It's hard not to feel like Syracuse got jobbed a bit by the NCAA Tournament committee. I'm sure that all of the commentators will do a better job than I can of recounting the various reasons why SU, not to mention Drexel, better deserved a spot than, say, Arkansas or Illinois. It's actually pretty tempting to dissect schedules, but I'll leave that to the "experts." Bottom line is that I think that Syracuse would have been in the neighborhood of a 7 to 10 seed, and faced with, at best, a showdown with a top 10 team for a trip to the Sweet 16.
I think, after the past two years--which featured prominent meltdown losses to Texas A&M last year and to the legendary Tyler CoppenWHO?-led Catamounts of Vermont the year before--that the committee is sending Syracuse a message. The Orange have been mildly dangerous (G'Town and Marquette this year, last year's Big E tourney), but mostly they've been squarely above average. When G-Mac took off for Euroball and the occasional used car commercial, it was hard not to figure that this would be a down year, a couple of nice surprises notwithstanding.
Oh well. On the bright side, I won't guess wrong for the 3rd year running about when SU will lose. Here are links to ESPN's printable brackets: Men & Women.
March on.
