HOUSTON — It has always been on Bob Fox’s bucket list to attend a Final Four with the Syracuse men’s basketball team playing, but he didn’t expect to be able to check that off this year.

He, like many others, thought the Orange’s season was over for all intents and purposes when it lost five of six games prior to the NCAA Tournament. And he also suspected it might be over when SU trailed the University of Virginia by 15 points with under 10 minutes to play in the Elite Eight on Sunday.

But five days later on Friday, Fox sat in the lower bowl of NRG Stadium in Houston, watching SU’s Final Four open practice.

“I didn’t come in 2003, and I didn’t come in 2013,” Fox said, referencing the last two times the team made the Final Four. “I figured I had to come this year.”

He and his wife, Joanne, were among a collection of Syracuse fans that showed up to NRG Stadium on Friday afternoon for the open practice. The team was prepping for its national semifinal game tomorrow night, when it is scheduled to play the University of North Carolina at 8:49 p.m. EST.

Bob and Joanne arrived in Houston on Friday morning from Lake Placid, Florida, where they reside for the part of the year when they’re not in Syracuse.

Bob graduated from SU in 1960. He was a senior when the football team won the national championship in 1959, which he said is still his favorite Syracuse sports memory. But he also said that being in person to see this year’s men’s basketball team win its own national championship would come close to topping that.

Sitting two seating sections to the right of Bob and Joanne was Neil Hart, a 1968 SU alumnus. He’s the first of a three-generation family of Syracuse fans and watched Friday’s practice with his granddaughter.

Hart, who lives in Houston, bought tickets to the Final Four months ago, just in case Syracuse made it. But, like Fox, he never expected the team would actually do so.

“You’d be kidding yourself if you weren’t surprised,” he said.

Several rows up from Hart were a pair of sisters, Betsy Lydon — who said she had no relation to Tyler Lydon, a forward on the team, though she admitted to looking up a family tree to find out — and Virginia Staffa.

After Syracuse beat Dayton in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, Staffa decided she would attend the Final Four if Syracuse got there. So she sent out an email that day to her three sisters, asking if any of them would be interested in joining her. Almost immediately, Lydon said she was in.

The two arrived in Houston from Syracuse on Friday afternoon, got to their hotel and then went straight to NRG Stadium, where they were able to catch the end of the open practice.

Lydon and Staffa, born and raised in Syracuse, have been fans of the basketball team their entire lives. Staffa was at the Final Four in San Diego in 1975, the first time Syracuse made it, and Lydon was in New Orleans in 1987, when the Orange made it to the national championship.

But each said that there have been few years as sweet as this one, which included head coach Jim Boeheim being suspended for nine games and a 0-4 start to Atlantic Coast Conference play for Syracuse.

“To have them stay strong like this is absolutely amazing,” Lydon said.  “… People are saying they shouldn’t have even made it into the tournament, but obviously they’re proving they deserved it.”

As Syracuse walked off the court at NRG Stadium at the end of its open practice and North Carolina got set to begin its own, Lydon said she was confident that the Orange would beat the Tar Heels tomorrow.

That was a belief that just about all of the Syracuse fans in attendance Friday shared.

“I just get the feel we’re going to win,” Bob Fox said. “… (North Carolina) has beaten us twice. It’s tough to beat a team three times in one season.”

Published on April 1, 2016 at 7:57 pm

Contact Michael: mdburk01@syr.edu