While the season goes from bad to worse, Adrian Autry may not be happy, but he’s not rattled. He joined ESPN Radio’s “Orange Nation” for his weekly appearance on Thursday and said for as bad as it is, he’s seen too much in his life to get down.
“The outside noise is not bothering me… I’m trying to get this team better. For me, this is my job. This is what I signed up for. I come from the hood man, so I’ve seen a lot worse.”
Life perspective is always important, although from a basketball perspective it’s hard to imagine SU’s situation getting much worse. Syracuse has the fourth-worst record in the ACC, meaning the Orange are dancing the line of being left out of the ACC Tournament. SU has lost three straight games, including the depth of the year in a loss to bottom-feeder Miami. SU has lost 7 of 9 ACC games, and blew an 11-point lead to Pitt this week.
“Just gotta finish out the season,” Autry said. “That’s what this is. You start something, you finish it out, you keep going.” The fan frustration is mounting by the day, as a recent poll showed the majority of SU fans want to move on from the 2nd-year head coach.
If there is a silver lining, it’s that next year Autry has confidence things will be much better. He cited the arrival of GM Alex Kline to assemble a roster that’s ready to win.
“We’ve got a great high school recruiting class,” Autry says. “Top talented guys. Guys that can come in play. Not development guys. We’ll be ready for the portal.”
Syracuse has announced a $50M initiative to drive fund raising over the next three years for NIL. “We have things in place that we did not have in place last year,” Autry cited.
“You can’t dwell on the past,” says Autry. “When things don’t go your way, you have to figure it out… You gotta fight through it.”
We’ll see if the Orange can indeed fight through it, because the last few weeks suggest the losing may be wearing on them. They can’t finish off games, they have blown leads, and plenty of sloppy play to go around. Autry has life perspective to know this is just basketball, but between the lines has been all sorts of ugly.
