Syracuse Basketball: Fab Melo Doesn't Travel, Mookie Jones No Longer On Team

If Melo is out the semester, good bye dream season. Further, this could be a problem if he doesn’t get his grades up because that has the long term effect under NCAA rules.

And hopefully everything is ok with Mookie. There have been a lot of ups and downs for him at Cuse. If nothing else, at least he went out on a high note by putting up 10 in his last game.

if its academics, he’s going to be out for a while.

I would have thought the official statement would have said that.

Unresolved academic issue from the first semester.

Did he forget to hand in a paper or something?

Also, Syracuse reserve Mookie Jones has left the program and I was told will not be back with the team this year.

Could be next yr?

From Mookie’s twitter:

Ill be back next year…..#IStealBleedOrange

What are the odds Rakeem starts at center and they slide CJ in to start along side Kris. Then you’ll get Rakeem and Baye splitting time, with CJ playing a few minutes at center if need be.

If he doesn’t get into good academic standing, this could hurt in future years with lost NCAA bids under the new rules. I mean, that is worse case scenario, but holy crap this year has been a series of worst case scenarios.

Referring to my other comments on other threads. It is odd to me that Fab thought that he was traveling with the team via Twitter yesterday, so this had to be a surprise to him, too. If it were academics, wouldnt he have known this was coming?

What are the chances they would even report such an issue? Are we even sure they have classes there?

If we can survive the weekend without fab, wont it prove those haters who say it will come back to haunt us that we don’t have a “go-to-guy.” It will also make our team look that much stronger.

still think Melo will be back next year?

Sure, he’s been shaky the last 2-3 games, but he played 20 minutes (his most all season) against Marquette and put up 4pts, 5reb, 2blocks and 3 fouls. That is fine (at least tonight). Last year against UConn he played 27 min had 4pts, 11reb, 6stl, 2blk.

I’m obviously just cherry picking here, but Baye could step up. It’s not like the team is putting someone completely untested and unaccustomed to getting minutes into the starting lineup.

There are going to be games Melo would pick up silly fouls and become a non-factor. So, now we find out what SU has for an answer.

Guessing a one semester suspension because he’s saying he wants to come back next year

Even if we lose with Fab out, as we learned with OSU, a loss doesn’t count when your key big man isn’t playing.

They’ll apply that same reasoning to us, won’t they? ….won’t they?

I saw this once before. The player could not play until grades were posted from a “winter mini” class the student took.

This was a little larger than we’d like or expect, but let’s see how the team rallies.

Hopefully it’s worked out next week and this gives us practice of a big man foul situation.

It would’ve said that, and not that it’s something “they hope to resolve this week”. And, yeah, I can’t figure out for the life of me how this is just coming out now when we’ve had our grades for weeks.

I’m still not worried about ND. Even with Fab I’ve been nervous about that Cincy game. They’ve been playing damn good ball on the road against G’Town and UConn. Now the #1 team comes into their gym….that place is going to be rocking.

We actually benched/disciplined a star athlete.

Many a time in sports, a team rallies around a lost player (injury or otherwise) to win games nobody thought they could. Dion, if you think you are NBA ready, here is your stage in South Bend and Cincy.

Unless I’m missing something, there is a significant chance this “issue” lingers for the remainder of the season. Also, it’s a huge deal on the court because they now only have two big guys, one of whom has barely played in the middle and hasn’t played more than 10 minutes in any meaningful game. Not good things

Hope baye brought his good hands today

Said a class was given an invalid final and they all have to retake it. This affected 4 athletes including Melo.

do any other reserves know Mookie’s pre-game chest-bump rituals?

Fab wrote all the answers to his finals in Brazilian. The answers couldn’t be accepted because Brazilian is only a language to Fab.

Either that or Chipotle is involved.

at how many of you are taking this so hard. Even for cynical northerners it’s a little ridiculous. Some of you are acting like we just lost our season. Even if Melo is out a few games who cares? Last time I checked a number 1 ranking is completely irrelevant and we’re up two games on everybody else in the Big East. Not to mention regular season games meaning much less than Big East Tourney and NCAA Tourney games. I hate to say it but this kind of ‘woe is me’ crap is what makes us look bad. Stop complaining. It could be way worse

That is five weeks after the first semester grades are closed and in. If this has been allowed to go on for five weeks without consequences than I’ll be damned. If that’s the case the University deserves to look like crap. There’s no freakin’ way