I know it might have been ill-advised of me as a Syracuse fan to make fun of DePaul's exhibition loss to someone called Lewis last night. It might have also been ill-timed considering the Syracuse Orange will return to the scene of an even greater crime tomorrow night. The Lemoyne Dolphins return to the Dome Tuesday for the first time since their epic, albeit exhibition, upset of the Syracuse Orange one year ago.
The loss was supposed to confirm what many had already thought...that this Syracuse team was about to take a serious step backwards. Of course, as the season went on we came to learn that exhibition loss meant absolutely nothing. And in a weird way, it actually became more of a distraction for Lemoyne than it ever did for the Orange.
The outcome of tomorrow's game has no real meaning or value other than to provide our players with adequate experience before the season-opener. It should not exist as some kind of vengeance game and the team should not affix any kind of vindictive label to it. It should just be treated like any other exhibition contest wherein the outcome does not matter and the opponent creates no emotional resonance.
That said, I hope we win by fifty.
This game is a cuter version of our "rivalry" with Vermont. Last year's 1 vs 16 match-up in the NCAA Tournament should have just been about getting the job done. But ask any Syracuse fan and they would have told you they wanted to maim the Catamounts. Even though no one on the current team had anything to do with the upset-minded squad that beat the Orange those years earlier, we wanted to decimate them all the same. To make things right.
That's what tomorrow's about. Putting things right again. The natural order of the city of Syracuse needs to be restored properly.
Five points for whoever points out the error in that video first. (Five points for what?)