Guilty as charged. I’m a little biased when it comes to Syracuse University. But unlike the e-mailers who bombarded me Monday when they discovered I had put the Orange No. 3 on my Associated Press ballot, my bias is in favor of Syracuse, not against it.
My father and mother, both of whom have moved onto their eternal reward, met delivering a baby in Syracuse and then went on to have 10 of their own. My father was at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, my mother a student at SU’s nursing school. Few things make me prouder than looking at the framed orange ‘S’ varsity letter my grandfather, Cleveland Thomas Keegan, earned in baseball at Syracuse. No meal beats a white hot dog smothered in mustard at Heid’s in Liverpool. Skaneateles Lake is the world’s best summer vacation spot. Great childhood TV memory from the crowded den of our home in Rochester, N.Y.: Watching Rudy Hackett beat Bernard King and Ernie Grunfeld of Tennessee in the NCAA Tournament.
So why did I rank Syracuse third and Kansas first in the toughest call of the season? Well, Syracuse played nobody in the nonconference season. Kansas and Kentucky had more challenging pre-conference schedules. Kansas has lost once in conference play, Syracuse twice. The Big East is the nation’s best conference, but the Big 12 is a close second.
Was I biased against Syracuse a week ago when I voted the Orange No. 3 and they ended up fourth?
Of course, it doesn’t really matter now which team is ranked ahead of which, but it will matter when the NCAA Tournament selection committee ranks its No. 1 seeds. The East Regional is in Syracuse this season, so the Orange must go elsewhere. The next-closest site? You guessed it, St. Louis. Kansas, Kentucky and Syracuse all could be in the mix for getting sent to St. Louis.
