Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="HoustonCuse, post: 2049526, member: 87"] As I watch this year's team, I am struck by something important about perspective and how we form opinions about things. I see a Syracuse team that doesn't play anything like I have seen in over 30 years of fandom. They appear to lack toughness, fortitude, at times even pride. They don't appear to be particularly good at executing team concepts on offense or defense. They make dumb mistakes. They look very poor in the program's bread and butter zone defense. They look scared and listless on the road. They've seemingly broken every "bad" program record in the book - at least with respect to the modern era. In short, among other things, they look poorly coached. What is so striking about that is that this season very well could have been Hopkins' first as HC. It wouldn't have taken some miracle for JB to retire after sticking it to the NCAA with the Final Four run last year. Imagine for a moment that JB did retire and we saw this exact season play out just as it has, but with Hopkins as HC. What would we think of him as a coach? What would our reactions be to the "Hopkins experiment?" Would we be calling for his ouster already? Would we see any possible explanation other than his complete incompetence for the team's dramatic performance dropoff from Final Four and preseason expectations to historically bad? I think that we know the answers: Hopkins would be pilloried with extreme prejudice and many, many fans would see the only possible action to restore Syracuse to it's rightful place would be to send him packing. I have to admit, I am sure I would be among that group. But instead of that, we got this glimpse into what would seem an alternate reality that is the 2016-17 Syracuse basketball season, fully and completely coached by Hall of Fame Legend James A. Boeheim. I hope we realize that Hopkins is going to deserve some benefit of the doubt and that we shouldn't form a raging mob after a limited amount of information - or even 20+ games like we have seen this year. As a final thought, consider that if Hopkins was coach this year and we had scored just 3 more points against Yukon. We'd be sitting at 13-8 and be howling for Mike Hopkins head. Never knowing that such a performance by HCMH would have actually been better than what Boeheim could muster with this team (so far). [/QUOTE]

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