Last Saturday night, as Syracuse was about to advance to its first Final Four in a decade, Clay McKnight turned to a Marquette fan inside a sports bar in Orange County, Calif. He directed the fan’s attention to the 2003 national championship ring around his finger.

“I said, ‘Can you hold this for me while I go to the restroom?’” said McKnight, a graduate assistant on the 2003 team. “I was just trying to be a dick, but obviously I didn’t give it to them.”

McKnight was one of many members of former Syracuse teams that cheered for the Orange on Saturday night as SU returned to the Final Four for the first time since 2003. While all were excited to see Syracuse again near the pinnacle of college basketball, some took the win as an opportunity to reconnect with old teammates, make plans to fly down to Atlanta or vindicate head coach Jim Boeheim.

On the phone with his father, McKnight made plans to fly out of John Wayne Airport in Orange County to Atlanta on Thursday. It will be his 23rd straight trip to the Final Four, he said, a stretch that includes the Orangemen’s loss in the 1996 final to Kentucky and the 2003 championship run.

McKnight compared this SU team to both of those squads, mostly on the basis of one familiar quality.

“(This team) has a lot of the same qualities as the team in 2003, for me,” McKnight said. “It’s more of a system. You know in 1996, this year, 2003 when we were there, you know the zone’s going to take care of things.”

Inside of the Verizon Center, former SU greats sat together. Derrick Coleman, Billy Owens, Pearl Washington, Hakim Warrick, Leo Rautins and Etan Thomas joined Syracuse’s all-time leading scorer, Lawrence Moten.

“Everybody was there to support our university and our team,” Moten said, likening the Verizon Center to being in the Carrier Dome. “And it’s weird, because some of those guys, we never even played together, but we have so much love and respect for each other that we want to see the university always do well.”

After the game, Moten went down to talk with SU players like C.J. Fair, Jerami Grant, Michael Carter-Williams and Brandon Triche. A former swingman himself, Moten told Carter-Williams and Triche to continue driving to the hoop, calling the NCAA “a guard’s tournament.”

“Basically, what I said to Carter-Williams and Triche is they’re 6-6 and 6-4,” Moten said, “if they penetrate and create, it’ll open up so much more for the guys.”

Moten said he thinks the Orange can win the tournament now, pointing to players like Baye Moussa Keita stepping up during the postseason stretch.

He, too, is working on plans to go to Atlanta for the Final Four. Moten missed out on a Final Four run by just a year after he played his last SU game in 1995. Though he said he felt he was a part of the 1996 team’s run to the championship game, he’s pulling for this year’s squad just as hard.

Andrew Kouwe watched the game this past weekend with 10 friends inside Jack Flats bar on an annual trip to Key West, Fla. Kouwe, a walk-on on the 2003 championship team, held onto his player’s mentality as SU wound the clock down on Marquette. Even after James Southerland drilled a 3-pointer with 2:23 remaining to give the Orange a 50-36 lead, the game was not over.

“I don’t think you ever think that, especially after Kansas, you know, watching the Kansas game the day before,” Kouwe said. “But you know that when you have a 10-point lead or eight-point lead or 12-point lead against the zone and the way the zone’s playing it actually seems like a bigger lead than it really is because it’s so tough to score against.”

After the game, Kouwe talked to Kueth Duany, the lone senior on the 2003 championship team, and Hakim Warrick, who made a game-saving block on Kansas’ Michael Lee with less than two seconds remaining in the championship.

Warrick will be in Atlanta for the Final Four, Kouwe said, and Duany is trying to fly in from Africa. Josh Pace lives in Atlanta, but had to leave for New Zealand on Saturday to prepare for his upcoming season with the Nelson Giants. He was a sophomore guard-forward on the championship team.

Kouwe also texted current SU assistant coach and then-freshman point guard Gerry McNamara.

McKnight, Moten and Kouwe all said Boeheim deserved more recognition for the success he’s had.

“I know he’s had criticism and people say he can’t play zone and all this stuff, but he’s proven over the years that he’s just remarkable,” Kouwe said. “I think it just speaks to that fact that he’s one of the greatest college basketball coaches of all time.”

Moten added that despite the Orange’s miserable regular-season stretch, Boeheim has always had his players ready in postseason crunch time. Moten was glad to see his former head coach return to the Final Four, but learned a more important lesson in his time in an Orange uniform.

“I’ll tell you, Boeheim doesn’t care what anybody thinks about him,” Moten said. “In life, everybody’s always going to say something about you, but if there’s one thing I learned from Coach Boeheim, it’s to let it go in one ear and come out the other, just do what you do.”

Published on April 2, 2013 at 1:15 am

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