Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Syracuse Loses To D-II Le Moyne

I had to get online to talk about the first big upset of the exhibition season, Syracuse losing to Division II Le Moyne. I have been saying that I think Syracuse is a bit overrated, but I won't use this game to say that I've been proven correct.

The fact is that these types of upsets usually happen once or twice every year. Teams like Syracuse may not take an opponent like Le Moyne seriously ever, but it's doubly so during exhibition games. And I'm sure that Jim Boeheim was much more worried about getting everybody the right amount of playing time and trying different personnel combinations than the fact that he was in a close game. By the final few minutes they started taking the game seriously, but once you've gotten that far in a virtually tied game there is always some probability that your shots won't fall over the last couple of minutes and you'll have an embarrassing loss. In recent years we've seen other teams lose to horrendous teams during the preseason (such as Michigan State a couple of years ago) and still go onto have fine seasons.

I do still think that Syracuse should not be a Top 25 team, and that they're really much closer to being a bubble team than a contender in the Big East. But this game doesn't say anything about that. We'll learn about Syracuse when they play real games. Exhibitions mean nothing.

1 comment:

nfl picks said...

I was shocked when I heard about this Syracuse loss, but you are 100% correct in that this was just an exhibition game and the result shouldn't be taken all too seriously.