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Syracuse: The Unsympathetic Underdog
By CHRIS HERRING / Wall Street Journal / Page D5
March 29, 2016
Given that Syracuse already has five prior Final Four appearances, a national championship trophy, a Hall-of-Fame coach and a perch in what is arguably the country’s top basketball conference, the team’s forthcoming trip to the final weekend in Houston isn’t exactly causing their pulses to race.
Most high-seeded underdogs that earn surprise trips to the Final Four collect every scrap of the nets they cut down at their regional arena. But after upsetting No. 1 seed Virginia on Sunday at Chicago’s United Center, Syracuse staffers accidentally dropped (then left) several extra clumps of nylon on the floor. These guys might be seeded No. 10, but they’ve been here before.
“Normally, you get a mid-major team that advances and everyone kind of loves them and wants to hop on the bandwagon,” said Syracuse guard Trevor Cooney, a senior who made it to the Final Four in 2013. “Now you have this big-time program, with our history, as the No. 10 seed. So it’s a bit weird.”
That word, weird, is a fitting one to describe Syracuse’s season. The team got off to an 0-4 start in the Atlantic Coast Conference, making it the first team in NCAA history to reach a Final Four after losing its first four games in conference play. During those dark moments, “I wasn’t thinking about the tournament, that’s for sure,” Cooney said. “We were just trying to figure out how to win a game.”
After dropping five of its final six games heading into March Madness, the team’s No. 72 ranking in RPI, the metric the NCAA selection committee uses to set the field, was the worst ever for a team that earned an at-large bid. Syracuse’s 13 losses this season ties it for the most ever for any Final Four team. “I mean, I thought we deserved to be in the tournament,” said coach Jim Boeheim. “But I wasn’t planning on getting to the Final Four.”
There’s another reason Syracuse isn’t setting hearts ablaze all over America: Boeheim and Syracuse were both penalized last year by the NCAA. Investigators alleged that staff members violated ethical rules by completing coursework for a player who was ineligible, boosters gave athletes money for volunteer work at a local YMCA facility, and the school failed to follow its own drug-testing policy. Along with a postseason ban for last season, which was self-imposed by the school, Boeheim was forced to vacate 108 prior wins and was suspended for nine games.
All of this came more than three years after an embarrassing episode for the school in which then-assistant coach Bernie Fine was alleged to have sexually abused two former Syracuse ball boys. Boeheim sharply criticized one of the accusers initially, saying “The Penn State thing came out, and the kid behind this is trying to get money.” Fine was fired from the university, but denied all charges and wasn’t charged after an 11-month federal investigation. (The University last year settled a lawsuit with the ball boys, in which Boeheim, in a statement given by the school, expressed regret for questioning their integrity.)
Syracuse’s troubles are echoed by its opponent Saturday, North Carolina: a school that is currently under NCAA investigation for widespread academic fraud. Specifically, investigators are examining whether the university steered hundreds of student-athletes toward sham classes that didn’t require real academic work from 1993 to 2011. A Carolina spokesman referred to an August statement in which athletic director Bubba Cunningham said: “we fully believe that we will be able to bring the investigation to a conclusion in spring 2016, as previously anticipated.” NCAA president Mark Emmert said this week that he expects a resolution on the matter soon.
“You’d like to think that this occasion would bring about some soul-searching for the NCAA, but the fact of the matter is—crime pays,” says Jay Smith, a history professor at North Carolina and co-author of “Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports.” “These two programs cheated pretty egregiously, yet here they are competing for a national title on a national stage.”
Smith said he believes the matchup might actually encourage other schools to break the rules. “While you might have some embarrassment on your hands, you’re now seeing that it’s not going to be a long-term hindrance on your program.”
Even if Syracuse’s presence in the Final Four doesn’t fill your heart with warmth, the team has made a habit of doing shocking, thrilling, Cinderella-like things. In February against Virginia Tech, for example, the Orange closed a seven-point deficit with 2:08 left. In the Sweet 16, they came back from five points down with 2:57 left against Gonzaga. Then they did the same thing to Virginia in the Elite Eight: After trailing by 15 points with 9:32 left, at which point their odds of wining the game were just 1.4%, they roared back to win by six.
“With what we’ve been through, this is gonna be up there in the chapters with some of the most unbelievable moments,” said Syracuse assistant coach Mike Hopkins.
Write to Chris Herring at chris.herring@wsj.com
By CHRIS HERRING / Wall Street Journal / Page D5
March 29, 2016
Given that Syracuse already has five prior Final Four appearances, a national championship trophy, a Hall-of-Fame coach and a perch in what is arguably the country’s top basketball conference, the team’s forthcoming trip to the final weekend in Houston isn’t exactly causing their pulses to race.
Most high-seeded underdogs that earn surprise trips to the Final Four collect every scrap of the nets they cut down at their regional arena. But after upsetting No. 1 seed Virginia on Sunday at Chicago’s United Center, Syracuse staffers accidentally dropped (then left) several extra clumps of nylon on the floor. These guys might be seeded No. 10, but they’ve been here before.
“Normally, you get a mid-major team that advances and everyone kind of loves them and wants to hop on the bandwagon,” said Syracuse guard Trevor Cooney, a senior who made it to the Final Four in 2013. “Now you have this big-time program, with our history, as the No. 10 seed. So it’s a bit weird.”
That word, weird, is a fitting one to describe Syracuse’s season. The team got off to an 0-4 start in the Atlantic Coast Conference, making it the first team in NCAA history to reach a Final Four after losing its first four games in conference play. During those dark moments, “I wasn’t thinking about the tournament, that’s for sure,” Cooney said. “We were just trying to figure out how to win a game.”
After dropping five of its final six games heading into March Madness, the team’s No. 72 ranking in RPI, the metric the NCAA selection committee uses to set the field, was the worst ever for a team that earned an at-large bid. Syracuse’s 13 losses this season ties it for the most ever for any Final Four team. “I mean, I thought we deserved to be in the tournament,” said coach Jim Boeheim. “But I wasn’t planning on getting to the Final Four.”
There’s another reason Syracuse isn’t setting hearts ablaze all over America: Boeheim and Syracuse were both penalized last year by the NCAA. Investigators alleged that staff members violated ethical rules by completing coursework for a player who was ineligible, boosters gave athletes money for volunteer work at a local YMCA facility, and the school failed to follow its own drug-testing policy. Along with a postseason ban for last season, which was self-imposed by the school, Boeheim was forced to vacate 108 prior wins and was suspended for nine games.
All of this came more than three years after an embarrassing episode for the school in which then-assistant coach Bernie Fine was alleged to have sexually abused two former Syracuse ball boys. Boeheim sharply criticized one of the accusers initially, saying “The Penn State thing came out, and the kid behind this is trying to get money.” Fine was fired from the university, but denied all charges and wasn’t charged after an 11-month federal investigation. (The University last year settled a lawsuit with the ball boys, in which Boeheim, in a statement given by the school, expressed regret for questioning their integrity.)
Syracuse’s troubles are echoed by its opponent Saturday, North Carolina: a school that is currently under NCAA investigation for widespread academic fraud. Specifically, investigators are examining whether the university steered hundreds of student-athletes toward sham classes that didn’t require real academic work from 1993 to 2011. A Carolina spokesman referred to an August statement in which athletic director Bubba Cunningham said: “we fully believe that we will be able to bring the investigation to a conclusion in spring 2016, as previously anticipated.” NCAA president Mark Emmert said this week that he expects a resolution on the matter soon.
“You’d like to think that this occasion would bring about some soul-searching for the NCAA, but the fact of the matter is—crime pays,” says Jay Smith, a history professor at North Carolina and co-author of “Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports.” “These two programs cheated pretty egregiously, yet here they are competing for a national title on a national stage.”
Smith said he believes the matchup might actually encourage other schools to break the rules. “While you might have some embarrassment on your hands, you’re now seeing that it’s not going to be a long-term hindrance on your program.”
Even if Syracuse’s presence in the Final Four doesn’t fill your heart with warmth, the team has made a habit of doing shocking, thrilling, Cinderella-like things. In February against Virginia Tech, for example, the Orange closed a seven-point deficit with 2:08 left. In the Sweet 16, they came back from five points down with 2:57 left against Gonzaga. Then they did the same thing to Virginia in the Elite Eight: After trailing by 15 points with 9:32 left, at which point their odds of wining the game were just 1.4%, they roared back to win by six.
“With what we’ve been through, this is gonna be up there in the chapters with some of the most unbelievable moments,” said Syracuse assistant coach Mike Hopkins.
Write to Chris Herring at chris.herring@wsj.com