CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Sitting on his couch in March, Michael Gbinije couldn’t resist watching an NCAA Tournament that Syracuse couldn’t be a part of.

With a self-imposed postseason ban announced in February, the Orange sat out of the Atlantic Coast Conference and NCAA Tournaments. Gbinije made a point of watching teams SU faced during the regular season. He wanted to know how his team would have matched up. He wanted to know how far Syracuse would have gone.

In four years at Duke and Syracuse, he’d started taking postseason basketball for granted. But after his breakout year, he was left wondering what “could have been.”

“It’s nice to know that we have a chance to play in the postseason,” Gbinije said of the upcoming season. “We’re not ranked or being looked at to do much but basically it’s on us to write our own story now, and I kind of like this opportunity.”

At ACC Basketball Media Day on Wednesday, Gbinije and backcourt mate Trevor Cooney both painted the 2015–16 season as a “fresh start.” Last year, the Orange was consumed by an NCAA investigation that, at times, pushed basketball to the back of the conversation. SU’s season ended with a premature thud on March 7, the day after the NCAA announced the findings of its investigation and the sanctions against the program.

And with the 18-win, postseason-less season pushed into the past, Cooney and Gbinije looked back on last year before expressing optimism for the year ahead.

“It definitely was tough. It wasn’t about basketball anymore, and that was the hardest part,” Cooney said. “Especially toward the end of the year when you’re trying to play well and you’re trying to play for each other because you weren’t allowed to go to the ACC or NCAA Tournament.”

Thinking back to last season, Cooney tabbed upset wins over Notre Dame on the road and at home against Louisville as ones that defined his frustration. Syracuse left the court feeling good about its play, but Cooney said the conversations with the media in the locker room had nothing to do with that.

“It wasn’t even about how you beat them or who played well,” he said. “It was definitely just about the sanctions and stuff like that. It not being about basketball was the hardest part.”

As far as Cooney and Gbinije are concerned, that’s all behind them. The conversation is shifting back to basketball, and things are starting to feel normal again.

“It definitely feels a lot better. I think it would have been really, really tough this year, going into this year knowing you couldn’t go to the postseason,” Cooney said.

“It feels good to control your own destiny.”

Published on October 28, 2015 at 2:23 pm

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