College Basketball: 2014 Year in Review

Best Play of 2014: Tyler Ennis Downs Pitt at the Buzzer

Considering Syracuse’s massive let down at the end of the 2013-2014 season, it’s easy to forget that the Orange entered the 2014 calendar year undefeated, and stayed that way until late February. The undefeated run should have ended on February 12 at Pittsburgh. The Panthers had lured the Orange into a throwback old-fashioned Big East slugfest between the two new additions to the ACC. In the final moments, it looked like Pitt had stolen a hard fought victory that would knock Syracuse from the ranks of the unbeaten.

Trailing by one with 4.4 seconds remaining, Ennis took the inbound pass at the opposite three-point line. The freshman covered a good portion of the court in three dribbles before heaving a 35-foot prayer that found the bottom of the net. Though the buzzer-beater was not a sign of later heroics, it does allow us to remember a team that contended for a long time before ultimately crashing back to the reality of being a pretender.

Ennis parlayed this performance with the rest of his stellar season and played his way into the first round of the 2014 NBA Draft. With only one year spent on campus, this shot serves as the lasting legacy of the best one-and-done player at Syracuse since Carmelo Anthony.

Worst Play of 2014: Chris Jones‘ Flops Against Kentucky

I won’t be dedicating too many words to this abomination of an action by Louisville’s Chris Jones in last weekend’s showdown with Kentucky. As Jay Bilas pointed out in the aftermath of the incident, flopping is a huge issue in college basketball, and measures must be taken to penalize players who are blatantly attempting to abuse the emphasis that officials have begun to place on player safety. If an official’s discovers a blatant flop upon replay review, start doling out technical fouls. There has to be some type of deterrent for flopping in the works as we head to 2015. This is hurting the game.