Syracuse game rematch of 5th banner

After falling to IU in the 1987 national championship game off of Keith Smart’s buzzer-beater, Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim said that loss stayed with him for a long time.

Although the Hoosiers were favored coming into the game, until Smart made 10 of IU’s last 13 points, Boeheim said he thought Syracuse might just pull off the upset.

Smart had been benched earlier in the game by former IU Coach Bob Knight, but Boeheim said after he came back into the game, he took over and defeated the Orange almost all himself.

“He was one of the guys that I was worried about in that game,” Boeheim said. “He came back in, and he was the guy that beat us. We played very well in the game. When you lose a game like that, you really almost never get over it.”

Knight said to Boeheim after the game that one day he would have his chance.

Boeheim didn’t realize it would take as long as it did, but after 16 years, he returned to New Orleans, the site of the devastating 1987 title game loss, and took down Kansas for his first national championship, a memory that was finally able to replace the nightmares of Smart’s shot.

“You can talk about it all you like and say you don’t need it or you don’t have to have it, but it’s the biggest thing that can happen to a college coach,” Boeheim said.

But since the Hoosiers’ fifth banner they clinched that night in New Orleans, IU fans are still waiting on when the sixth banner will be hung in Assembly Hall.

Although the IU players have likely seen Smart’s shot several times, IU Coach Tom Crean said his players aren’t taking the 1987 win, or anything really, with much weight.

After falling to last year’s eventual national champion Kentucky last season in the Sweet 16, Crean said his players came into this season with a bit of a chip on their shoulders, even with a preseason No. 1 ranking to their name.

The hype of a No. 1 seed this year or playing Boeheim and Syracuse on Thursday against the backdrop of a previous national championship victory hasn’t phased the Hoosiers, junior guard Victor Oladipo said last week.

After narrowly beating No. 9 seed Temple in the Round of 32 in a game that came down to his own 3-pointer with just 15 seconds left, Oladipo said the win was important to get his team to their ultimate goal, but until Atlanta, everything is just a business trip.

Crean said that type of mentality is something he values in his players. Without that chip on their shoulders, whether it be from the Kentucky loss, IU’s national championship drought or the struggles the program has had to go through during Crean’s first three years in Bloomington, he said he’s not sure they’d be in Washington, D.C.

“When you get entitled and enabled type of guys, they’re not going to go the extra mile,” Crean said. “They’ll buy in for a while on talent, and they’ll get things done for you, but they’re not going to win big for you, and there has to be intangibles and the edge.”