensitive about anyone questioning anything related to Orange... Finishing so far down in-conference should surely be telling about the quality of our program this year. But, it also wasn’t an aberration. Last year, the year before, the year before….. How many middle of the pack and below seasons do we have to sustain before we actually are
that team? Yeah, i’ll take UVA’s wire to wire top-rank
edness. Wire to wire excellence. Each game, going into it knowing you’ll win. No team controversies. Playing a (slightly) more exciting game. With a coach of the year. And doing it with only one player recruited out of the top 50 (i think). And they’ll be there again next year.
The Challenges. The kid that dropped out. I don’t know the entire situation there. There was discussion about a medical issue partially related to his injury. And then speculation about his dissatisfaction with minutes. Part of a coach’s responsibility is in managing a player. We’ve had a lot of defections for one reason or another, so i can’t fully trust that all of these issues are the fault of the player. I don’t know what discussions were had, or what the player expected in terms of time, but i can absolutely see that he wasn’t happy with his time, given his status/age/year. The injuries…. Sidibe was affected. Washington wouldn’t have played much. Other teams have injuries, too. So, it’s all a part of the fabric of the season. I’m challenged to recognize which games/if any were affected by not having Howard Washington, and i’m not going to speculate on how much more effective Sidibe could have been, since he still would have been splitting minutes with Chukwu, and Chukwu did develop a bit toward the end.
But, again, this goes into perspective, and how you want to look at things. If we were good enough to beat Michigan State, why weren’t we good enough to win a few of those games we lost to inferior teams? If you give JB credit for being ‘the master’ in the tournament, are you also suggesting he only ‘turned it on’ at the end? Why not be the master in the lead-up, so that we’re not on the bubble? So that we win more conference games? Looking at some of the comments, it’s like people are suggesting JB is playing 3D chess, showing only enough to get us into the field, so that we can spring our vaunted 2-3 on them and confuse them into losing to us. So, if you consider a Sweet Sixteen a ‘run’ into a successful season, how do you then ignore what happened before that? And didn’t we ‘suffer’ for four months before the two week ‘glee period?’ That doesn’t matter?
“The team greatly overachieved.”
Well, no. Not so much. We finished with a win total and conference standing that was pretty close to what the consensus here predicted. And we were on the bubble, which is what just about everyone predicted. I don’t think anyone here, even the most diehard debbie downers, thinks we can’t win a couple of games once we get into the NCAA field. And that’s what we did. And then we shocked Michigan State. To some, that seems to overwrite everything before it. To others, it was a big/lovely/beautiful win. Period. Perspective. The only thing that bothers me about one of those perspectives is the insistence that everyone should feel the same way, and the incredulity when that doesn’t happen.
“Boeheim led this ragtag bunch to the sweet 16, and has proven to be quite effective at his job.”
Ooof. Ragtag bunch. We had two players who will be drafted into the NBA. Not a lot of our opponents had that. We had a 7’2” center who JB said
last year was going to be a significant disruptor and “block a lot of shots.” We had a pro from a euro league. We had a junior point guard. A first team all acc freshman PF. A Jordan Brand Game backup center (however hobbled). Against anyone in our league not called Duke or North Carolina, that’s not a ragtag bunch. But, again, Sweet 16—music to some ears. But, in most cases, it only takes two wins to reach it. Beautiful that we did, but not an indicator of team quality, in my estimation. We were not a better team than UVA. Saying JB has proven to be quite effective isn’t the same as saying he is effective. We were 8-10 in conference. 8-10! Look at the teams that finished ahead of us, and tell me you were satisfied with the season. 9th the year before. 10th the year before that. 8th before that. That’s “quite effective?” We have one ACC tournament win. That’s “quite effective?” So, perspective….
People want to believe certain things, and they tend to look for ways to believe them.
What matters most here? A sweet sixteen. Does that build our program? Is that something that will be impressive to a recruit? Versus being ranked in the top three for an entire season, even with a tourney flameout. Was our sweet sixteen really that gratifying to you? Because why? Do you consider ASU and TCU to have been significant accomplishments? MSU, sure, i get that, but how do you need to weight those three wins to override the rest of the year? That’s an earnest question.
Again—instead of flaming the person, how about discussing the arguments. Or, whatever. I don't care. Some of this is from conversations i've been having with alums (real fans who are just as dedicated as you lot, but don't park themselves here because of the "unreasoned fanaticism")... So, have at it.
