Meet your 2009-2010 Le Moyne men’s basketball team. I don’t know who could possible not know this BUT Le Moyne is a division II team also located in Syracuse, NY. On Tuesday the Dolphins upset the Orange 82-79 behind their six foot–nothing sophomore guard Chistopher Johnson who led the Dolphins with 22 points.
‘Cuses official athletics site has a write-up of the game and predictably they try to avoid the actual result of the game as much as possible. This is one of the more glaring example of the dangers of these pre-season “exhibitions”. It’s embarrassing for the Orange. They are going to get it in practice tomorrow and they should. There really is no excuse for this type of loss for any respectable DI program.
I would be super pissed if I was a current or former Syracuse student. It’s damn embarrassing. At the same time, things could be worse–at least their team is a preseason top 25 team. I feel bad for Cal-State Los Angeles who lost to the Orange by nearly 40 on October 25th. This could have been their glory but apparently they didn’t have the killer instinct of the Dolphins.
Le Moyne upsets Syracuse in exhibition [SI.com]
Division II upsets occur more often than people think. Two years ago, Grand Valley State won at Michigan State, which was a Sweet 16 team a year prior (Grand Valley went on to Elite-8 that year) and a couple of days later, Findlay won at #8 Ohio State and last year went undefeated on the way to the D2 championship. This year alone, Delaware, Fairfield and Valpo have lost in D2 exhibitions and there have been other scares. The gap between strong, experienced D2s and D1s is narrowing. Go Le Moyne!