When it's over

Yeah, yeah, yeah, haven't posted in a while. But I'm back like Shady, at least for now.

It's over. The season from hell that almost turned into one of the most glorious seasons for the Syracuse Orange Men's basketball team is over. We lost to Ohio State. I've had a few days to think it over, and here are my official thoughts on the game and the tournament as a whole.

Who's to blame?


While I'm one of the first people to blame the refs in any sporting event, it's not entirely their fault. We missed easy shots. Probably six or so fast break layups. All season long, when we saw Kris Jo or Neon Dion flying down the court, we knew it would be two points, it was just a question of how impressive the dunk would be. Not this game. Dion missed a dunk early, and it was all downhill from there. This team's success was built on it's fast break, and when that's not working, we're in trouble. Can we blame Fab Melo, who was ineligible for the tournament? Sure, we can try to, but we'll never know how the game would have gone with him on the court.

What we learned from the tournament


Rakeem Christmas is good. He can play. I was a doubter, but his tournament proved me wrong. Good for Rak, great for the future.

Baye Keita isn't as bad as I thought. His stonehands weren't nearly as noticeable in the tournament. Solid backup.

This team will miss Dion greatly. He declared for the Draft yesterday, so good luck to him in the future. Hopefully he'll be on a good team next year. I think Dion has a great chance to be a really solid pro for an NBA team. He led Syracuse from the bench and has some of the best moves I've ever seen.

Aaron Craft is a douche. No explanation needed.

More post-mortem to come later