There’s reason to hope, Syracuse fans, even as the SU men’s basketball team drops down the Top 25 faster than an anvil in a Looney Tunes cartoon. Frustration has replaced expectation on campus, winning streaks replaced by droughts.

But there’s no need to worry. Trust me on this.

Book a flight to St. Louis. Clear a space in your autograph book for Billy Packer. Syracuse is going to the Final Four.

With an exclusive, top-secret equation obtained from the NCAA by The Daily Orange, I can guarantee No. 15 Syracuse will win the national championship this season, or double your money back for this column.

(OK, it’s actually the transitive theory. And this column is free. But c’mon, people, we could nit-pick all day.)

Here’s the secret, but keep it on the down low – if NCAA officials find out Syracuse even has access to this, they might disqualify the Orange on the spot. That’s how powerful it is.

If A is greater than B and B is greater than C, then A must be greater than C.

Eat your heart out, Joe Lunardi. Bye bye, RPI. This theory is going to be huge.

Using this highly sophisticated method of evaluating teams across the country, it’s clear that Syracuse is better than the teams ranked No. 2-4 in this week’s Associated Press poll.

First, No. 4 Oklahoma State. Syracuse beat Villanova, which beat Kansas, which beat Texas, which beat … Oklahoma State! That loss Syracuse had to the Cowboys earlier this season? A mathematical improbability that should be easily dismissed.

And then there’s No. 3 Boston College, against which the Orange suffered another odds-defying defeat. But you can’t argue with math like this. Syracuse beat Notre Dame, and Notre Dame beat BC. Simple as that.

Now there’s No. 2 North Carolina. It’s not quite as clear cut that Syracuse is better than the Tar Heels, but it’s still here in black and white.

SU beat Georgetown, which beat Clemson, which beat Maryland, which beat Duke, which beat – yup – North Carolina. Good thing this formula isn’t like basketball – we would have been called for traveling twice with all those steps.

So there you have it. Pure proof five weeks in advance that Syracuse will win it all this year.

Ah, you say, what about Illinois? Well, what about ’em!? The Illini have somehow fooled every voter in every poll that they’re the best team in the country, when the math – the cold, hard, undeniable math – shows they’re more on par with, say, 7-18 Long Beach State.

See, Illinois beat Missouri by a scant six points this season. Creighton proved to be a far superior team than Illinois when it crushed Missouri by 24. Creighton would go on to lose to Indiana State, which lost to Long Beach State.

What’s that, dear unenlightened reader? Illinois hasn’t lost this season? Please! Smoke and mirrors, baby. Before the Illini need to worry about ending the season undefeated, they should probably worry about being better than New Orleans, which lost to Southern Mississippi, which lost to LSU, which lost to Ohio State. Ohio State beat Iowa by 12, while Illinois won by just five over the Hawkeyes.

So, clearly, Syracuse is a better team than Illinois. Undefeated schmundefeated.

While Illinois might be the luckiest team in the nation -winning all those games with a clearly inferior club – the unluckiest has to be Savannah State. The poor Tigers finished the season 0-28, a mind-boggling mathematical rarity that professors are looking into across the country.

OK, so Savannah State lost every game it played, leading some to call the Tigers the worst team in a decade. Well, simple statistics proves these so-called ‘experts’ wrong. Savannah State really isn’t that bad.

Florida A&M beat Savannah State by five in the season finale. Before that, Florida A&M had defeated South Carolina State by seven, proving unequivocally that Savannah State is two points better than South Carolina State.

SCSU beat Miami, which beat Massachusetts, which beat … uh … uh oh.

Wait a second.

Massachusetts beat Connecticut. And UConn beat Syracuse.

So Savannah State – 0-28 Savannah State – is better than Syracuse.

Sorry to get your hopes up. Maybe Syracuse isn’t as good as I first thought. Look on the bright side, though. The knuckleheads who select the brackets never use this stuff, and Savannah State – this is just a guess – probably won’t make the field this year.

See? There’s reason to hope.