More than two decades after helping to bring a national championship to Syracuse as a player, Gerry McMamara looks poised to try and deliver another one as the program’s next head coach. According to a report from ESPN on Sunday, Syracuse is working toward completing a deal with McNamara to become the next men’s basketball coach at the school.
It seems like an obvious fit, and it could be just what the program needs to inject some life back into it. Especially given what McNamara did in his two years at Siena.
Gerry McNamara would be ideal fit for Syracuse
McNamara does not have an extensive record as a D-1 college basketball head coach, but his two-year run at Siena was quite a resume-builder for himself.
He was hired by the program at the start of the 2024-25 season, taking over a team that had won just four games the year before and had not been to an NCAA tournament since the 2009-10 season.
In his first year he improved the team by 10 wins.
In his second season, he led it to a MAAC championship, a birth in the NCAA tournament and nearly pulled off one of the most stunning upsets in the history of the tournament.
Even though Siena, as a 16-seed, lost its opening-round game, it gave top-seeded Duke everything it could handle and even held a double-digit lead at halftime.
Bringing back a giant of the program that also happens to be an up-and-coming head coaching prospect could be significant for Syracuse. The program has not played in an NCAA tournament since the 2021-22 season, while the current five-year drought is the program’s longest since the early 1970s. They need something to bring some juice back into everything.
Perhaps the most important development out of this, however, is the report from ESPN that Syracuse officials told McNamara that they are ready to deliver an NIL commitment that places them among the top-three in the ACC.
Having a good coach matters. But in the era of NIL and the transfer portal having a financial backing might matter just as much, if not more. Syracuse is a traditional basketball powerhouse with a huge fan base and playing in what has become a very winnable conference. There is no excuse for the program to not be a consistent contender within the conference, and also on a national scale. They might now be able to get back to that level.