ST. LOUIS — Earlier this week, after Syracuse was selected to play in the NCAA Tournament and before it flew here for its game against Dayton, Dajuan Coleman received a Snapchat from Rakeem Christmas.

This time last year, Christmas’ college career ended with a thud due to the Orange’s self-imposed postseason ban. Christmas was SU’s only departing senior and didn’t get to extend an All-Atlantic Coast Conference year into the NCAA Tournament. Now he’s in the Indiana Pacers organization and fighting for a chance in the NBA while his teammates prepare for a return to March Madness.

His Snapchat message to Coleman was simple: Good luck and keep playing hard.

“We really do it for the whole history of Syracuse, everyone who’s come through here,” Coleman, who’s since replaced Christmas at center, said in a Scottrade Center locker room on Thursday. “But we do it for a guy like Rakeem, too, who didn’t get a shot last year. That’s in our heads, for sure.”

Christmas did get to play in three NCAA Tournaments and a Final Four in his career, but Syracuse’s decision to self-impose a ban last year justifiably affected him the most. The decision has also made 10th-seeded SU’s (19-13, 9-9 ACC) matchup with the seventh-seeded Flyers (25-7, 14-4 Atlantic 10), at 12:15 on Friday, a comeback of sorts. A comeback from a year and a half mired by NCAA sanctions. A comeback from a situation that penalized current players for infractions they took no part in. A comeback from watching on their couches as this all unfolded a year ago.

On Thursday, Jim Boeheim spoke with the media and last year’s self-imposed postseason ban was unsurprisingly brought up. Here’s the full transcription of what he had to say — which may be the most detailed description he’s ever given on this topic — including notes on Christmas, this year’s seniors and how to best execute a self-imposed ban with the future in mind.

“Well, it was the right call, but not (because we’re playing in the Tournament this year). I mean, when we did the ban we were 14-7, better than we were this year. And we won 18 games and we narrowly lost a couple of games at the end of the year. So we could have made it last year if we would have gone to the tournament and done something, we certainly could have. We had great wins last year. We beat Louisville. We won at Notre Dame. We had some other wins.

“But the misconception is that you don’t have to take this ban, you can wait. I don’t know where the media gets that from. There is no waiting. When you feel that you need to, you’re going to be out of the tournament, you don’t — you say, well, we’re just going to wait a year. You have to make that decision. It turned out to be beneficial because we might not have made it last year, and we did make it this year. And the other reason that I wanted to take the ban, and I thought it was the right move, is there was only two months left. We only had one senior (Rakeem Christmas) last year, and he had played in three tournaments and one Final Four. The two other seniors we had (Trevor Cooney and Michael Gbinije) were coming back. So we only really took it away from one guy, and it turned out we didn’t take it away from him anyway because we wouldn’t have gone. But he had been there three times. So it was… and the other thing is one month knowing you’re not going to the tournament is one thing. To sit in Syracuse and for 10 months know we’re not going to the tournament next year, that would not have been good.

“So there’s a lot of reasons. It’s not just that part. Really the overriding reason is, if you’re going to take it you got to take it. You just can’t wait. But all those other factors that I just talked about, all play into it a little bit as well.”

Published on March 17, 2016 at 5:45 pm

Contact Jesse: jcdoug01@syr.edu | @dougherty_jesse