Syracuse Basketball: Of Course They Did (The I-Told-You-So Column)

When the 2013 NCAA Tournament bracket was released, March 17, a majority of Syracuse Orange basketball fans cringed when seeing the possible Sweet 16 match-up with No. 1-seeded Indiana Hoosiers on the horizon.

After both the Hoosiers and No. 4-seeded Orange advanced passed the first week of March Madness, the pre-game talk for Thursday night's showdown sounded like this:

-- "Up and down this roster, there's not a singular spot that Syracuse has an advantage. It is a major mismatch."

-- Syracuse doesn't have the center to stop the zone-busting big man, Cody Zeller.

--- Indiana's 3-point shooters are too good. THEY MAKE EVERYTHING, I TELL YOU!

-- Victor Oladipo will lock down Michael Carter-Williams (or who ever he is guarding).

See, the beauty of sports is the game is played on the court, or field, or rink, or whatever.

This is why we all love March, and the madness it brings.

If a team like Florida Gulf Coast University wants to run over, or better worded, jump over the Georgetown Hoyas and make a historic run to Sweet 16, it can.

If Syracuse wanted to get their heads out of its respective Oranges, basically as soon as the calendar flipped into March, they could.

And, of course, they did.

I am not telling you you should have seen this coming, but you should of seen this coming.

As mediocre as this year's NCAA Tournament field was, as bad as Syracuse was playing pre-March 9th, as much as potential as this team had, you could see something like this happening; and if you actually looked at the Syracuse-Indiana match-up, after witnessing the Hoosiers play in the last two weeks, this was a near perfect match-up for the Orange.

As as mentally weak as MCW and Brandon Triche, and maybe the rest of the SU team besides C.J. Fair can be, the Hoosiers were in worse shape upstairs.

If a team could punch the Hoosiers in the mouth -- jumping out to a 18-point lead -- and use its match-ups to its advantage -- Syracuse's much taller, bigger guards against Indiana's "midgets guards" (as CBS' Jeff Goodman said this morning on The Dan Patrick Show) -- it had a really good chance to knock off the Hoosiers.

And that's exactly what happened Thursday, which helped set up a rematch with the Marquette Golden Eagles on Saturday (4:30 p.m. ET on CBS).

Can the Orange continue what seems to be an improbable run for most, but "I am not shocked at all" run to some, into the Final Four?

Of course they can. I just hope now, you actually believe it.