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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 2552458, member: 289"] 2018 Update 2004: We beat Maryland 72-70 in the what was advertised as first ever confrontation between the last two national champions in the NCAA tournament but wasn’t, (Cincinnati vs. Ohio State for the 1962 title). Then we lost to Alabama 71-80 in our old ides of March, the Sweet 16. The only thing I remember about that game is that Alabama’s coach Mark Gottfried became the latest ‘hot thing’ and got the NC State job, where he gott fired. We were the 5 seed, the Tide the 8 seed so it was the first real upset since the Richmond game 13 years before, (discounting the 8-9 game of 1999). Alabama lost to eventual national champion Connecticut in the next round, 71-87. 2005: We roared out to a 20-1 start and again faded to a 4-5 regular season finish. But we redeemed ourselves by winning the BET for the first time in in 13 years, (that number comes up a lot). We were 26-7, ranked #11 and a 4 seed in the NCAA tournament when we shockingly lost to Vermont 57-60 in overtime, the margin of victory being a 25 foot shot by one T. J. Sorrentine that we are still sore about. 2006: We got off to another great start, 16-2 and again slumped badly late in the regular season, 4-9. But that led to the legendary GMAC run in the BET. We might have needed every one of the four wins we got there just to get into the tournament. Unfortunately, it took about all Gerry McNamara had to make that run and he was unable to play in our 58-66 loss to Texas A&M in the NCAA tourney. It was our second straight first round loss and might have been a third straight if Gerry as a sophomore hadn’t exploded for 43 points in an 80-75 win over BYU. This was also our third straight up, this time in a 5-12 game. The next two years we were in the NIT and some fans were openly suggesting that Jim Boeheim be forced into retirement because “the game has passed him by”. 2009: Broken record: we got off to a 16-1 start and then lost 7 of 10 games. Then we started playing almost fanatical defense, beating St. John’s 87-58, Cincinnati 87-63 and Rutgers 70-40 before ending the regular season with an overtime 86-79 win over Marquette. Then came the BET and three more straight wins, the second of those the legendary 6 overtime win over #1 ranked Connecticut. Then we won another OT game vs. West Virginia and led Louisville at halftime by double figures before the cardinal’s press and our fatigue did us in, 66-76. Then we won a couple NCAA game to stretch our comeback to 9 wins in 10 games before getting slam dunked 71-84, by Blake Griffin and his friends. We were the 3 seed and they were the 2 seed, so that wasn’t an upset. 2010: Maybe my favorite SU team. We had two of everything: two inside scorers in Arinze Onuaku and Rick Jackson; two +40% three point shooters win Wes Johnson and Andy Rautins; Two guys who could slash to the basket to score in Johnson and Kris Joseph and two point guards in Scoop Jardine and Brandon Triche. We crushed defending national champion North Carolina 87-71 in New York and also handled Florida 85-73 on the way to an amazing 24-1 start. Rick Pitino and Louisville got us twice down the stretch but we ended the regular season ranked #1 in the country. Then came the BET and an 84-91 loss to Georgetown. But that wasn’t the big news: Onuaku went down hard in a pile-up in the lane and was severely injured, being helped off the court. It looked like his season had ended. And it had but Jim Boeheim, to keep our opponents guessing, never confirmed that. It appeared not to be a problem when we crushed our old pals, Vermont 79-56 and Gonzaga 87-65 in the sub-regionals. We expected to do the same thing to Butler in the Sweet 16. But the Bulldogs were a different deal. They were one of the best defensive teams in the country, coached by a great young coach, Brad Stevens and had a future NBA star in forward Gordon Heyward. What they did not have is a shot-blocking center so we tried to beat them getting the ball into Rick Jackson. But the Bulldogs shut off the passing lanes and we had 8 first half turnovers trying to pass to Rick. If we had had Arinze, we had two potential inside targets who could also play a two man game with each other. We would have had fewer turnovers and more scores going inside. We stopped trying to force it into Rick in the second ahlf and made a comeback, even taking a brief lead late in the game. I remember another bad out of bounds call that might have made a difference and the game slipped away as we had to foul to get the ball back. We lost 59-63. We were a #1 seed and they a #5. Butler went on to play Duke for the title and lost when Heyward’s half-court shot rimmed out. I’ll always believe we had the best team in the country that year and with Arinze, we would have won a second national title. Put that with the 1987 title that we would have won if we made our free throws and we’d have three titles, which would be about right for a school with our historical record. Instead we have one- for now. 2011: This team had the potential be as good as their book-ends but fell a bit short. We won our first 18 games, only to have a 4 game losing streak beginning with a game at Pitt where the 18-0 team got off to a 0-18 start. (Pitt has stopped a lot of our opening winning streaks over the years). Particularly disturbing was a 68-90 home loss to Seton hall. The season ended with a strange 62-66 loss to Marquette featuring a traveling call on Scoop Jardine as he tried to avoid an over-an-back call on an inbounds pass, for which there is no such thing as over-and-back. That was a #3 vs. #11game and so another upset. Marquette got blown out by North Carolina in the next round. 2012: Ten deep and anchored on defense by Fab Melo who blocked shots and drew charges, this team had the greatest regular season and best numerical record any SU team ever had. As in so many seasons, we started with a huge winning streak: 20-0 in this case. We’d been ranked #1 for more than a month when we got new that Melo was suspended for academic reasons. Jim Boeheim said “He just has to complete something”. This coincided with a trip to Notre Dame where they love to beat Syracuse and did so, 58-67. But we rallied to win the next one at Cincinnati, 60-53. Melo came back and the annual slump never happened. We completed the regular season 30-1 with no losses with Fab in the line-up. We were ranked #2 behind Kentucky who was also 30-1. Nobody else had fewer than 4 losses. It seemed inevitable that the two teams would meet for all the marbles. Then Fab was permanently suspended by the NCAA. It was the second time in three years that we lost our starting center just before the NCAA tournament. As in 2010, it didn’t mean our dream had ended as the team was strong enough to make a run anyway. This time we made it to the elite 8 where we lost to Ohio State in a game where 48 fouls were called, 28 of them on Syracuse. Ohio State went to the line 42 times to our 25 and score 11 more points there in a 70-77 loss. But the real impact of all those fouls was that SU’s running game, (this was our last real fast breaking team) was more disrupted by all the whistles than their half court, back-to-basket style game. It was our third straight season to end with an NCAA upset. Ohio State then lost to Kansas who lost to Kentucky in the final. That Kentucky team, led by Anthony Davis, a player we had basically discovered and recruited hard before John Calipari came into the picture, would probably win any vote for the outstanding team of the decade. Davis certainly turned out to be a far greater player than Melo. This suggests to me that Kentucky, not Syracuse was the best team that year. But I would have liked a shot at them with our full line-up and referees who minded their own business. 2013: Another great start: 18-1 and back to having a slump at the end of the regular season: 5-7, including a terrible 39-61 loss at Georgetown in our last game there as a big eats team. But like 2009, we started playing fanatical defense. I think this team was aour best defensive team ever with Baye Keita and Rakeem Christmas completely shutting down the paint and 6-6 Michael Carter-Williams out front. We gave up an average of 59 ppg in three BET wins and led Louisville 35-22 at halftime before succumbing to their press in the second half. Then we ‘upset’, Montana (per Seth Davis 81-34, held off California 66-60, dominated #1 seed Indiana 61-50 and sat on Marquette 55-39. Against Michigan, we were both #4 seeds but they were the higher ranked team in the AP poll (#7 vs. #17). Our defense finally let up in the first half as we fell behind 25-36 at the half. We revved up the defense again in the second half and out-scored the Wolverines 31-25 but it wasn’t quite enough, especially when the whistle-happy refs fouled out our backcourt on some dubious calls. Louisville then beat Michigan for the title. I don’t think anyone was going to stop the Cardinals that year. 2014: The greatest star of all: 25-0 and our third team of the decade to achieve a #1 ranking. But it was deceiving. We were not a dominant team. Our biggest strength is that, with Tyler Ennis at the point, we didn’t turn the ball over and typically had a 5-10 plus difference in that stat. We were winning a lot of close games, including miracle finishes against Pitt and NC State for #s 24 and 25. But we were already in a severe offensive slump. We scored 61-57-58-56-59-60-57-56-62 in successive games and lost 4 of the last 5 of those games. The offense showed some life with a 74-58 win at Florida State. Then NC State got revenge in the ACCT, 63-66. We looked going disposing of West Michigan 77-53 but went 0 for 10 from three point range in losing to Dayton, an 11 seed in the Round of 32. 2016: We didn’t even get off to a strong start. We won our first 6 but then got beat by Wisconsin and Georgetown, beat Colgate but lost at a bad St. John’s team. We won 3 in a row but lost 4 in a row. Then we finally put something together with 8 wins in 9 games, only to lose 5 of 6, including a first round ACCT game to our old friends at Pitt. We were 19-13 and 9-10 in the ACC. It’s still a shock that we not only got into the tournament but were a 10 seed and didn’t have to play in a play-in game. A bigger shock was that we won 4 NCAA games in a row to become the first 10 seed to ever make the Final Four. We got revenge on Dayton, then crushed Middle Tennessee, the team that had knocked off #2 seed Michigan State. Then came miracle comebacks against Gonzaga and our other old pals, Virginia. The coach, (not Boeheim) turned into a pumpkin in the national semi-finals against North Carolina. 2018: Another bumpy ride during the regular season. We had a credible but not spectacular 11-2 non-conference record. In the conference we never won more than 3 games in a row, and that only once on the way to an 8-10. The feeling seemed unanimous that we need to win a couple game in New York to get in but when we got easily handled by the Tar Heels, 59-78. But we just made the field as the 68th team. That made us the underdog in every game. But we held four teams to an average of 25 points under their scoring average, playing the best defense since the 2013 team. Unfortunately, we came up just short against Duke in the Sweet 16, 65-69. We looked like the better team with Marek Dolezaj in there but he got into foul trouble and wasn’t there for the 0-10 run at the end of the half that was the real difference in the game. I’ve gone through the Boeheim years, stroke tallying the wins and losses when we were favorites and underdogs. Seedings were fires revealed in 1979. For 1977 and 1978 I used the last writer’s poll of the regular season to determine who was the favorite. In 2013 SU and Michigan were both #4 seeds but Michigan was the higher ranked team and thus the favorite. This year neither SU or Arizona State even got votes for the final Top 25. But SU was the last team in and thus the underdog. I have Jim Boeheim at 44-18 as an NCAA favorite. That’s a 71.0% winning percentage, not far from Jim’s overall winning percentage of 73.6%. As an underdog, Jim is 16-14, 53%, so he’s more likely to win as an underdog than to lose. But there’s an interesting breakdown of that. Through 1995, 9the Arkansas game where Moten called the time out we didn’t have), Jim was 2-8 as an underdog. Beginning with the 1996 run to the title game, which is when he started to really emphasize the zone, (although he didn’t play it exclusively until 2010), Jim is 14-6 as an underdog, nearly the same winning percentage (70.0%) as a favorite. In the NCAA losses since my original post, we were favorites 7 times and underdogs 4 times. I think Oklahoma in 2009 was clearly the better team. I’m not sure Michigan was in 2013. North Carolina clearly was in 2016. Duke was this year but not really on the day we played them. I think we would have beaten them if Dolezaj didn’t get in foul trouble. But in all four of those years, my pride for what the team had accomplished was greater than my disappointment at the ending. Adding that to the dozen games I mentioned in the original post that didn’t hurt so much I’d say we were dancing with Gene Nelson in that clip 16 times in 39 NCAA losses. We had gone about as far as we could go. [/QUOTE]

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