No, really, he’s overrated

Gerry McNamara, congratulations on your Big East Tournament championship and your No. 5 seed… Gerry McNamara, congratulations on your Big East Tournament championship and your No. 5 seed in this year’s NCAA tournament.

Before you get too full of yourself, you must be brought back down to reality.

You’re overrated – sorry, but truth hurts.

You had a great run of four games there, but just to inform you, four games do not make a career.

Listen, before you get your coach to shout a few swear words my way, before you try to call me out and have me stop writing for this student newspaper and before you wear another shirt reading “Overrated?!”, just hear me out.

It isn’t entirely your fault that you’re overrated – it’s partially the media’s, too.

As a complimentary piece – and a very good one at that – to Carmelo Anthony in the 2002-03 season, you helped lead the then-Syracuse Orangemen to a national title by averaging 13.3 points per game on 40.1 percent shooting, including 35.7 percent from beyond the arc.

Stellar numbers indeed for a freshman, which is why you were a unanimous selection for the Big East All-Rookie Team and the eventual All-Final Four Team.

These numbers forced the expectations of you and your play to skyrocket among the nation’s sportswriters. If you did all of that in your freshman season, then what else were we supposed to hope for in your next three years?

In your sophomore season, your scoring went up because of the loss of Anthony to the NBA Draft.

However, your assists went down, turnovers went up, steals went down, field goal percentage went down and free throw percentage went down, though you did manage to up your percentage from 3-point land.

In the postseason, your Syracuse team, as the No. 5 seed, lost in the Sweet 16 to the No. 8-seeded Alabama squad.

We’ve all heard of the famous sophomore slump in sports. It happens to all rookies in every sport – their numbers mysteriously fall in their second year of action, so you were let off the hook.

But again, the talent was there, so, of course, the expectations of you went right back through the roof.

Then came last season, your junior year. Points? Down. Rebounds? Down. Turnovers? Up. Field goal percentage? Down. 3-point percentage? Down. If you don’t remember the tourney that year, you lost in the first round to 13th-seeded Vermont.

OK, now we begin to question things.

After three years you aren’t really progressing the way a player of your caliber is expected to. You are supposed to get better, and produce more, but your numbers began to fall off.

Maybe by this time, the media should have lowered the expectations and, thus, not rated you as high. But they didn’t, and again, you didn’t live up to the hype.

As the main guy on the offense this year, you struggled for open looks and watched as your field goal percentage dropped to 35.7 percent. The 3-point numbers stayed the same and you managed to dish out assists at a much higher rate, but the turnover category jumped to 3.4.

If it weren’t for a miracle of a Big East Tournament, your career would have gone from a national title to the National Invitational Tournament.

You see, the media just expected more out of you. Maybe that was wrong of them. You can look at it either way.

But your career reminds me of former Notre Dame point guard Chris Thomas, who went from questioning whether to leave for the NBA after his freshman season to not even being drafted after using all four years of eligibility as a Fighting Irishman.

No one wanted to see that happen to you, but it just might.

Now you’ve got one last shot to silence the critics and tack on another six amazing games. It won’t make up for your career, but it’d put a nice stamp on the senior season part of it.

But just remember, everyone outside of Syracuse, especially in Cincinnati, knows how your career should have ended – with that trip to the NIT because of a first-round loss in the Big East Tournament.

Everyone knows two steps with ball in hand and no dribble is a violation of basketball rules.

“Toot!” blows the whistle of the referee.

“Traveling,” he’d say. “Cincinnati ball.”

Game over.

Alan Smodic is a senior staff writer for The Pitt News. E-mail him at ams85@pitt.edu.