Colgate Basketball: Revival of Raiders program and the future ahead
By Shea Irish
November 20th, 2021. A date that Colgate fans will never forget. The day the Raiders finally knocked off Syracuse to end a losing streak that dated all the way back to February 1962. 54 times in a row the tiny Patriot League school had taken the 40-mile bus ride northwest of their Hamilton, NY campus to return empty-handed.
Nearly six decades between victories. So long ago that legendary Coach Jim Boeheim hadn’t even started his playing career at Syracuse yet. Construction for the Carrier Dome was 16 years from breaking ground and President John F. Kennedy was still in office.
These two universities may share the same stretch of highway, but their similarities are few and far between. Colgate is a team featuring 2-star recruits, players that Jim Boeheim’s program never even considers recruiting. The Colgate players choose to attend the prestigious Patriot League school because of the academic excellence it has to offer. On the other hand, Syracuse players head to college with NBA aspirations in mind.
The enrollment of Syracuse is seven times the size of Colgate’s undergraduate population. Even more astonishing, look at the difference in the capacity between the Carrier Dome (35,446) and Colgate’s home venue, Cotterell Court (1,750). Regardless, the 2021-22 Colgate team wasn’t worried about the obstacles that stood in front of them or what had happened in the past against this in-state power.
Losing 17-2 just five minutes into the game, Matt Langel’s team could have felt discouraged and accepted the fate of a 55th consecutive loss. A team from the Patriot League is never expected to win on the road against an ACC opponent, and they were a 10.5 point underdog coming in; but they didn’t care about any of those narratives or the 15-point hole they dug themselves into.
Instead, the Raiders used the mantra that is written on the wall of their team’s facility inside the Reid Athletic Center. It reads “Impossible Is An Opinion”. They certainly proved that to be the truth, dissecting the vaunted 2-3 zone to make 18 three-pointers and hang 100 points on the scoreboard, completing a comeback to shock Syracuse and the rest of the college basketball world. Arguably the greatest win in program history, it signifies just how far this program has come under the guidance of Coach Matt Langel.