If you pull out the highlights from the last year and a half of Syracuse basketball, you’ll notice there is hardly any basketball at all.

It started two Octobers ago, when Jim Boeheim reportedly visited Indianapolis for an NCAA hearing. He remained hell-bent on not discussing the manner. Then it all trickled out —an NCAA ruling was brewing and it wasn’t looking good for Boeheim and his Orange — throughout a season that would have been arduous without this proverbial cloud overhead.

Last February, SU announced a self-imposed postseason ban. Last March, on the second-to-last day of the 2014-15 season, a 94-page report detailed more than a decade of NCAA infractions and a laundry list of punishments including, but not nearly limited to, a nine-game suspension for Boeheim. The coach announced his three-year retirement plan less than two weeks later and Darryl Gross stepped down as Director of Athletics the same day.

On Dec. 3, the NCAA announced the suspension would be effective immediately rather than at the start of conference play, leaving the Orange without its head coach for a 34-day period in which it went 4-5 and started 0-3 in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Saturday night, Boeheim returned to the Carrier Dome sideline, the referee threw the ball into the air just after 8 p.m., North Carolina controlled the first possession and … poof. Syracuse’s “NCAA sanctions era” was irrelevant as yesterday’s newspaper.

Some two hours later, a gallant SU (10-7, 0-4 ACC) effort ended in an 84-73 loss to the No. 6 Tar Heels (15-2, 4-0). But the game, for just one more night, transcended the effect of another loss on the Orange’s reeling record. Saturday was the symbolic ending of one of the darkest periods in Syracuse basketball history.

Boeheim’s back. No more announcements loom. The players, who had no part in the actual violations but were dragged into the aftermath, will no longer have their play upstaged by the demons of SU’s past.

“I’m done,” Boeheim said on Saturday as a reporter started a question on it all. “I’m only thinking about basketball, and that’s it. There will be no more.”

 

 

There are a few ways the NCAA sanctions can still sneak into the Syracuse basketball conversation. The Orange will be down two scholarships for the next three seasons, still faces NCAA-mandated probation and recruiting restrictions and, when March rolls around, the team will likely be asked how much Boeheim’s nine-game absence should be factored into its tournament stock.

But the worst of it is behind the Orange, especially for its players. I started on the Syracuse men’s basketball beat last October so, for all intents and purposes, my entire coverage of this team has been partly rooted in this bigger picture of impropriety. I sat front row for every one of the previously described events and worked on NCAA-sanction-related stories in Syracuse, Pittsburgh, South Bend, Indiana, Chapel Hill, Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina, and so on.

Was it exciting? Absolutely. It was even exhilarating at times. But I did often think it wasn’t the players’ fight and never should have been.

It’s nearly impossible to connect what we do as reporters to what athletes do in their respective sports. I’d usually find it self-indulgent for a writer to even try. But as I reflect on the last year and a half it’s hard not to stab at it.

In a six-day stretch last February, Syracuse beat No. 12 Louisville by 10 at home and No. 9 Notre Dame by five on the road. The team was excited in the locker room after each game until asked some form of these questions: Is the win tainted because you can’t compete in the postseason? Do you feel like the administration hung you out to dry by self-imposing a ban before you beat ranked teams?

That would be like me writing a good story and then being asked about the murky future of print journalism right after it’s published. The question is relevant, sure. An answer combative or irritated in nature is understandable, as well.

No one wants their accomplishments brought down by reality at every turn. Syracuse’s players are now free from that. Even if the immediate future doesn’t look bright. Even if none of them would outright blame the NCAA sanctions for an uncharacteristic 28-20 record since the start of last season.

“Now we’re not even thinking about it really,” SU point guard Michael Gbinije said after the UNC game. “… Now we know what to expect from here on out. We just have to get better.”

At ACC media day in October, prior to this season, I sat down with fifth-year senior Trevor Cooney in a candid moment and brought up “non-basketball stuff.” He’d said to a few non-local reporters that answering questions about sanctions, suspensions and the postseason ban had become tiresome last year. I couldn’t blame him and knew he was, in at least a small part, talking about me.

I didn’t think I needed to say anything. But I wanted to get his perspective on what had, in all honesty, grown a little tiresome for me too.

“I mean yeah, it could get annoying at times,” Cooney said, “but you guys were just doing your jobs.”

And now he and his teammates can fully focus on theirs. There’re no more distractions. No more uncertainty. Just a ball, two hoops and the 94 feet in between.

“It’s just play basketball now,” Cooney said Saturday night. “We don’t have to worry about any of that.”

Jesse Dougherty is a Senior Staff Writer  at The Daily Orange, where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at [email protected] or @dougherty_jesse.

Published on January 10, 2016 at 10:40 pm