Every Syracuse fan, everywhere starts every athletic season with expectations and delusions of grandeur. The 2019 football team was an exceptional example of that. “La Familia”, Uniform reveals, and hype surrounded the team leading up to Liberty. After the win, albeit a 24-0 shutout the wind started to come out of the sails, and the boat capsized at Maryland the following week. Turncoats came out of the woodwork, perched upon the cliff of “reality” and “honesty”.
So here we stand (or sit depending on who is at the game) a little over halfway through the ’19-’20 Men’s and Women’s basketball seasons and once again the expectations haven’t been met. So it leads us to ponder the question, Are we setting our sights too high for a program that while steeped in legacy isn’t necessarily steeped in dominance? Is requiring a dominant program setting the bar just a tad high for a university that has never been on the level of Alabama, Georgia, USC, Ohio State, etc in football or Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, UNC in basketball. Lastly do we want to be that type of program?
Answer: Yes. And No.
The fan base as a whole does set their sights too high, set the bar too high. Even in its best decades Syracuse never filled the roster with McDonalds All Americans or 5 star recruits. Since 2003 the basketball team has brought in 11 total 5 star recruits. That’s 17 years. Less than one per year. To listed to the fan base lately though one would believe that we used to be UNC or Kansas not all that long ago. There is zero basis in truth to that sentiment. Of those 11, 8 of them have left early for the NBA. We know how much this fan base loathes kids leaving the program early so I implore you to be careful what you wish for, what you pine for. If we were to land these highly ranked recruits at a consistent basis, history tells us that they wont be here for more than a year or two anyways.
As for football we have had a total of 2, yes 2 5 star recruits, and 13 4 star kids come through here since the millennium.
We are a program that thrives on undervalued kids. The ones that were overlooked by the system and have to work a little bit harder to showcase their talents. At the end of the day, for a fanbase that lives and breathes being undervalued, isn’t that they way it should be. Nothing easy is handed to these kids, they come here, work hard and produce to the best of their ability. I think when all is said and done that is the program I want to be. As the programs continue on their paths, and conference championships come, and who knows maybe national championships come, we will be ever more grateful than the blue blood programs we listed above.
All we are saying is. Lets be realistic about who we are, and thankful for what we have.
Cuse Analized…….
Orange Analysis 