Tuesday offered a striking contrast for Syracuse basketball fans and Adrian Autry has now been fired.
Within hours, two programs tied to the same history told two very different stories.
At the ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament, Syracuse Orange men’s basketball ended its season with a thud, getting blown out by SMU Mustangs men’s basketball and looking non-competitive in the second half. The loss closed the chapter on the season and Adrian Autry’s tenure. He was predictably let go Wednesday morning.
Afterward, Autry spoke candidly about the realities of modern college basketball.
“It’s not an excuse and it’s just the reality,” Autry said. “NIL is a real thing, the transfer portal is a real thing… if you fall a little short in those things, it makes it that much more difficult.”
In one of The Fizz’s most read pieces, we discussed how Autry seemed to admit last weekend he was unprepared for this new basketball world. The writing was on the wall. We knew this was his last week coaching SU.
The brutal honesty was reflective and alarming. NIL collectives and portal spending now shape rosters across the sport. Programs that can’t keep up financially are left out in the cold. They are the schools confounded and perplexed, wondering how to stay upright as the land beneath quakes.
But later that same night, another former Jim Boeheim assistant told a very different story.
At the MAAC Men’s Basketball Tournament, Siena Saints men’s basketball cut down the nets and punched its ticket to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2010.
Leading them was Gerry McNamara, a familiar face to us all.
And when McNamara explained his team’s success, the language was entirely different.
“I got the right kids,” he said. “They’re about the right stuff… Gavin Doty is a psycho, an absolute maniac competitor. Justice Schultz… I got the right guys to compete at the level it takes to try to win something.”
One coach talked about resources.
The other talked about competitive fire.
College basketball today absolutely requires financial backing and the worry has always been whether Syracuse has the requisite booster resources to keep atop the food chain. No one doubts that SU’s NIL has to continue to improve, and reportedly there was triple the investment in this year’s roster compared to last year. There has been a widespread annoyance within the fan base that Autry seemed to lean on these same excuses throughout the season.
Autry may not have intended it to come off like an excuse, he even said that in the press conference last night. But it does put a sullen period on a run-on sentence. As one team was eliminated after a demoralizing season, we heard about lack of resources. As one team soared to March Madness, we heard about the character of the players.
Did Syracuse fail because the players weren’t good enough or because Autry could not generate the type of fire that McNamara did?
Whatever the answer, Tuesday made one thing clear.
Two Syracuse basketball stories unfolded on the same night.
And they couldn’t have sounded more different.
One is still dancing.
