Joe Lunardi, bracketologist extraordinaire, was in the Dome last night for the St. Joeseph's game as the Hawks color commentator. Before the game though, he fired off a column on ESPN Insider all about the never-ending discussion Cuse Nation has about last year's tourney snub and he has a thought in mind about it...shut up already.Lunardi himself had the Orange in the bracket as a 9 seed:
I believe the Orange still should have been in the 2007 NCAA field (though not as high as my original placement as a No. 9 seed). The Orange did not have a great profile, but it was good enough to fall in the top half of a fairly nondescript set of bubble teams (both BCS and mid-major).
However it was our loss to Drexel (a fellow snubee) and the cumulative effect of so many season scheduling cupcakes in the Dome early on that were our downfall. At this point I'm fine with the fact that we were indeed on the bubble and had ample opportunity to erase all doubt once and for all and we failed to. But I'm still not buying the scheduling thing. We're not the only team that schedules that way. And where you once might have looked around at a schedule including Siena, St. Joeseph's, Fordham and Colgate and scoffed, I don't think you can look at those teams and that schedule the same way you did in 1999. The post-George Mason college basketball world is a lot different than it was beforehand.
I have no problem with telling Syracuse fans to get over it already, something Cuse Country certainly agrees with. We've got a much more exciting team this season and let's face it, we would have been eliminated by round two last year anyway. But if Joe is correct that the NCAA was punishing the 2006-2007 team for the transgressions of the teams that came before them, that reeks.
I certainly don't want this team to make the NCAA cut this year just because people feel bad about last year any more than I wanted last year's team to miss the cut because of the teams that came before them. All we ask for is fairness and to judged on the merits of the season we put forward.
Let's put the focus on this team and their shot at the NCAA tournament, rather than continuing to complain about last year. That goes for you too, Joe.