Three years ago today, the Syracuse Orange men’s basketball team completed the unthinkable: They came back from 16 points down to beat top-seeded Virginia to make the Final Four. Better yet, SU was a 10-seed, had to apologize for being in the NCAA Tournament at all and was still dealing with the fall out of NCAA sanctions reducing scholarships. It was a revenge tour that we loved, despite the eventual loss to UNC in the National Semifinals down in Houston.
That team gave us so much, from the aforementioned apology letter/tour, to the Malachi Richardson three goggles, Tyler Lydon’s shoeless shot, to beating Gonzaga and “finally” getting that surprise run that other programs seemed to have like once per decade.