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Message: [QUOTE="Flacusian, post: 224187, member: 264"] One thing that seems to be generally acknowleged by most posters here is the fact that the team has not played well recently. Of course there are those who say that as the season wore on we played better teams and thus the margin of victory shrank accordingly. The general concensus is also that the level of play dropping off coincided with Fab's hiatus from the team. Whatever the case may be it begs the question, "What is the reason behind the team seemingly not playing as well later in the season than earlier". It seemed that early on when the minutes were spread out between 9/10 players there were times that the team clearly looked unbeatable. Although we struggled with rebounding the other areas in which we excelled more than compensated. Then the slump bug seemed to hit pretty much everyone on the team. Dion was only a shadow of what early on looked like a 1st team big east / all american type of break out season. Dirty pretty much lost his ability to hit a 3 and many of his shots didn't even make it to the rim. Scoop was no longer the "facillitator" and we watched him continue his downward trajectory from the charity stripe. Fab, although back and playing fairly consistently was seen stepping back and taking 12 to 15' rather than being a force down low. KJ had a couple games in which he pretty much disappeared and contributed next to nothing on the boards. CJ even struggled at times. Brandon saw long stretches when he sat on the bench when clearly he could have been contributing. It would seem reasonable to expect a team to experience a trajectory of improvement over the course of a season. Although the team continued to win, was the winning in fact masking the fact that some disturbing trends were developing with the team. It's easy to point to the fact that they continued to win games and say that is all that matters but at the same time most would say the thing that matters most is to have the team playing their best as they head into the tourney. Was it the shortening of the bench which began to have an effect on the morale of the team both individually and as a team? JB always claims that "The guys who are playing best are the ones who are going to play". Did that cause any hard feelings which simmered with some of the players such as MCW. Was the flare up of tempers when Fab launched the early in the clock 3 late in the game a sign that there is some dissention on the team? Was the grind of the stress from the Fine situation / Fabs absence/ and finally the drug scandal something that although we've been assured it hasn't affected the team, actually had an averse impact on the team as a whole? And finally, in the loss to Cinci, there were times when clearly there was a lack of hustle from those who are the supposed leadership of the team. The team came out without the sense of urgency and intensity that we had become accustomed to seeing earlier in the season. Sure, Cinci was shooting lights out but in addtion to them hitting those shots one has to ask the question of why they got so many open uncontested looks and were allowed to pretty much ice the game in the opening minutes. I certainly don't have the answers to this but I have to be honest in saying that these are some of the things that I'm thinking about as we head into the tourney. The gaudy record of 31-2 makes it easy to think that all is well with Syracuse but to me it is important that they are poised to play well and make a deep run in the dance. JB assures us all is well. I certainly hope so. I just don't want the heartbreak of a team which has held so much promise to not play well as we head toward the finish line of the season. I'm believing that the team has saved their best play for last and we are going to see the team that had so much fire in it's belly back in January. LGO!!! [/QUOTE]

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