Remember that time Syracuse was playing Gonzaga and the feisty Bulldog attack was supposed to expose a planet-sized hole in the Orange’s game plan after Rick Jackson committed his third foul? 

Yeah, me neither.

The truth is, Syracuse chugged along Saturday with its biggest weakness exposed, flapping behind it like a loose bumper on the highway, begging for the well-equipped Zags to take a stab at it.

And 30 minutes later, Wes Johnson and company were still rolling, ignoring the ‘check engine’ light and plowing through their second-round matchup. It should have been a distraction, or at least a bump along the way, but the Orange ended up winning the game by 22 — the Bulldogs just another blurry vision in the rearview mirror.

It has been the same story all year. We all thought Syracuse would eventually slip up. It never did.

It’s that kind of resilience that shows why Syracuse will win the national championship.

‘We took it amongst ourselves to go out there and play hard,’ Johnson said. ‘We’re coming off the two-game losing streak and winning the previous game with Vermont. We came here and played our game of basketball. That was the main thing we were trying to do.’

The story last Sunday was supposed to be about life without injured center Arinze Onuaku and moving on without the ‘seven-starter’ rotation that had gotten Syracuse to the Big Dance in the first place. But by day’s end, all the chatter was about how dynamic Johnson played, how freshman point guard Brandon Triche appears more confident than ever, and how Andy Rautins continues to keep his team humble and emotionally under control.

The game showed that Syracuse wasn’t mired in a funk following the Big East tournament, just as it showed that SU wasn’t just a polished clunker with no horsepower like some of its conference counterparts.

‘Syracuse basketball is about being ready to play and being consistent,’ SU head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘We’re usually ready to play.’

It has gotten to the point where this isn’t really that much of a bold statement. Forget Bracketology, how Syracuse fares against mid-majors or its record west of the Mississippi.

The reason Syracuse is primed for a national championship is because of moments like the ones Sunday against Gonzaga. It has been right in front of our eyes the whole time. Throughout the season, there were a million occurrences when the Orange was expected to fail and it proved everybody wrong.

North Carolina was supposed to be too tall, too physical for Syracuse in November. Cornell was pegged as the quintessential trap game, the ideal opportunity for SU to come crashing back down to earth before the conference schedule started. With a banged-up Johnson, Syracuse was supposed to struggle against Villanova in front of a sold-out Dome, just like it was against Georgetown down in D.C.

And when facing Gonzaga, the Orange was supposed to struggle without one half of its two-headed frontcourt monster.

The team has been hearing these doubts, these second guesses since Midnight Madness, and it’s getting to the point where Syracuse deserves the benefit of the doubt. If there’s a leak in the frontcourt, it’s more than likely they’ll fix it. If the opposition has better guard play, chances are SU will be able to game plan around it. It’s the same thing the team’s been doing all year.

‘We try to play with a chip on our shoulder whenever we go out there,’ sophomore guard Scoop Jardine said. ‘It was a team that was doubted in the beginning of the year. Every time we go out there we try to take it one game at a time and play Syracuse basketball.

‘Coming into the Tournament, we had lost two games straight. People kind of turned their heads. Then we lost Arinze Onuaku. We knew it was a good team all year and we could stick together and just play basketball.’

And now, as Syracuse begins the final drive toward another Final Four, there’s going to be a whole new set of doubts and concerns. What will SU do if Butler gets red hot from beyond the 3-point arc? How will it contain Kansas State’s Jacob Pullen in the Elite Eight? Will Evan Turner or John Wall take over and crush the dream in Indianapolis?

At this point, we might now know a little better. Think about the last time you doubted Syracuse this season and remember what happened. Odds will say 30 out of 34 times you were better off ignoring it and trusting in the team that has defied all of our expectations.

Conor Orr is the sports editor at The Daily Orange, where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at ctorr@syr.edu.

Published on March 24, 2010 at 12:00 pm