Staying In The Orange Family: Gerry McNamara Is Finalizing a Deal To Become The Next Syracuse Men's Basketball Head Coach

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And there it is, Gerry McNamara will be the next head coach of Syracuse basketball. My gut reaction? I'd be lying to you if I said this was a home run hire, but it definitely could be much worse. 

When the coaching carousel opened up the hope was to either land Josh Schertz over at Saint Louis or Bryan Hodgson from USF. Schertz re-upped on a big extension and Hodgson ended up at Providence. After those two went off the board it was pretty bleak so that's where G-Mac became one of the better options left to pick from. 

The good news here? Well, for starters his 16 seed Siena squad just gave Duke hell in the first round of the tournament. Scheyer admitted that McNamara coached circles around him in that game. You can't have a better audition for a job than that performance. He's also NOT Mike Hopkins which is a massive win. That would have been the worst case scenario in my mind. 

I really wanted Syracuse to go outside of the family and hire an external guy to fully reset the program. This is the opposite of that which makes it underwhelming to me. That doesn't mean this can't be a good thing, I just have my worries. It really seemed like we needed a full program overhaul and I’m not sure a guy who grew under Boeheim is the guy to do that, but he clearly can coach and was always our top recruiter during his time with the program. This is at least what I'm telling myself to stay positive. 

Two years at Siena to coaching at Syracuse is certainly a big jump. I hope he can take all the good things he learned from Boeheim and bring them back to the school. Seems he also loves the idea of not using his bench at all, so there's that. I hope he's able to attack NIL effectively and inject this program with much needed life in that department. Listen, GMac is a legend and it would be so cool if he's able to right this ship and make Syracuse a power again. Hey, it can’t be worse than the Autry experience, right? 

Go Orange.