Orange Pulped

In a sad end to a horrible season, Syracuse lost to Villanova 92-82 yesterday in Gerry McNamara's final regular season game in the Carrier Dome. He'll now have at least one more chance to play at the Dome because SU is NIT bound.

This season started decently well as SU won 15 of its first 17, the juniors seemed to be ok and the team had been able to overcome McNamara's shooting woes. But the danger signs were evident: a choke job at home to Bucknell, a desperate comeback that rescued the team from a home loss to Manhattan, inconsistent play from Terrence Roberts, etc. That all came crashing to a head when UConn went to the Dome and wiped the Orange off the court. SU lost 9 of its last 13 Big East games, pulled a sub-.500 record in the conference for the first time in 25 years and wasn't even competitive in eight of the nine losses: a misleading 8-point loss to UConn, by 15 to 'Nova, by 13 to Pitt, by 23 to UConn, by 17 at home to Cincy, by 15 to G'Town, by 39 to bottom-feeding DePaul in the worst loss of the Boeheim era, and by 10 to 'Nova.

Problems: no defense, inconsistent offense, team chemistry out of whack and ultimately a poor job by the coaching staff. Ultimately, the first post-Carmelo recruiting class (Roberts, McCroskey, Nichols, Watkins) has been exposed as a flop. And next year will be a struggle: the Orange has two top wingmen coming in, but no point guard -- thus the team will rely on inconsistent Josh Wright or out-of-position Eric Devendorf.

Boeheim has a history of righting the ship after a disappointment: in 1983, the team went back to the NCAAs after two straight NIT seasons and had a successful campaign; in 1998, SU went to the Sweet 16 with a bunch of sophs who took the Big East regular season crown as seniors and notched another Sweet 16 in 2000 (when SU might have been a Final Four team but for drawing Michigan State in Detroit); and in 2003, with Carmelo ascendant, SU made an NCAA Tourney run for the ages. But most of those teams were young, not saddled with the baggage of previous disappointments, unlike next year's team.

Monk not sanguine about SU's immediate future.

In other news, UVa's outdated and rather heinous University Hall closed its doors (barring an NIT home game) yesterday. Next year the Cavs will play at a nice new arena named after either a Revolutionary War naval hero, Led Zeppelin's bassist, or a rich alum with the same name. Hopefully between the nice arena, the new coach with a winning attitude and brand of basketball and UVa's biggest selling point, the Grounds themselves (that's "campus" to the rest of you), UVa can rise up to reach consistent NCAA Tourney appearance quality.

And at least Duk honked Saturday . . .