As you read this, I'm in Syracuse for a pair of NIT Season Tip-Off doubleheaders. This is notable only in that I'll invariably be asked about the events of March 11, 2007.You know, Selection Sunday, the day the Orange got treated like they were any other team.Eight months later, entering the Carrier Dome, two things still rankle: 1) I had Syracuse in my final NCAA bracket last season; and 2) at the time, using all generally accepted criteria and precedent, it wasn't a close call. The Orange were slotted as a No. 9 seed in that final tournament projection, more than a dozen spots from the at-large cut line. Somebody -- either the Selection Committee or your faithful Bracketologist -- was way off.Which was it?I know what Jim Boeheim thinks. At the Final Four he pointed to me in the Georgia Dome concourse and said, "I know you, and this time you were finally right."Syracuse athletic director Daryl Gross tried twice to reach me in Philadelphia while attending the Big East tournament. We never connected -- as I typically spend the bulk of Championship Week in Bristol -- but it doesn't take Kreskin to guess his intent. I had been saying the Orange needed to win a game in New York to feel secure about their NCAA chances, and Gross presumably had a different opinion.In retrospect, I should have ignored both coach and athletic director. Andy Glockner of "Bubble Watch" had been telling me all along that the Orange were in danger of missing the NCAA field, but I wasn't biting. This was Syracuse, after all, and perennial tournament teams are rarely cast aside without significant cause.Naturally, the arguments we heard most are the ones that don't matter:"We won 20 games. That always gets us in."With expanded regular season and conference tournament schedules, there may be no greater red herring in the selection process than the one-time 20-win milestone. The Orange, in fact, had 22 victories on Selection Sunday last March, but they also had 10 losses. Among BCS schools alone, eight others -- Florida State, Clemson, Alabama, Oklahoma State, Michigan, Kansas State, West Virginia and Mississippi -- would miss the dance despite 20 or more wins.And that's not counting Air Force, Missouri State, Bradley, Drexel, Utah State, Appalachian State, UMass, Akron, Hofstra, Bucknell, Vermont, Kent State, Fresno State, Western Kentucky, Santa Clara, Marist, Charleston, UCF, Delaware State, East Tennessee State and Siena (21 more teams in all). Clearly 20 wins ain't what it used to be."But we won 10 games in the Big East. That's really all any power conference school has to do."It is rare for a BCS school to win 10 or more conference games and miss the NCAAs, but it does happen. There have been 11 such examples in the last decade, or a little more than one per season. Most seem to have occurred for fairly compelling reasons.But given the competition, I believe the Orange still should have been in the 2007 NCAA field (though not as high as my original placement as a No. 9 seed). The Orange did not have a great profile, but it was good enough to fall in the top half of a fairly nondescript set of bubble teams (both BCS and mid-major).Ultimately, I think Syracuse was done in by two things: 1) the Orange lost to Drexel at home, and the Committee had probably voted the Dragons off the board; 2) the cumulative effect of too many seasons of never leaving the state before January. I support both lines of thinking in the abstract (especially the scheduling issue); however, I still believe last year's bubble was soft enough to have included both the 'Cuse and Drexel ahead of some combination of Stanford, Arkansas and Illinois. Syracuse in my view was the "best team" in that group (the Jay Bilas litmus test), while the Dragons had "done the most" (the Lunardi barometer).So the distress in Syracuse was understandable, if misplaced. If the Orange were caught with their hand in the nonconference scheduling cookie jar once too often, I can live with that. As NCAA "snubs" go, this one could be worth the long-term message sent.Bottom line: It's time to move on.