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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 4214253, member: 289"] People always seem to under-estimate the ability of players and teams to improve over the course of a season or between seasons. IMO, that's the best thing about college sports- watching players get better. The college basketball season isn't geared to measure this. Leagues that have a lot of rebuilding teams are graded down in the rankings to open the seasons and may certify those opinions by losing some early games. Then they start playing each other exclusively in games that don't help them in the rankings because they aren't playing ranked teams. The Big 10 and SEC teams fed off of each other's ratings and their reputations as leagues remained high. The Big 10 is now 8-7 with Purdue down by 1 to Texas as I write this. They may have only Michigan, a 19-14 team, in the Sweet 16. the SEC is 4-5 and only Arkansas will be in the Sweet 16. The Big 12 also had several ranked teams but they've been great, only Baylor losing in OT to UNC in 10 games. They will have 5 sweet 16 teams if Texas and TCU win. The ACC had the low ratings and the poor start but we're 9-2 with 3 of 5 teams in the Sweet 16. We twice had 18 point leads on Miami, losing by a total of four points, took UNC into overtime and gave Duke all it wanted with two starters out the last time we played them. Like the conference, we got better as the season progressed. I read predictions that we will have our second straight losing season next year but who can know that now? The issue of whether to root for conference members comes up each year. Obviously you can root for whomever you want. I root for Syracuse first and then root for everyone we've played second because the better they do, the better, or at least the less bad, we look when they win. To me, it's as simple as that. "But what about the hate?" I don't have any hate. there's enough of that in the world. [/QUOTE]

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