In 1962, Jim Boeheim was a college freshman who just wanted to make it as a walk-on guard at Syracuse. Rick Pitino was 10 years old at the time. John Beilein was nine. Gregg Marshall hadn’t been born yet.
So much for Boeheim’s coaching contemporaries in this Final Four.
“I didn’t think I would make it through the first year,” Boeheim said Thursday. “Dave Bing jumped on my head (in practice), and I didn’t get a shot off all day. My mother had the best line: She said, ‘What about the other players?’ I said, ‘Well, they’re not as good as he is.’ And it worked out. So see: Mothers are always right.”
Momma couldn’t have foreseen this: 51 years on one campus as a player and coach — in a profession where coaches seldom stay long enough for the paint to dry in their new office. They either lose and get fired, get their school on probation and get fired, or win and move on to the next contract and ego stroke.
Boeheim is wired differently. It’s what you would expect from a guy who views the relative outpost of Syracuse as some kind of Eden.
“I don’t like the other side of the fence. I never have,” he said.
There is, of course, a lot Boeheim doesn’t like. He will be the first to tell you. He can be ornery. He can be outspoken. He doesn’t hesitate to go after critics, particularly in the media. “I’m too sensitive. I need to be more insensitive and have a big ego, like you (media) guys,” he said.
He has, appropriately, criticized the changing college sports landscape and conference Armageddon, particularly as it relates to the mutation of the Big East and Syracuse’s move to the ACC.
In his first Final Four news conference, he also was given an opening to criticize Mike Rice, the abusive fired Rutgers coach. Of course, he took it.
“You can’t touch a player other than just on the shoulder or something, and you certainly can’t push ’em and grab ’em or throw something at ’em,” he said. “I watched 10 seconds of the (hidden-camera) video. I couldn’t watch it anymore.”
He is 68. He has seen a lot. There is reason to wonder how much more he wants to see.
Boeheim maintained Friday: “I have no plans on retiring. Every once in a while I say, ‘It’s not that far away.’ People used to get excited when I said that because we didn’t go to the Final Four, and they didn’t want me back. But now the majority wants me back. After Saturday, who knows?”
But why stick around?
His legacy is secure. He has the admiration of his peers. (From Beilein, the Michigan coach and a longtime friend: “He’s one of the greatest minds in basketball, about anything. … You ask him about college football, he’ll tell you. You ask him about North Korea right now, he probably knows all about that.”)
He is the second-winningest coach in Division I history, behind Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski. This is his 30th NCAA tournament and his fourth Final Four (having won it in 2003). Things aren’t likely to get better, and they could get worse. The move to the ACC means annually going against the only coach who has more wins than him. It also means being part of a conference move that he was against. There’s also the matter of a reported wide-ranging NCAA investigation into program, according to both the Syracuse Post-Standard and CBS Sports.com.
Two wins in the Georgia Dome would create the perfect jumping off point for him.
This year’s team has given him a special satisfaction. The Orange finished fifth in the Big East, and they’re still here. They’ve held three of four tournament opponents under 50 points — a first in the shot-clock era. They upset Indiana, the East Regional’s No. 1 seed, by 11 points.
Alluding to his players, Boeheim said, “I don’t think I’ve raised my voice more than a couple of times. … If we lost in the second round, nobody would have been surprised. So this is a great feeling, if we can pull his thing off.”
Pitino was Boeheim’s first assistant coach. Pitino jokes that his greatest accomplishment was introducing Boeheim to his future wife, Juli.
When asked about Boeheim’s longevity, he cracked: “Jim is coaching a long time because he’s extremely frugal. He’s just a cheap guy. He’s going to coach until he’s 90 and hoard away every penny he’s ever made.”
Why stay? Boeheim joked (or not) that he is fueled by anger. He still hears fans complain that Syracuse once was bounced from the tournament by Richmond.
“I still get mad,” he said. “That’s why I’m still coaching. When I stop getting mad about this stuff, then I won’t matter and I won’t be coaching.”
For now, he’ll stay on his side of the fence.
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