For the Syracuse Orangemen, there once was a time when NCAA Tournament disappointment was like Christmas. It happened once a year. We call this period my freshman through senior years, back when it had been only 12 years, not 20, since Georgetown fielded a white player. (This was also around the time G'Town admitted "student"-athletes Allen Iverson and Victor Page into the same institution that educated Bill Clinton.)
But times have changed. Georgetown can't buy a win, and picking the 'Cuse to advance to this year's Final Four in New Orleans is more fashionable than your gay roommate. Clear your heads right now of me ever going to The Big Easy to see the Orangemen. That combination would require a reservation at one of the local hospitals for a full stomach pump. Although it would sure beat the last place the 'Cuse played the Final Four in: a little toxic waste dump we like to call New Jersey, in 1996.
One of my favorite NCAA Tournament memories was, ironically, the one in which Syracuse laid, up till that time, the biggest egg ever — becoming the first No. 2 seed to lose in the first round in a 64-team field. It was Thursday, March 14, 1991 and I was a freshman who was turned on to the school in part by seeing pictures of the impossibly insane parties to celebrate the team's 1987 Final Four appearance. Our whole dorm was devastated, but we cheered up one day later, when we ponied up $20 for an all-you-can-drink-all-weekend St. Pat's Day special at 44's on Marshall Street. Doors opened at 8 a.m. and closed at 2 a.m. all three days, and I managed to get drunk six times in one weekend, even though I'd just turned only 18 years old. (Thank you fake Illinois ID.)
NCAA Tournament Links:
ESPN Ranks the Contenders — Kentucky is the pick to win it all, but Syracuse is one of seven that's deemed to have a legit shot. Not among that mix: Kansas, Duke and Florida.
SI's Postseason Awards — The 'Cuse's Carmelo Anthony gets a second-team All-America nod, but coach of the year and surprise of the year don't even consider the tremendous job turned in by Jim Boeheim and his team of young studs.
Top 10 Tourney Upsets — The Syracuse-Richmond game of 1991 isn't listed. Thank god that's behind us. UNLV losing that year was just as improbable. We used to stay up late at night just to watch them kill teams on ESPN.
Syracuse Post-Standard's Team-by-Team Predictions — The newspaper has the hometown boys going to the Sweet 16, but no further. Pittsburgh and Xavier — along with Oklahoma and Arizona — are its teams to head to New Orleans.
College basketball. Yawn.
Posted by lucy at March 19, 2003 1:14 PM