He had ditched the orange headband – quick becoming an icon itself – and the Cincinnati Reds hat and black T-shirt that Jonny Flynn wore during the Selection Show on Sunday night only made his beaming grin appear that much brighter. It was a juxtaposed image to a year ago, and a clear vision of Syracuse’s sharp reversal of fate.

Last year Flynn sat shaking his head on a trainers table in a cramped locker room underneath Madison Square Garden after Syracuse’s first-round Big East tournament loss to Villanova. ‘We don’t deserve to be in the (NCAA) Tournament,’ he muttered then.

Now, the spotlight’s on Flynn, the conference tournament’s most outstanding player, to lead the Orange deep into March. SU has morphed from the snubbed to the celebrated. Now, the pressure’s on Syracuse to keep its hot hand alive.

No team sidesteps into the NCAA Tournament these days, not after SU became the poster child for bracketology blues, waking up the nation as a signal that tourney resumes don’t begin and end with conference affiliation. You have to earn your dancing shoes. Perhaps CBS was only teasing when it waited until nearly the very end to reveal Syracuse as a No. 3 seed in this year’s championship. Forgive Orange fans for not laughing along.

Since 2006, the community’s collective fury over burst bubbles and NIT brackets has practically choked the air. In March, only one tournament matters.

‘You don’t realize how much you miss the Tournament until you’ve missed it,’ SU head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘I think sometimes you get spoiled and you think it’s easy to get in, and it’s not easy to get in. It’s getting harder and harder every year.’

Boeheim ran a fairly normal practice Tuesday evening, except for the appearance of a few former icons – Gerry McNamara, John Wallace and Leo Rautins – lounging along the sidelines, looking to catch their own refreshed glimpse at the Orange squad that shook up the Big Apple. Being media darlings is a new role for Syracuse, lately defined on the losing end of the Tourney spectrum.

Suddenly SU is a bracket buster and a Final Four sleeper, if it’s not basking in its own spotlight. Has Syracuse’s mission changed now that it’s read its name on back pages across the country? Does its role as perhaps the Tourney’s biggest attraction only serve to add more pressure?

‘Not at all,’ Flynn said. ‘That just makes it a lot more enjoyable, a lot more fun when you have everybody coming around, talking to us everywhere we go. I’m just happy to be in it.’

‘Our team has lived up to hype all season,’ SU guard Andy Rautins said. ‘We’ve competed with the best. We’re not focused on that, we’re focused on one game at a time.

‘It’s a dream come true to get there,’ Rautins added, reminding everyone that the NCAA Tournament, at any level, remains the goal for college athletes – whether snubbed before or not – and a checkpoint on their basketball bucket lists. Enough pressure is put on by the players themselves just to perform at the level of their childhood expectations.

The fear for Syracuse fans that haven’t seen their team win a Tournament game in four years, though, is that the Orange will be spending too much time pinching itself. Suddenly, after such a magical New York City run, it’s not enough just to get in.

‘(Fans are) going to go with what’s hot,’ Flynn said. ‘If you’re winning games, they’re going to jump on the bandwagon. If you’re losing games, they’re going to jump on us, they’re going jump off the bandwagon. That’s just natural. It’s just good that we’re playing good basketball right now.’

It’s good that the headlines trail Syracuse down to Miami, lagging behind the pixie dust that still lingers after the Orange’s miracle Manhattan run. It’s good that players like Flynn get their deserved props for showing so much heart (and a smile).

Just in time for spring: the reawakening of an SU program previously mired in the two-year swamp of its own irrelevance. How quickly the setting has switched.

Gathered in the academic wing of Manley Field House on Sunday, some players gathered for an impromptu photo op as their head coach spoke to the media. In an effort to register every step along the way, how could they leave out this moment of euphoria after two years of devastation?

‘It’s just good to be in it, especially for the coaching staff and the players that were here before me that missed this two years in a row, it was just so exciting for me just to see the looks on their faces,’ Flynn said. ‘People like that who are used to being in the Tournament every single year and then getting back to it. That’s what I take out of it.’

For one night, at least, the world seemed theirs. But on Friday, Florida sunshine won’t be the only thing bringing the heat.

Adored by the media, pressured by the community, and trying to play basketball – welcome back to the NCAA Tournament, Syracuse. Tell me in a few weeks how much you missed it.

Zach Schonbrun is the sports columnist for The Daily Orange, where his columns appear every Wednesday. He can be reached at zsschonb@syr.edu.

Published on March 18, 2009 at 12:00 pm