(09-04-2013 10:38 AM)john01992 Wrote: im not arguing that uconn, bc, & gtown were not important or major rivals. what im arguing is that in the last few seasons and going into the next few seasons we were starting to see a shift from uconn to louisville which was identical to the way we shifted from gtown to uconn.
when LV joined we beat them in their first year, but then they went on to win the next 7 straight matchups. they turned into a team that we just couldnt figure out. and suddenly LV became a must win game because we had to snap that awful losing streak. I think thats why this turned into a rivalry so quickly because boeheim knew that pitino had him figured out. and SU fans started caring a lot more for LV because at 7 straight losses its hard to not know about that team nor have an increased thirst to beat them.
sure uconn-su and gt-su have a lot of things that SU-LV didnt have, but pitino/boeheim have a lot of similarities to bo/woody where you have the former mentor/protege mentality, the 1996 natty, and two really good coaches. and while uconn/gtown have academics & geography LV has those traits. you cant say because LV doesnt have the same things that made the uconn rivalry good LV cant be a good rivalry either, because they were two different rivalries built on two different reasons.
while geography & academics are major factors, at the end of the day the go too reason for why teams become rivals is quality of opponent, and towards the end of the BE it was LV who was consistently good, consistently getting to the BE championship game, consistently getting past the s16, dominating the rankings, and the recruiting rankings, the news, a brand new arena.......all of the sudden they became the BE team to beat. like the gtown-su & uconn-su who grew because they were the two biggest kids on the block......all of the sudden louisville replaced uconn as that big kid on the block. beating uconn wasnt enough....you want to knock off your rival when they have a high ranking to mess up their season. he had back to back seasons where LV/SU kept meeting up when they both had those high rankings.
before the gtown game, our last 3 attendance records were set during nova games. the only reason why we had the gtown game get so many was because it was the final game. had this not been the final game i highly doubt we would have broke that attendance record making the nova games as our biggest attendance games. but by no means would anyone here say nova is SU's biggest rival. or what about the duke game which could have had 50k and a very good chance to beat the GT record? would you say duke is our biggest rival after just one season in the ACC? this is why i find the whole attendance argument a bit silly.
and to put things in perspective.......
taking out the gtown 35k game
gtowns biggest draw was 32k
louisville's biggest draw was 33.2k
uconns biggest draw was 33.4k
yes uconn has the most but thats negligible difference at best after louisville. but lets talk quantity. since louisville joined the big east they have had more 30k games (4) than nova (3) gtown (3) and uconn (2) in that same span.
the whole louisville doesnt draw well at the dome compared to other schools is a huge myth. they draw just as well as syracuse's traditional rivals.
i get that cuse has a lot of traditional rivals, (i lol that you think i dont know about BC) and i get that im the newer generation plus ive been living in colorado the last 2 years and my fellow cuse fans out here care a lot more for LV cuz they dont have that geographical perspective.....but i think its pretty undeniable that the stats show that LV was starting to replace uconn as the go to rival for syracuse.
For starters, I think you misunderstood me when I spoke about BC. My comments were directed at another poster. You're a good Syracuse fan (I actually think I was the first one to give you a positive rep) and I am more than certain that you know about all our traditional rivals, including BC. The person to whom my comment was directed was not a SU fan and didn't understand the SU-BC dynamic and our gentleman's rivalry. Either way, I can assure you that I didn't mean any offense to either you or the other poster.
That aside, I think that the crowds that you see with UL are more a matter of UL fielding good teams than UL being UL. UCONN and Georgetown draw well then they are mediocre and SU is mediocre. I do not think that a mediocre SU v. a mediocre UL would draw any better than a mediocre SU v. a mediocre ND. And, to me, that's what defines a rivalry. I've never felt any special interest in the SU v. UL game, and you're one of the few SU fans that I have ever met who does. Don't get me wrong, if that's a rivalry game in your mind, then I won't try to tell you to think otherwise. In fact, I actively encourage as many Cuse fans to take as much an interest in as many SU games as they can, so I actively support your position. However, I don't see it as an institutional rivalry. SU and UL have almost nothing in common.
As noted earlier, SU and UCONN are very similar and have the whole NY v. NE dynamic, SU and BC are also similar, have a LONG history playing each other in everything, and have a NE v. NY dynamic, and SU v. GU are fairly similar institutions and, although they aren't especially close, there are a ton of SU grads in DC because of Maxwell, so there is way more of a neighbor dynamic than most people think and we travel really, really well there. Also, there is 30 years of hate that has spanned generations (literally). Boehiem has squared off against JT and his son, JT3, and, if the schools keep playing, SU's future coach (Hopkins) will be a Boeheim trained/recruited/groomed coach who played for SU during a period of intense GU hate. I don't see the institutions not hating each other for at least another generation, no matter what happens.
And yes, RP and JB have a history, but, despite occasional lobs at each other in the media, they are close friends. Furthermore, even if they didn't like each other, it wouldn't matter. Both are only a couple of years away from retirement. The conditions just aren't right for a real rivalry. At best, on an institutional level, SU-UL will just be one good team v. another good team. Otherwise, it will just be another game. It might as well be SU-WF.
Also for what it's worth, I will go on the record and say that I think one of SU's biggest bball rivalries is VU, so there is at least one person saying it. I will also go on the record saying that a lot of SU-Duke is based on the novelty of the situation and I believe that most SU fans think that SU-Duke will be a bigger rivalry than SU-UL, though we don't have a shot in heck of being Duke's primary rival. Finally, I will go on the record and say that UCONN has been more dominant in the BE than UL since 2000 (even when taking into account that UL joined in the mid 00's).
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Cuse player says playing at Met Life "like an away game"
