Give @MattZemek a twitter follow and check out his musings on college sports at https://www.patreon.com/Zemek.
Death. Taxes. Syracuse living under a cloud in March.
Whether it’s the big, bad NCAA, or a failed drug test, or a dubious inclusion into the NCAA Tournament, Syracuse and controversy have been intimately linked in March throughout this decade.
This is not some incendiary outsider perspective: This is the reality of Syracuse fans as they have known it. They wait for the other shoe to drop. They wait for the piano to fall from the sky. They wait for the firestorm to emerge.
It once again hit Syracuse with full force in the NCAA Tournament, as did the Baylor Bears on Thursday night in Salt Lake City.
Guard Frank Howard failed a drug test. Just before Syracuse was supposed to give Baylor a battle and earn a date with Gonzaga in a highly-anticipated second-round showdown, it was announced that Howard would not play. Howard’s absence clearly showed up. Everyone in the arena, everyone watching in Syracuse, and everyone else who saw this game on national television could tell how much Howard’s absence was felt on the court.
The story is not so much that Howard messed up. The story is that with Syracuse, SOMETHING ALWAYS HAPPENS.
A normal March? HA! What a concept, right? March isn’t “normal” in a certain sense; it is in the nature of March to be anything but normal. Yet, for Syracuse, a lack of normalcy so often refers to matters other than basketball, and as Jim Boeheim forges ahead into the final stretch of his career — however long that lasts, no one knows — it would be great if Syracuse could somehow manage to make March about basketball, and not “things other than basketball.”
Frank Howard made this March about something other than basketball.
The Fab Melo situation in 2012 — which likely prevented Boeheim from coaching for a second national title in New Orleans (against Kentucky) after his first one with Carmelo Anthony in 2003 — was about something other than basketball.
The 2016 and 2018 NCAA Tournament inclusions were about something other than basketball: CBS and Turner TV ratings.
Maybe in 2020, March will be evaluated solely on the basketball merits in Syracuse. Maybe next season, Syracuse can get a high-enough NCAA Tournament seed so that its first-round opponent will be easier than Baylor, and one player suspension might not mean the difference between victory and defeat.
Maybe, one of these years, March will feature a Syracuse team which doesn’t step on the rake in the middle of a yard.
Maybe. Don’t become too confident. This is Syracuse in the 21st century.
Make sure you follow the All Sports Discussion Twitter account at @AllSportsDACC and please like our Facebook Page
Leave a Reply