Yes, Syracuse basketball made the right decision in hiring Gerry McNamara as the program's next men's head basketball coach.  

I understand that trying to give an opinion on if Syracuse made the "right decision" in March 2026 is not perfect. The official announcement on McNamara's hiring has still yet to be even released. Attempting to validate an opinion on a coach or player before they have even taken the field/court/ice feels like handing out NFL draft grades months before a player makes their debut. 

However, when evaluating the current state of the men's basketball program, the performance of Siena in MAAC and NCAA tournaments, and projecting the future, I ask: did Syracuse get the decision right in bringing back McNamara? The answer is yes.

If you've been following our conversations on Roundtable Sports, I've made it no secret that I thought McNamara should have been the lead candidate from the start - for a variety of reasons.

One, the connection to the program. That should not be a detriment to McNamara, as some claim it to be.

McNamara had been in Central New York since the fall of 2002, helping lead Syracuse to a national championship in April 2003. Nobody who's ever played for Syracuse Basketball has played more minutes for the Orange than him. He spent time on the bench with a Hall of Famer in Jim Boeheim. He's helped lead two teams to a Final Four. McNamara, for 15 years as an assistant, understood how to recruit players to Syracuse. Now obviously a lot of things have changed, but those are all massive starting points in McNamara's favor.

As I point out in the video above:

"So McNamara's strengths here now works in not just one way, but two separate ways. One, understanding what that landscape is. He's worked with athletes now who have found ways to do the name, image, and likeness in their favor and understood what it may take for a recruit to find that money as their career developed.

And maybe even more so, that finds it more attractive for young recruits: is he would have been this guy. How incredible is that? Coach McNamara and I talked about the "overrated" t-shirts for the 2006 Big East Championship. Gerry McNamara didn't see a dime from that. 

McNamara joked around with me at Saratoga Racetrack just two summers ago. He would have liked to see some of those things when I've spoken to him in the past. So not only does Gerry McNamara understand the NIL ways in which to work with people, and of course the name Adam Weitsman will pop up to some Syracuse fans (Weitsman was a popular booster for the Orange in the late 2010s, early 2020s), but McNamara is, as a former athlete, in these spots of how in the world he could have found ways to make revenue from that.

So we've got the NIL, understanding that landscape, the connection to the program, and the most important one's the third one, his coaching resume."

"Now, are there coaches out there who've coached longer than two seasons? Absolutely. But Gerry McNamara, in just two seasons, had Siena flip around to a 20-win season, just their sixth in program history. The coaching that went into the matchup against Merrimack, the team that had won the regular season in the MAAC, had beaten Siena twice. He made adjustments in the game. (Antonio) Chandler not playing for Siena, a factor.

So the adjustments— and let's give credit where credit's due, we're going to talk more about this on Roundtable -- Ryan Blackwell, Arinze Onuaku, Ben Lee, Brian Beaury, his staff was a part of that as well, and we'll discuss who, if at all, will join him in Syracuse. But we saw the coaching in the MAAC championship win over Merrimack. We saw the performance against Duke. My gosh, a double-digit lead against the top-seeded Blue Devils, and Siena just played five guys until the end... So we have the coaching, the NIL, the connection to the program.  

Syracuse hiring Gerry McNamara is the right choice. "

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