The Orange won the first 18 games of the season, only to follow that impressive streak with four straight confounding losses. There didn't seem to be any logical explanation as to why or how the same team that won 18 straight could lose four straight – particularly to Seton Hall and Marquette.
So, naturally, a rumor of a point-shaving scandal involving three Orange players started on a gambling website, pocketfive.com (the post has since been removed and the writer has issued an apology to the players), and it spread like wildfire.
Andy Adamson, a Rochester, N.Y., reporter of Your News Now contributed to the wildfire when he reported it on his Facebook and Twitter (posts have since been deleted).
While updates have since been issued, denials made and posts deleted, rumors like this can hang over players for the rest of their careers. Syracuse is livid and rightfully so.
"People calling me. People calling our people. People calling our players. It's wrong," Orange head coach Jim Boeheim said to Bud Poliquin of The Post-Standard. "It should never have been done. There's nothing there, and there's nothing murky here. These are not murky times. If people go on those blogs and take stuff at face value, they're idiots."
The players named in the scandal — Scoop Jardine, Dion Waiters and James Southerland — have expressed their own frustration with their names being dragged through the mud. Jardine and Waiters took to their Twitter pages.
"These rumors are out of control when we was winning it wasn't a problem now that we took a couple steps back. Wow nd yu called that fans Smh," tweeted Waiters.
"Yo I wish all you dum a** fans that's not really Cuse fans stop with the lying ish! I love this game to much and my teammates to much!" wrote Jardine.
The rumors continued to swirl through the cyberspace world, however, and it wasn't until after No. 17 Syracuse's 66-58 win over No. 6 UConn that the rumors stopped and people started retracting their posts.
The rumor mill has stopped, the team has ended the four-game losing streak and apologies have been made, but Jardine can’t move on so easily.
"No apology can really be accepted,” Jardine said to Fox Sports.
