The 2017-18 Syracuse basketball season came to a crashing halt on Friday night vs the Duke Blue Devils. ITLH looks back and grades the season.
This is a season Syracuse basketball fans won’t soon forget. Before the season kicked off, local media (including myself) didn’t understand how the Orange would score the basketball. There was a lot of hope and finger crossing that Tyus Battle could score 20 points minimum a night to keep this team in games.
Perhaps that was a little aggressive, but what other option did this team have? Taurean Thompson skipped out of town. Geno Thorpe played for a few games and decided Jim Boeheim wasn’t for him. Howard Washington tore his ACL. While the rest of the lineup went through a myriad of injuries themselves and mostly played through it.
This season should be aptly labeled, ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’.
Despite that truth, Boeheim was the face of consistency. He relied on his patented 2-3 zone, when others demanded he ‘adapt or die’ to the obvious solution, man-to-man defense. Fortunately he stuck to his guns and that’s the reason the Orange made it all the way to the Sweet 16. So now that it’s all over, how did this season grade out?