Credit to Mike Waters…

[OrangePA]

I thought you were being sarcastic until I read more of your posts. Oh my.

Try this.

Jim Boeheim wants to win basketball games.

He will use a defense that gives him the best chance of doing that.

Oh my.

 

[Orangezoo]

Don't get me wrong, I'd def prefer man over zone. Just saying that u need a specific personnel set to play zone effectively. The dudes we have recruited lately don't fit that skillset at all.

Yeah. I'm trying to find it but a blog writer for Mizzou.. yes I know not exactly basketball royalty.. did a nice write up with numbers on their use of the 1-3-1. It really does a good job pointing out its flaws and values in modern times but one of the biggest conclusions is how important having multiple defenses is if you are going to deploy a zone more than a last resort.

 

[Scooch]

Try this.

Jim Boeheim wants to win basketball games.

He will use a defense that gives him the best chance of doing that.

Oh my.

I know you’re being genuine OPA, I respect that.

I’ll offer a counter point, also genuine… I’m not convinced about just how *much* JB wants to win games. I know he wants to win, I’m not saying he likes losing. But if winning drove him the way we all know it did years ago I think we’d have seen many different choices from him over the past few years.

I get the sense that Jim wants to win enough to be OK in conference and make an occasional tourney run. And he seems to think the zone is good enough for that.

At this point I think the burden of proof is on those who want to claim that JB is consumed with winning titles like the old days. I don’t see much evidence of that.

 

[pokercuse08]

Make him defend if he wants to get on the court.

This is part of the problem for Boeheim. He'd recruit talented players overall or talented athletes that fit the wings (giving him a recruiting edge in that he could get more value out of a group of players other schools might ignore), then force feed them the 2-3 zone. If they didn't like it, they'd sit. You wanna sit out a year and transfer? Be his guest, lose a year of your prime playing/earning potential if you're good enough to go pro someday.

Now, they can hop in the portal and play somewhere else the next year.

On top of this, the game has changed in ways that make the 2-3 less effective AND some of the athletic wings that used to get less attention now get more attention if they can spot up and shoot 3's.

Basically, he was ahead of the curve for a while, but now he's behind it and he's become an outdated one trick pony.

 

[IthacaMatt]

If the staff cant recruit players who can play man to man, I gotta ask if I can get a job at this free money printing nonsense land that is the Syracuse Athletic Department. Players literally grew up playing man to man. Do your jobs better. Miserable.

This is why people have to go.

There is no intellectual honesty about what all of us can see with our own eyes.

Boeheim is out of ideas, and is too stubborn to change.

 

[OrangePA]

Then he can’t coach man.

Because every single one of his players —the ones he chose to attend SU — have played man their entire lives before they got to SU.

You have to wonder then why he recruited these deeply flawed players.

Exactly.

Jim Boeheim can’t coach.

 

[Scooch]

Exactly.

Jim Boeheim can’t coach.

Man. Can’t coach man.

He’s still an excellent coach, all things considered. .

 

[Cuse181]

Exactly.

Jim Boeheim can’t coach anymore.

FIFY, he might be slipping now, but 40 years of stellar success shouldn’t be ignored.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Exactly.

Jim Boeheim can’t coach.

No, it's not that Boeheim can't coach; it's that he stopped trying

 

[anomander]

Excellent point although there have been a few players over the last five years that have rarely ever been singled out for criticism.

Every time you listen to post game this year he is hammering Benny and Bell for not rebounding, playing hard, etc. There is at least whipping boy every year.

 

[baggerbob]

No, it's not that Boeheim can't coach; it's that he stopped trying

Part of coaching is recruiting players, and that takes a lot of effort. Jim has stopped putting the effort in to recruit. That is apparent by our recent efforts and classes.

 

[CuseCPT]

I know you’re being genuine OPA, I respect that.

I’ll offer a counter point, also genuine… I’m not convinced about just how *much* JB wants to win games. I know he wants to win, I’m not saying he likes losing. But if winning drove him the way we all know it did years ago I think we’d have seen many different choices from him over the past few years.

I get the sense that Jim wants to win enough to be OK in conference and make an occasional tourney run. And he seems to think the zone is good enough for that.

At this point I think the burden of proof is on those who want to claim that JB is consumed with winning titles like the old days. I don’t see much evidence of that.

I agree with a lot of that. I think it's fair say that JB wants very badly to win, his way. He seems like he'd rather break the hammer trying to get the square peg in the round hole at this juncture in his coaching career.

I don't know that he's okay with being OK in conference and making an occasional tourney run. I can see him more like a gambler that feels like they're just in a run of bad luck, but if they just keep playing their game, just a few more hands, they just know it will turn around.

That's immediately what I thought of when I read in another thread he wants to coach 2 more years after this, to "leave things in good standing."

 

[Capt. Tuttle]

Try this.

Jim Boeheim wants to win basketball games.

He will use a defense that gives him the best chance of doing that.

Oh my.

Survey says: false. He hasn’t tried any other defense.

 

[kcsu]

Jim is a good coach, not great whos past his prime.

 

[dollarbill44]

The logic is just as sound as the head coach saying the players who played man prior to SU can’t play man. Apparently our players suck so much that they can’t play man at Syracuse. I don’t know why JB recruited players who can’t play the most basic defense on earth.

JBs nonsense is just that-nonsense.
But the logic that high school basketball players must be better than SU players simply because they play man to man defense is not sound.

 

[Scooch]

JBs nonsense is just that-nonsense.
But the logic that high school basketball players must be better than SU players simply because they play man to man defense is not sound.

You know I was kidding right?

 

[Bayside44]

Symir Mintz and Copeland would be a fantastic defensive trio in M2M.

Oof on the offensive end though

 

[bpo57]

Every time you listen to post game this year he is hammering Benny and Bell for not rebounding, playing hard, etc. There is at least whipping boy every year.

No doubt. And there are guys that play like dog do and yet JB rarely calls them out. Really creates a bad dynamic that does nothing for team morale.

 

[DoctorBombay]

He said they tried to install a man-to-man defense in the summer and the fall.

And, the players couldn't play it.

Seems like a reasonable answer to me.

This was a ridiculous answer.
How about instead of "the players couldn't play it", he manned up and admitted that he couldn't teach it very well. These guys played m2m their whole lives, and what...they got amnesia when they tried it at the Cuse?
It's another exercise in deflection by JB, who simply refuses to indulge the zone v man debate. He's a zone coach, & that's how he'll go down w/ this ship, come hell or highwater.

 

[M2MPrinciples]

Playing passable M2M defense involves doing research on the other team's tendencies, and I think we all know Boeheim isn't up for that.

 

[STEVEHOLT]

Somehow, JAB managed to recruit the only 7 1/2 players in the country who can’t play M2M and could only be successful playing his antiquated 2-3 zone.

And he’s managed to do this 20+ straight years. This puts the DiMaggio streak to shame

 

[STEVEHOLT]

2-3 will leave in transfer portal

If the 2-3 zone leaves in the portal I’ll throw a party for everyone here

 

[Millhouse]

Exactly.

Jim Boeheim can’t coach.

Another example of bad faith bs. This board sucks because of this non stop misrepresenting of what everyone says. Yours was just a little more shameless

 

[pokercuse08]

I don't know that he's okay with being OK in conference and making an occasional tourney run. I can see him more like a gambler that feels like they're just in a run of bad luck, but if they just keep playing their game, just a few more hands, they just know it will turn around.

Yup, and he's had stretches before where he got pestered about the zone and he stuck to his guns and came out the other side. I graduated in '08 so I was there for one of those stretches of tourney disappointments and NIT appearances, sometimes with a feeble zone. Keep in mind that part of coaching his way, historically (before everyone understood the analytics around the 3-point shot) is that a couple times a year you're going to get lit up in the 2-3 zone by a hot shooting team, and lose to an inferior team. The trade off was that you might give a better team fits by being really good defensively, or pull some big tourney upsets on the short turnaround.

In his mind he could easily be thinking, "Colgate was hot from three, we turned it over too much against Bryant, and we played three of the best teams in the country to a stand still. We could easily have 3 or 4 more wins, and at 20-9 instead of 16-13, we're not even having these discussions. We're a tourney team. Next year we'll be better and less unlucky."

But the reality is, more teams are shooting more 3's and there's now more ground to cover, so that's going to happen more often and you can't write it off when it happens a few times a year anyway, that's part of the trade... They turned it over too much because his teams tend to do that early in the season when they're usually ~only practicing the zone, and they could have lost at home to Richmond, and on the road to Notre Dame and Louisville. Also to NC State. So they could be 12-17 as easily as they could be 20-9. I can't even imagine the view from 12-17 right now.

 

[orangepassion]

I think we all know that our players are capable of playing man to man. However JB didn't get much credit early in his career. A lot of people said he just threw out the ball, fairly or not.

It wasn't really until the 1996 run with the zone that people started giving him credit as a coach locally and nationwide. Because of that, the zone has become his baby and he's sticking to it until the very end, because that's what he's known for and what he got the most credit for.

1000% agree with this. The zone is what helped JB get his long-awaited respect. I can't see him ever parting from it, as it has become his identity. The problem is it was much more effective in the Michael Jordan-wannabe era than the Steph Curry-wannabe era and he is unwilling or unable to adjust (other than tweaking the zone here or there).