Well we've hit the big time now

[Marsh01]

Halfway down after he talks about Syracuse and their schedule for this year.

http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/41944/bag-on-cuse-racers-and-multiplicity

 

[SkanSU]

Brennan's an idiot ... I can see if he said, well Duke, or North Carolina, or even Michigan State should be #1 ... b/c he is basing it on schedule. But OSU?? They have played 9/10 home games ... 1 against Florida (us, too), 1 against Duke, and 1 away game against Kansas (loss) - altho w/o Sullinger. Now I'm not getting into another circular scheduling debate but if you are going to pick OSU over SU based on schedule ... take another look ...like Kentucky, or Duke, or North Carolina, or even Michigan State ... but not OSU ... their schedule has been pretty soft and homey as well.

 

[CuseTroop]

dang, that would have been the perfect opportunity to plug "Espresso Yourself" coffee shops, Fairbanks Alaska. Best cup of joe in town!

 

[slidingdown]

I don't like the idea of all those eyes watching me.

 

[CuseTroop]

and do you think he reads our board? Or just does google searches of his name, and reads what ever pops up?

 

[CusefanATL]

Brennan's an idiot ... I can see if he said, well Duke, or North Carolina, or even Michigan State should be #1 ... b/c he is basing it on schedule. But OSU?? They have played 9/10 home games ... 1 against Florida (us, too), 1 against Duke, and 1 away game against Kansas (loss) - altho w/o Sullinger. Now I'm not getting into another circular scheduling debate but if you are going to pick OSU over SU based on schedule ... take another look ...like Kentucky, or Duke, or North Carolina, or even Michigan State ... but not OSU ... their schedule has been pretty soft and homey as well.

Let me get this straight...

Ohio State has played a team roughly ranked 6th at home and won by 20, and team that was around 9th at home and won by 10. and a team that was ranked 12thish on the road and lost.

AND THEY HAVE A SOFT SCHEDULE?!?!? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

They have played 5 out of the last 8 natl champs for God's sake. That schedule is BRUTAL.

 

[realorange]

Let me get this straight...

Ohio State has played a team roughly ranked 6th at home and won by 20, and team that was around 9th at home and won by 10. and a team that was ranked 12thish on the road and lost.

AND THEY HAVE A SOFT SCHEDULE?!?!? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

They have played 5 out of the last 8 natl champs for God's sake. That schedule is BRUTAL.

Absolutely correct. Those guys are good! They damn near took out KU at Allen Fieldhouse. They played without Sullinger who is easily first team AA and arguably the best player this year. Yeah, KU is not as good as usual, but getting a win there is a gold star on anyones calender any year.

As I've said before, we wouldn't want any part of Ohio State right now. If we totally get our act together, I would still hope we don't have to meet them before the Championship Game.

 

[CusefanATL]

Absolutely correct. Those guys are good! They damn near took out KU at Allen Fieldhouse. They played without Sullinger who is easily first team AA and arguably the best player this year. Yeah, KU is not as good as usual, but getting a win there is a gold star on anyones calender any year.

As I've said before, we wouldn't want any part of Ohio State right now. If we totally get our act together, I would still hope we don't have to meet them before the Championship Game.

I certainly dont think anyone should question us being #1 right now, but to call that schedule soft is insane.

We are a very good team, OSU is very good, Kentucky is very good, UNC is very good.

Lets enjoy college basketball this season.

 

[SkanSU]

Take a look at the rest of their schedule

 

[CusefanATL]

Take a look at the rest of their schedule

OSU OOC schedule > Syracuse OOC schedule.

 

[armory]

OSU current strength of schedule - 98th
SU current strength of schedule - 12th

Sure it's early, but yeah.

 

[NKR1978]

I don't understand why some are so sensitive to opinions. I thought his answers were pretty well thought out and showed a knowledge of SU and its fans. For example, he linked to TNIAAM. He also rightly pointed out that we take pride in our ownership of MSG. We can't argue in one breath that MSG is 200+ miles from Syracuse and then say we OWN MSG (we do).

We have found a way to beat the RPI by scheduling teams that only kind of suck and that will be strong in their mid major conference. But, we also have played Florida and it isn't our fault that the NIT field was pretty weak.

I can't wait for Saturday's game to shut up some of the critics.

 

[Knicks411]

I like Brennan. Pretty sure dude ran a college hoops blog, got noticed, and got picked up by ESPN. He's one of us. (Not an SU fan, as far as I know, but in the sense that he loves loves loves college hoops.)

And hey, I agree with most of his points too. So maybe that has something to do with it. But I think his response is pretty well reasoned.

I can't wait for Saturday's game to shut up some of the critics.

If we lose, does that mean the critics had some merit?

 

[SkanSU]

As I've said before, we wouldn't want any part of Ohio State right now. If we totally get our act together, I would still hope we don't have to meet them before the Championship Game.

Actually now's the time to play them ... Sully's out.

 

[CorduroyG]

Any way to track how many views that eamonn brennan thread has gotten?

 

[Ghost]

I don't have a big problem with the article, but if I did have one gripe it would be that all too often you get references like this when people are picking on our schedule:

"Despite these mitigations, this simply hasn't been a very challenging first 10 games for Syracuse this season. I, the selfish college basketball fan, would like to see how the Orange would fare at, say, Gonzaga, where Michigan State played Saturday."

It seems like everyone references Michigan State - why? Most years you can put their schedule up against anyone else and say the other team schedules nobody. How about you pick out 5 random teams in the top 15 and do a comparison to make it fair. Izzo is a madman when it comes to scheduling most of the time.

 

[CuseTroop]

Any way to track how many views that eamonn brennan thread has gotten?

1,590

 

[OrangeTown]

1,590

Yeah, I'm kinda disappointed. When I saw my thread linked in his article, I thought it'd be interesting to see how many hits it got. I guess that shows how many people read Eamonn's articles.

 

[bnoro]

Take off the orange colored glasses, people! That article was probably the least biased, well thought out article anyone's written about our scheduling in years and people get pissed about it. We should be happy with that analysis. He raises several great points, especially the MSG one.

 

[Forza Azzurri]

I think he is spot-on...the only teams we could play who might outdraw us at the Garden are UConn; a top ten St. John's team and possibly Kentucky (their fans travel in rabid packs...they outdrew us at the National Championship game in '96 at the Meadowlands.

I would love to see this team really challenged: 1 road game against top ten team in either December or, even better, in one of those made-for-TV games in late January/early February like UConn does every year...@ MSU in'03 is a perfect example.

 

[Col. Bleep]

I certainly dont think anyone should question us being #1 right now, but to call that schedule soft is insane.

We are a very good team, OSU is very good, Kentucky is very good, UNC is very good.

Lets enjoy college basketball this season.

Amen.

Brennan's column is very positive about SU.
It's no big secret we tend to play a relatively easy early schedule.
Jim Boeheim's only been doing it for 35 years or so.

So our undefeated record has to stand in contrast to the much tougher early schedules that OSU, Duke, Kentucky, Kansas & UNC have played.