Syracuse, NY. — The summer is known as \u201clist season\u201d among college sports writers because there are no games to cover but there is still an appetite among fan for something to read, discuss and debate.<\/p>\n
That void is often filled with lists and the sports-centric website, The Athletic, is rolling out a number of lists revolving around college basketball.<\/p>\n
So far the website has ranked the best players of the 2000s, the best coaches of the 2000s, the best games of the 2000s, the best teams of the 2000s, and the best teams of the 2000s never to win the national title.<\/p>\n
Three of the five categories so far have included Syracuse representation, highlighted by Carmelo Anthony being named the best college player of the past 25 years.<\/a><\/p>\n While Anthony is routinely considered among the few logical candidates to be the best one-and-done player in college basketball, he does not often appear on the best college player ever lists because he played only one season of college basketball and he finished it as a Second Team All-American.<\/p>\n Writer Lindsay Schnell looks past that, focusing on quality over quantity, looking at Anthony\u2019s performance at the end of his freshman season and giving the star points for degree of difficulty.<\/p>\n Anthony led the 2003 Orange to the NCAA tournament championship. The team had missed the NCAA tournament the previous year. It entered the season unranked. He played alongside just one NBA players, Hakim Warrick, and his co-headliner was freshman Gerry McNamara.<\/p>\n Writers often lean toward favoring statistical accomplishments in these rankings because they are tangible. <\/p>\n That style of ranking would probably have favored either Villanova\u2019s Jalen Brunson, a two-time national champion, or North Carolina\u2019s Tyler Hansbrough, a national champion and four-time All-American.<\/p>\n Picking Anthony at No. 1 requires going deeper and just looking at the numbers, something Schnell opted to do, writing: \u201c(Anthony) takes top billing here because his impact is second to none, and what he did for the program in six months is astonishing. Keep in mind, Syracuse wasn\u2019t ranked in the preseason and had missed the 2002 NCAA Tournament. With Melo, they were national champs.\u201d<\/p>\n All of that, Schnell argued, contributed to the quality of his achievement. <\/p>\n Anthony might not have been the pick most expected but Schnell does an excellent job defending it.<\/p>\n Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim was ranked 15th among all college basketball coaches during that 25-year span.<\/a> Ironically, he probably fell a few spots for the same reason Anthony was elevated.<\/p>\n Boeheim was ranked behind a number of coaches that never won a national title, a group that included Kelvin Sampson, Mark Few and Brad Stevens.<\/p>\n Just like in the player category, the Houston, Gonzaga and Butler jobs were considered more difficult than the Syracuse jobs, which was used as a justification for the ranking. <\/p>\n In Boeheim\u2019s case, however, you could argue that he\u2019s the primary reason the Syracuse job is considered an easier one than the others during the 2000s.<\/p>\n Kansas\u2019 Bill Self topped the coaches list thanks to two national titles and an astounding 18 regular-season conference titles. That was seven more than any other coach. <\/p>\n Syracuse also had two games ranked among the best of the 2000s. <\/a><\/p>\n The Orange\u2019s national championship win over Kansas in 2003 was ranked No. 7 on the list. With a national title at stake, that game remained in question until Kansas\u2019 desperation heave missed the rim following Hakim Warrick\u2019s blocked shot with 1.5 seconds remaining.<\/p>\n Syracuse\u2019s six-overtime win over UConn in the Big East Tournament in 2019 was ranked No. 9. The Orange won the tournament quarterfinal over the Huskies, a game in which eight players fouled out.<\/p>\n The winner in that category was the 2008 national title game, where Kansas beat Memphis, 75-68, in overtime. Kansas\u2019 Mario Chalmers hit the game\u2019s biggest shot, beating the Tigers and Derrick Rose.<\/p>\n Syracuse did not have a team considered among the best not to win a national title in the past 25 years.<\/a> The Orange\u2019s best contender was likely the 2009-10 team, that looked like an NCAA tournament contender until it lost defensive anchor Arinze Onuaku due to an injury.<\/p>\n That Syracuse team finished 30-5, won the Big East regular-season title and earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. Playing without Onuaku, it was upset by Butler in the Sweet 16.<\/p>\n That category was won (if you want to call it that) by Kentucky\u2019s 2014-15 team, which advanced to the semifinals and had won all 38 games it played before losing to Wisconsin.<\/p>\n That Kentucky roster was headlined by Karl-Anthony Towns, Devin Booker and Willie Cauley-Stein.<\/p>\n Syracuse was one of eight national champions that weren\u2019t on The Athletic\u2019s list of the 25 best teams of the past 25 years.<\/a><\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Syracuse, NY. — The summer is known as \u201clist season\u201d among college sports writers because there are no…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":73330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,51269,1317,1337,1338,62,51270,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-73329","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-fromcd-20030403","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-basketball","12":"tag-ncaabasketball","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-su-basketball","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114875671853106106","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}