The initial college basketball ESPN/USAToday Coaches Poll has been released and Syracuse just misses the cut as the theoretical #27 team. North Carolina eeks out UCLA by five votes to take the #1 spot while Memphis, Kansas and Georgetown round out the top five. Also from the Big East, Louisville is #6, Marquette is #12, Pittsburgh is #20 and Villanova is #25. Syracuse is the 2nd team out from the poll and UConn isn't far behind them. Notre Dame received one vote, begging the question "When did Beano Cook start voting for basketball?" If you're getting yourself worked up over Syracuse's ranking snub, don't. There's no better sign in recent history for a Syracuse basketball season than a shoddy preseason ranking.
The Orange have failed to live up to expectations every time they have been ranked highly to start a season. In fact, the only time they have finished better than projected in this decade was in 2003, which also happened to be the last time the Orange began a season unranked...and you may or may not remember how that ended.
This team has enough expectation to deal with as it is (the dynamic freshman duo, Paul Harris' ascension, Eric Devendorf's leadership, the frontcourt or lack thereof, the gaping hole left by Andy Rautins). Let's deal with what's in front of us and not worry about how the rest of the country perceives us yet, we've got all of February and March to worry about that.