Basketball history will be made today. Two powerful basketball giants meet for the 100th time. Syracuse and Georgetown will go at it beginning at 2:30 in the Syracuse Dome.
Their first game almost 100 years ago in 1929. Of the 99 games played thus far, Syracuse has an edge in wins 54-45.
Georgetown on paper appears the better team this season with a 7-2 record. Syracuse is 5-4.
The Dome will be packed. There will not be an empty seat. Wish I was there. I will be watching from Brady’s Irish Pub in the back room in a kitchen chair. Me alone with a sole TV set. My back cannot handle bar stools yet.
The competition between the two teams has been fierce for many years. The ferocity began at the beginning of the Big East Basketball Conference in 1979. Syracuse and Georgetown were members. The Carrier Dome opened in 1980. I had a 16 seat box with a bar in the new Carrier Dome. My interest in the Syracuse/Georgetown competition began in 1980.
Even the coaches disliked each other. It was referred to as a mutual feeling of hatred. Jim Boeheim and John Thompson never talked in all the years they competed. Their dislike for each other was common knowledge.
They became friends a couple of years after Thompson retired. Boeheim was still coaching. They ran into each other at a coach’s convention and started talking. Out of that conversation developed one of the closest relationships in the sport. The two could not even figure out why they had disliked each other. They became as close as peas in a pod as the saying goes. Did personal and basketball things together thereafter.
The game is on the ACC Network. I am anxious for 2:30 to arrive.
Enjoy your day! I am mine, win or lose!