After a slight detour, the destined ending of Gerry McNamara coaching Syracuse hoops

One. Two. Three. Chancellor-elect Mike Haynie. Bryan Blair. Gerry McNamara.

Orange Nation, and the entire university and CNY community for that matter, are pretty happy and optimistic this week despite sitting out the Big Dance for a fifth straight year, while enviously watching current conference opponent Duke, and former conference opponent St. John's land in the Sweet 16 later in the week.

That is because the hirings of three important positions in the connected ecosystem of the university hierarchy has successfully shaken out, producing the exact type of leadership most of O.N. might have envisioned on a "wish list" some two months ago as the basketball season was imploding into another losing record.

GMac has arrived back as an NCAA Tournament coach, proving he has earned the right to follow his mentor's footsteps

Let's face it. After the 2017 Mike Hopkins succession plan exploded because Jim Boeheim was not ready to retire with a plan formulating in his mind that he could indeed end up coaching at least one of his two sons as a capper to his otherwise already fulfilled H-of-F career, the university hands were tied when Hopkins bolted west to Washington.

The next "iron-clad" succession plan that Boeheim alluded to in a March 2022 interview on ESPN Radio Syracuse was kept in suspense, as Boeheim refused to divulge his known date of retirement, or details of the plan.

It turns out after the 2021-22 season turned out at 16-17 for the first losing season in Boeheim's career, followed by the 17-15 mark and first-round ACC Tournament loss a season later, the awkward postgame press conference in Greensboro followed the announcement hours later that Boeheim was out and Adrian Autry, next in senority, was in.

So McNamara had to defer to his longtime coaching colleague and personal friend Autry in the pecking order, work a year together on the bench, then set out on the course at Siena and this season's NCAA bid, that now returns him and his family to their beloved CNY community (with Autry's blessing, of course).

Would the recommendation for the pivotal hire be keep it Orange, or go in a new direction?

It has been the one question more common than inquiring about the annual wacky March weather in CNY among Orange stakeholders.

Would the decision makers make the logical legacy hire in GMac, even before winning the MAAC conference in year two and subsequent NCAA bid, or feel out a more seasoned head coach that has risen the ranks with a success style, fixating on guaranteed NIL dollars to make the move, allowing him to build an ACC-caliber roster (with depth) to his specifications.

At this point it certainly does not matter who turned down the job, it only matters that the aforementioned Haynie and Blair lead their respective university teams in ensuring that coach McNamara, who was always seemingly destined to one day fill the shoes of his own 'Cuse coach, gets all the necessary resources he needs to do his part of the job and get the program back to competing for postseason success.

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