Requiem for a Season

In the past 20 years, a team I root for has won the title in its sport only once, the 2003 Syracuse Orange.
20 seasons of Mets baseball, Redskins football, Knicks basketball and Syracuse basketball and football.
And one title.
99 seasons ended in a loss. Only one ended with a title.
Some seasons exceeded expectations, some disappointed. Some we thought would be bad, and they were bad. Others we thought would be great and they were great. But 99% of them end short of the ultimate goal.
But even as a sometimes pessimistic fan, I refuse to go rewrite history and say everything that happened before the final failure is failure as well.
The Syracuse men's basketball team had a great 2013-14 season. They won their first 25 games and held the number one ranking for a few weeks in February.
This year's team played (and won) the best game I've ever seen in person, 91-89 in overtime, over Duke, possibly forging a rivalry that could grow to even greater heights than previous battles with Georgetown and UConn.
We got to watch CJ Fair, a beacon for college purists who believe freshman should come in and learn and blossom into stars in their senior year.
We got to watch Tyler Ennis who for most of the season played with a calm and poise you rarely even see in points guards twice his age.

And we watched Jerami Grant become a fierce athletic slasher with some real low post move to complement his abilities on the break.

How can any season with all that stuff be considered a failure?
I loved watching this team for most of the season, but their flaws (poor shooting, limited depth) caught up with them in the end.
Believe it or not these players, especially CJ Fair, have been part of a great five year run, perhaps even more success than the team enjoyed in the Seikaly-DC-Sherm-Billy Owens Era.
If Ennis and Grant leave for the NBA, and I couldn't blame them for doing so, I would thank them for their contributions and wish them well on the next level.
And I'd try to enjoy next season with whomever is left.