The NCAA Tournament will captivate the nation’s attention for the next three weeks, and Syracuse won’t be involved for the second season in a row.

Many of the elite programs of college basketball will advance beyond this weekend. Syracuse hasn’t done this in five years.

An entire class of students has arrived at Syracuse and will graduate in May without ever seeing an NCAA Tournament victory. This never happened since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985. The recent struggles reflect not just fan despair, but of a slip in the program’s prestige.

This is not an obituary of the program, which will certainly be among the top teams in the preseason rankings next season if everyone returns from what was a young and inexperienced squad. Instead, it is representative of the burden of winning a national title. When Hakim Warrick blocked Michael Lee’s potential game-winner to secure SU’s first national title in 2003, the excitement for the program increased, and the expectations rose in result. This came from the outside, but it isn’t unreasonable to expect the five years following a national championship to be better than the five years before a national championship.

This has not been the case for Syracuse, nor tonight’s opponent, Maryland, which won the national title in 2002. Tonight’s game will be billed as two powerhouse programs. But when the numbers are dissected, that power is more a figment of reputation than of production.

In the five seasons prior to the national championship in 2003, Syracuse was 121-48, 5-4 in the NCAA Tournament with one NIT appearance. In the five years since the national title, Syracuse is 117-51 with a 2-3 record in the NCAA Tournament and two NIT appearances.

Part of this can be contributed to Carmelo Anthony’s one-and-done stint, yet the national championship was supposed to incite recruiting. Syracuse recruits higher-rated players than before, yet the effectiveness hasn’t transpired. The most frustrating case was in 2004, when the Orange’s two-man class was Josh Wright and Dayshawn Wright, a pair of four-star recruits who contributed little and did not last until their senior seasons at SU.

That senior season, by the way, was supposed to be this year – when SU was crunched with a lack of depth and experience. This is no coincidence.

Even if the general opinion suggests Syracuse deserved to make the NCAA Tournament last season and despite prevailing limitations that made it somewhat acceptable to miss the Tournament this season, the overall body of work in the five years since the championship is alarming. It’s even more disheartening when analyzing recent NCAA Tournament history. Of the last 10 national champions with five elapsed proceeding seasons – from 1994-2003 – just four failed to reach the Final Four in those five years: UCLA in 1994, Kentucky in 1998, Maryland in 2002 and Syracuse in 2003.

UCLA reached seven consecutive NCAA Tournaments after its title – including four Sweet 16 appearances and one Elite Eight. At their first sniff of a spring without the NCAA Tournament, the Bruins replaced their coach. Kentucky made the NCAA Tournament every season since its title and reached the Elite Eight three times in that span. Under pressure for seemingly not making the Final Four every season, former coach Tubby Smith bolted to Minnesota last offseason.

Clearly, the Final Four drought meant more to fans than shaking their heads and waiting until next season.

The program Syracuse most compares to is Maryland. Since the Terrapins won the national championship the season before SU, they also failed to capitalize on the momentum generated from the Finals run.

In the five years after the Terps won the title, they were 104-57 with four NCAA Tournament victories and two NIT appearances. They never advanced past the Sweet 16. It didn’t get better this season, when Maryland finished the regular season 18-14 with an 8-8 Atlantic Coast Conference record.

What distinguishes these numbers are the five enormously successful years that preceded Maryland’s title. In those years, Maryland went 120-49 with nine NCAA Tournament wins and no NIT appearances. They made the Final Four in 2001.

These records could merely be an indication of two programs that struck gold with particular teams – Anthony and Gerry McNamara together made the core of a memorable SU team, and the Juan Dixon/Lonny Baxter/Steve Blake teams achieved unprecedented success for the Terps.

Yet a certain prestige is bestowed upon programs. While not among North Carolina, Kentucky, UCLA, Duke, Kansas and Indiana as the elite programs in college basketball, both Syracuse and Maryland are generally considered as part of the next group in the upper echelon. That simply has not been the case in recent years.

Tonight’s matchup is so compelling for these very reasons. There is no denying the success Jim Boeheim and Gary Williams have both achieved at their alma maters, and whatever praise comes their way is merited.

But there is something to be said that five years after the Orange won the title and six years after the Terps won their title, the two teams are meeting in the NIT – not the NCAA Tournament. It says even more that this is bordering on a trend for both programs.

Zach Berman is the featured sports columnist for The Daily Orange, where his column appears weekly. E-mail him at zberman@syr.edu.

Published on March 21, 2008 at 12:00 pm