Which Syracuse team will show up?
Will the real Syracuse please stand up?
The Orange started the season 25-0 and soon enough were ranked No. 1 in the land. Then they stumbled to the finish, losing five of their last seven games. And so the question pondered all around First Niagara Center on Wednesday was which Syracuse would show up for today’s Round-of-64 game against Western Michigan.
“It’s a good question,” Westwood One radio analyst Kevin Grevey told USA TODAY Sports. “Are they the 25-0 team that won with all those (last-second) gamewinners? Or are they the 2-5 team that’s had trouble making shots? There’s something amiss there. They look vulnerable.”
At his news conference, Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim was asked about being underestimated and coming in like a wounded animal, a premise he rejected.
“I don’t even see it that way, and I don’t really pay too much attention to that,” he said, pointing out that the Orange lost four of their last five regular-season games last season before reaching the Big East championship game and the Final Four.
“The tournament’s a different thing,” he said. “You can start playing well in one game, and all of a sudden you can get on a roll. I think we probably were overestimated a little bit when we were 25-0.”
CBS analyst Bill Raftery fully expects the Orange team that takes the court today to live up to its No. 3 seed against the Broncos.
“Jim’s like all the great coaches,” Raftery said. “Give them a few days off, and they figure things out. His offense just has to make some shots.”
Boeheim made the case that the 25-0 Orange and the 2-5 Orange were not really all that different. He said it had more to do with the vagaries of the schedule and an injury near the end of the regular season to leading rebounder Jerami Grant, who has recovered.
Yes, his Orange were one-anddone in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament, but Boeheim said they played well, they just didn’t shoot well.
How are the Orange shooting now? “We’ll find out (today at) about 2:45,” he said, grinning again. “We’re making some in practice, which is always a good thing.”