After Texas A&M handed the Syracuse men’s basketball team its second first-round NCAA Tournament loss in two years on Thursday in Jacksonville, Fla., the realization senior Gerry McNamara had played his last game for the Orange began to set in.

But with that fact came another, more positive side – SU will return four starters, adds top high school talent Paul Harris and will have five seniors who saw regular playing time in the 2005-06 season back for next year.

All the Orange really could do was look to next October for solace from a rocky season followed by another disappointing postseason.

Syracuse grabbed national attention when it ran off four straight wins in the Big East tournament, including defeating No.1 Connecticut, 86-84, in overtime on March 9. The Orange played with passion in New York, shaking an up-and-down regular season and a 7-9 record in conference play to clinch a berth in the NCAA Tournament.

The thought was SU finally played like itself in New York City, giving more consistent and balanced efforts. The Orange still relied on McNamara in spots, mostly to win games at the end, but the entire starting five and the bench contributed to the wins. Balance was something Syracuse searched for prior to the Big East tournament, but rarely found.

‘We struggled at times, but most of it was because of our schedule,’ Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said before his team practiced on March 15. ‘It was more the product of our schedule than how we were playing. We really didn’t play at the level we could until New York.’

The NCAA selection committee apparently also bought into that train of thought, handing the Orange the fifth seed in the Atlanta region and a warm East Coast location for the first, and potentially second, round in Jacksonville, Fla.

In the NCAA Tournament, SU didn’t play like it did in New York and actually most of the season. With McNamara slowed by a groin injury which he supposedly re-aggravated in practice before the Tournament and Texas A&M playing solid defense, Syracuse relied on three players it rarely asks to lead the team: Terrence Roberts, Darryl Watkins and Josh Wright.

All three responded with positive performances, and Syracuse will need them to repeat that often next year.

‘We just have to learn from everything that happened this season,’ Wright said.

After finishing the season 23-12, the Orange still succeeded to some degree. For the most part, though, this season was a learning experience for an inexperienced team.

McNamara was the only starter who started regularly before this season. Eventually the other starters found their rhythm, but Syracuse still experienced a number of growing pains. The four-game losing streak in late January and the 39-point loss at DePaul on March 2 come to mind.

But Syracuse responded both times. SU snapped the losing streak with an overtime win against Rutgers on Feb. 1. After following the DePaul loss with a loss to Villanova, the Orange, seeded ninth, won four straight games and the Big East tournament title.

In fact, the trademark of this team was to respond to adversity by fighting harder. The scrappiness created a roller coaster-like season, filled with both failures and successes.

‘There’s a lot of lows and a lot of highs,’ guard Eric Devendorf said. ‘We have a great team coming back.’

Published on March 21, 2006 at 12:00 pm