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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1743233, member: 289"] Boeheim, the Dome, the Big East and ESPN are still pretty powerful influences. I think we would have broken through eventually even if the Pearl went elsewhere. But it would certainly have taken longer. Like I said, the Pearl was the pilot light that ignited the fire. One other historical perspective: during his career here, he was subject to a fair amount of criticism. I didn't agree with them, but there were critics. I remember a cab driver in Syracuse hearing something about him on the radio at time. He turned to me and and said, with a growl: "That's the most over-rated player we've ever had.!" Dick Vitale said he was at a loss to explain why Pearl "never lived up to his potential" until late in his junior year, when he started scoring a lot more. What they didn't understand was that Pearl was a point guard who was trying to set up his very talented teammates in addition to scoring himself. In high school he scored almost 40 points a game and I think Vitale, the cab driver and the other critics expected him to do something similar in college. They'd grown up in an era when college stars scored 25-30 points a game, as Bing did. But top teams in this new era had balanced offenses and Pearl used his offense to set up his passes and get everyone involved. Then when it came to crunch time, he took matters into his own hands. So he scored 15 points a game and had 8-9 assists to go with it. Then, halfway through the conference season in 1986, we had a game against Seton Hall in which both Rony Seikaly and Rafael Addison got hurt. Michael Brown had left the team and with both he and Addison gone, we had no outside game. So Pearl had to take over and began scoring 25ppg. Vitale, the cab driver and the other critics then decided he was suddenly "living up to his potential" and wondered why it had taken so long. In fact, he'd been playing great ball for three years. Over the years, the criticisms faded away as they often do. When Pearl started having health problems, it was permanently muted. But in his time, the admiration was far from unanimous. Sometimes hindsight is the more accurate view. [/QUOTE]

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