Syracuse’s run to the Final Four is one of the stranger NCAA Tournament occurrences in recent memory.
With their stunning comeback win over Virginia on Sunday night, the Orange completed their wholly improbable run to Houston. Syracuse is only the fourth double-digit seed to reach the Final Four, joining LSU (1986), George Mason (2006) and VCU (2011).
But whereas the Patriots and the Rams grabbed the hearts of the nation during their deep tournament runs, Syracuse has mostly been met with scorn or general indifference by college basketball fans.
Part of this disdain likely lies in the fact that many felt the Orange didn’t belong in the NCAA Tournament to begin with. Granted, the same held true for VCU in 2011, but America didn’t have much trouble rooting for the Rams and their young, upstart coach, Shaka Smart, once they upset No. 3 seed Purdue to advance past the first weekend. A low-seeded mid-major will always capture the hearts of the country when they make any kind of notable run in the NCAA Tournament. The same can’t necessarily be said for a low-seeded team from a major conference, especially one with a recent history like Syracuse’s.
The school instituted a self-imposed postseason ban in February 2015 during an NCAA investigation into its men’s basketball and football programs. Ultimately, the NCAA found that Syracuse had committed more than a dozen infractions over the course of more than a decade, with charges that included academic misconduct, improper benefits and drug-policy failures. Head coach Jim Boeheim was cited for lack of institutional control and the men’s basketball program was stripped of 108 wins.
Boeheim was also suspended for the Orange’s first nine ACC games this season, during which they went 4-5, including a 0-4 start to conference play. While some of Syracuse’s worst losses came during this stretch without Boeheim, Joe Castiglione, the chair of the NCAA Tournament selection committee, recognized that the committee took Boeheim’s absence into account when evaluating Syracuse’s résumé.
To what extent this factor weighed into the committee’s decision to include the Orange in the field of 68 remains unknown, but the fact that it was a factor at all caused a decent amount of outrage. Why would the selection committee give Syracuse some leeway for the games the team was without its coach when he was absent due to a suspension for a decade’s worth of violations? Isn’t giving them leeway at least partially defeating the purpose of suspending Boeheim in the first place?
Regardless of whether or not you agree with the severity of the NCAA’s punishment on Boeheim and Syracuse, this approach taken by the committee caused the NCAA to look contradictory and hypocritical—hey, there’s a first time for everything—and did nothing to help the ire toward the Orange that comes naturally when a team that many fans feel is undeserving is included in the NCAA Tournament field.
To be fair to Syracuse, it did have five top-50 RPI wins and eight top-100 RPI wins overall on its résumé. The Orange also endured a brutal ACC schedule, so there was an NCAA Tournament case to be made for them, even if it wasn’t as strong as some other teams’ cases that were left out on Selection Sunday.
Nevertheless, Syracuse was in the tournament as a No.10 seed, drawing No. 7 seed Dayton in the first round. The Flyers entered the tournament having gone 4-4 in their last eight games. While the Orange weren’t exactly lighting the world on fire entering the postseason, their win over Dayton wasn’t overly surprising, nor was their victory against No. 15 seed Middle Tennessee in the second round. While its Sweet 16 matchup with No. 11 seed Gonzaga wasn’t a cakewalk, even that win didn’t come as much of a surprise. Winning in the chaotic hell-scape that is the NCAA Tournament is never easy, but Syracuse certainly had a favorable path to the Elite Eight (well, as favorable a path a 10-seed could hope for).
However, almost no one expected what happened next—a comeback victory over No. 1 seed Virginia to advance to the Final Four. A win alone over the Cavaliers would have been shocking, but the Orange needed to erase a 15-point second-half deficit to make it happen.
Thanks in part to Boeheim’s decision to go to a full-court press midway through the second half, Syracuse pulled it off, capping off its remarkable journey to Houston.
So here they are, in the Final Four. A team that seemed destined for the NIT following an early exit in the ACC Tournament remains in the hunt for a national title on college basketball’s final weekend. According to FiveThirtyEight.com, they entered the tournament with just a 1.5 percent chance of reaching the Final Four, making the Orange the fourth-most-unlikely Final Four participant since 2006. They are on a historic run, and yet even now they continue to be met with lukewarm support.
Outside of Duke and its star player/Ted Cruz’s illegitimate son Grayson Allen, the case could be made Syracuse has been the biggest villain of this year’s NCAA Tournament. There is no shortage of factors that have caused this—a general feeling that they didn’t belong in the tournament, the Boeheim-selection committee controversy, the recent scandal, a coach that is almost as well-known for his prickly persona as he is for his love of the 2-3 zone defense, knocking out 15-seed Middle Tennessee, etc.—but it still feels a bit odd.
Syracuse is simultaneously the NCAA Tournament’s biggest Cinderella story and one of its most prominent villains, making the Orange the ultimate March Madness enigma.
Even when you take the random variance of the NCAA Tournament into account, this has surely been one of the most impressive coaching jobs of Boeheim’s 40-year tenure. But instead of being lauded as a masterstroke of a Hall of Fame coach, Boeheim and his team have been jeered all the way to Houston, despite the fact that they’re in the midst of one of the most improbable runs in tournament history.
Even by the standards of March Madness, this is pretty weird.
