2022-23 College Basketball Epilogue, Part 4: The Unceremonious Goodbye to Jim Boeheim
College basketball said farewell to a number of coaching titans in just two years, and the most recent — that of Jim Boeheim1 — is undoubtedly the strangest.
Roy Williams and Jay Wright shocked the nation with their abrupt announcements, during (for Williams) and immediately following (Wright) Final Fours. Mike Krzyzewski went on a yearlong farewell tour for his exit, which one could view as both warranted and self-indulgent and be equally validated in either opinion.
But for as different as each departure was, all were met with a universal fanfare and celebration of their careers that it feels like lacked in the days and weeks following Boeheim’s announced…retirement?
Maybe it’s a matter of my own myopia and I have simply missed the outpouring of praise for and recognition of Boeheim. Perhaps it’s due to the peculiar circumstances that felt less like a retirement and more like Kirk Van Houten being forced out from the cracker factory.
For the uninitiated, following a loss to Wake Forest in the 2023 ACC Tournament to conclude a disappointing, 17-15 season, Boeheim declared in his postgame press conference:
“I've said from day one when I started working here, the university hired me, and it's their choice what they want to do. I always have the choice of retirement, but it's their decision as to whether I coach or not. It always has been.”
Minutes later, word came down via social media that Boeheim was retiring. Making the move all the more curious, Syracuse’s coach of nearly 50 years told ESPN just four weeks earlier he intended to be on the sidelines for the Orange again in 2023-24.
Of course, much can change in four weeks — especially for someone who turns 79 the first week of next season.
The number perhaps more reflective than 79 of the sudden and unceremonious nature of Boeheim’s departure, however, might be 13. Syracuse lost at least 13 games in each of the program’s last eight full seasons, bottoming out in finishes of 16-17 and 17-15 the last two years.
Boeheim built up cachet, and deservedly so, for his outstanding run from 1977 through 2013 in which Syracuse reached three National Championship Games and won one, hit 30 wins five times and played in 30 NCAA Tournaments with five Final Fours.
But commensurate with the university athletic department’s move to the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2013 — and this plays a role in The Press Break’s retrospective on the death of Big East football2 — Orange basketball failed to retain its glory.
Yes, Syracuse advanced to three Sweet 16s and a Final Four under Boeheim during the ACC years. But it’s likely the conditions that precipitated Boeheim’s out-of-the-blue retirement would have come to a head much sooner without those Tournament runs.
What’s more, the three unexpected breakouts in March Madness could be labeled examples of Catch-22: The Orange beat teams with more talent and better resumes thanks to the oddity of Boeheim’s signature 2-3 zone defense.
However, one could argue that Syracuse was hamstrung during the regular season in the post-One & Done era as a result of the 2-3.
Allow me to preface the following by stating I do not ascribe to the mindset that “Zone Is For Cowards,” an overly simplistic view that Bomani Jones popularized as a catchphrase. I find this line of thought juvenile and lacking in a basic understanding of situational basketball.
Jay Wright didn’t win a national championship until he adopted a half-court zone to employ against bigger opponents that lacked productive outside shooters, and doing so actually better utilized the athleticism of his Villanova rosters for NBA-caliber talents like Jalen Brunson and Mikal Bridges to make defensive plays.
Nolan Richardson’s famed 40 Minutes of Hell — and, really, any effective trapping defense — is a zone, disproving the general assumption that zone defense is inherently slow-paced.
But I emphasize situational zone defense, and intentionally cite examples of zone defenses that didn’t sacrifice pace-of-play. Boeheim’s 2-3 wasn’t situational; it was his program’s identity, for better or worse. At a certain point, employing an identity that resulted in KenPom adjusted tempo rankings that routinely ranked in the 200s — and were not uncommon to dip into the 300s — made trying to keep up on the recruiting trail with programs like North Carolina and Duke untenable.
Why that became the case in the past decade, however, I can’t pinpoint. It certainly wasn’t always the case.
An irony of Syracuse’s decline coinciding with the One and Done era is that Boeheim’s national title came with who I consider the greatest one-and-done player in college basketball history — Anthony Davis is the only true contender3 — Carmelo Anthony.
The Carmelo-led Orange of 2002-03 provided some karmic retribution for Boeheim and Syracuse: Hakim Warrick’s win-sealing blocked shot came on almost the mirror-opposite side of the court at the same stadium, the New Orleans Superdome, as Keith Smart’s game-winning jumper to score the title for Indiana in 1987.
Third time was indeed a charm, as the Orange reached the title game in 1996 before running into a buzzsaw with Kentucky. Each of those three National Championship Game runs came in a different era and decade, but shared a common theme: Boeheim coached some top-flight talent.
Carmelo is a Hall of Famer — not just for his dominant year of college ball, nor just his lengthy NBA career, but for being arguably the best player in USA Basketball Olympic history, starring on teams that included Boeheim on the coaching staff.
John Wallace in ‘96 had one of the best individual NCAA Tournaments of the last 50 years en route to a 1st Round selection by the New York Knicks and a seven-year NBA career.
The ‘87 lineup included Rony Seikaly, a 12-year NBA veteran with a Most Improved Player Award to his credit; Sherman Douglas, one of the best college point guards of the ‘80s; and Derrick Coleman, who I consider a potential top 100 all-time college basketball player.
And for the Orange to boast these kinds of rosters for more than three decades — from Pearl Washington in the early/mid-1980s to Jonny Flynn at the end of the 2000s — established Syracuse as a program worthy of mention in the same conversations as Duke, North Carolina and Kansas for folks of certain ages.
It also makes the lack of fanfare around Boeheim’s exit unfortunate.
Winning a national championship is exceedingly difficult; the inches between Warrick missing his block attempt or Smart’s jumper falling underscore that. Further, while Roy Williams retired two years ago to a chorus of retrospectives about his success, it’s an interesting coincidence that Boeheim’s title was, at one time, the chief argument fueling the discourse that Roy Can’t Win The Big One.
Also of noteworthy coincidence: Williams hitting Bonnie Bernstein with the line, “I could give a shit about North Carolina!” followed a loss to Jim Boeheim, a coach whose retirement has seemingly been more about his tendency to unload on media than about the assorted milestones.
To be sure, Boeheim’s reputation for blowing up on reporters isn’t unfounded. Other than Williams at the ‘03 Final Four, Boeheim may have the most famous postgame expletive ever uttered with, “Without Gerry McNama, we wouldn’t have won 10 fucking games!”
Not unwarranted, but also a shame to lose sight of all the basketball history tied directly to Jim Boeheim’s career.
Boeheim was the last coach still active from the inaugural class of the Big East, making him a contemporary of John Thompson, Rollie Massimino4 and Lou Carnesecca as much as he was a contemporary of Jim Calhoun, Rick Pitino and P. J. Carlesimo in later years, or Jay Wright and Mike Brey even further down the road.
Syracuse may have hit hard times, due perhaps to poor fit in a conference that it’s never felt like it belonged in from this outsider’s perspective or maybe as a result of outdated strategic philosophies. But Syracuse under Jim Boeheim was essential to the Golden Ages of college basketball in countless ways that transcend the Orange’s record over the last decade.
This post was written and ready to send just as audio of Bob Huggins using a homophobic slur — TWICE! — during a radio appearance went viral. Pending West Virginia’s decision on how to address Huggins’ language, Boeheim’s remains both the most recent and most strange departure of the last few years.
Coming this June!
There are plenty of outstanding one-and-done players, both predating and since the NBA rule was implemented. Carmelo and Davis separate themselves from others like Kevin Love, Kevin Durant, Zion Williamson or Michael Beasley by leading teams to national championships.
Villanova didn’t join the Big East until Year 2.