are there any JB defenders left?

[Brooky03]

Dude. Seriously? Sounds like you’re bragging you don’t (yet?) have a 7th grade vocabulary….
1) We were arguing your ideas. Not sure why you had to get sensitive and make it personal.
2) Instead of focusing on those words, focus on your argument. It’s not getting any better as you keep shifting and diverting.
3) I went out of my way to amuse myself with the language, yes. Arbitrary and capricious is a standard legal phrase. Hell, Kramer used it on Seinfeld when he was trying to sound “lawyerly.” It’s a joke for myself, and even if you didn’t catch the reference, it’s still just two words you probably should know. Ad infinitem is common, too. Ad absurbitum I made up. Because I thought it was funny. None of which should have distracted you away from the recognition that you made an assertion of fact that was shown to not be factual. If you still don’t see that, throwing in a “Bud” doesn’t really give you more credibility.

Go reread your original reply to me and tell me you were arguing in good faith.

 

[Zelda Zonk]

Go reread your original reply to me and tell me you were arguing in good faith.

You can do that. I quoted your statements and directly contradicted them, with supporting reasoning. You countered with getting your panties in a wad and the Bud and Pal stuff, and the bitching about vocabulary.

In none of your followup posts have you bothered/been able to support or reinforce your original idea, nor deflate my arguments. You’re just whining about peripheral fluff.

You want to start over? Let’s take the first part. You said the difference between cohorts is “one year.” Which ignores the past handful of years. Your argument was that it’s about “current” wishes, moving the goalposts and still ignoring the other years. Sorry, but your original thought is misleading and inaccurate, and carries the implication that current consternation is less weighty because ‘it’s only one year/why get upset about one year….’

 

[TinyManInside]

i dont read this board as much as i used to (having a 3 yr old will do that) , but in the past whenever boeheim got criticized or soneone wanted him gone there were always posters running to his defense saying “ he built syracuse basketball, hes in the hall of fame, we made the final 4 recently, he deserves to leave whenever he wants, youll be sorry when hes gone, etc etc”

surely theres not any of those people left is there?? even the most committed jb defenders have gotta admit his a$$ has gotsta go.

and dont call me surely.

Don’t worry, they’ll come out in full force when we beat that POS GA Tech team by 20 on Thursday.

 

[two3zone]

We did, then we made 1 shot outside the paint and lost to Dayton. And some of us saw the glaring issues even at 25-0 while still somehow winning games because “a win is a win”, I guess. Until we stopped winning at that same frequency.

(I’ll take that season again though!)

Yeah, St Francis gave us a game early that year. Fools gold for sure.

 

[djcon57]

- I'm just tired of the whole issue and look forward to seeing what a new era could bring

yep, you said it perfectly and I’ve said this a couple times this year. Forget about all the zone vs man, should he be fired, does he deserve another year, etc debates

I just tired of watching the same game for what feels like at least 6 years now. Just want to see something new and I know it won’t be coming with Jim.

 

[IthacaMatt]

I support JB, I don’t think his a$$ needs to go. I think everyone needs to be careful what they wish for. I also think he deserves going out on his own terms. I think there’s others like me also, I’ve been watching for 30+ years and it’s the same BS throughout his whole career. He’s been the best coach this program and most programs have ever seen. things will work out in the end, I’m not sure the program will be better for it though.

I guess you don't like SU basketball that much, then.

How much worse is it going to get if we hire a new coach?
We're already terrible and can't recruit anyone.

Unless we hire someone completely unqualified (GMac, Autry), we should be back in 2-3 years.

What is the case for keeping Boeheim on after this season is over?
Other than loyalty, what's your reasoning?

 

[IthacaMatt]

‘16 was a final four team. ‘18 was a 23 win Sweet 16.

Counting the slide before ‘18 is unreasonable and biased, imo.

Fine. The slide is "only" the last 5 years.

The REAL question is "Is Boeheim the coach to reverse this trend?"

Answer: Without the ability to recruit top 100 players, I don't see how he can, because his in-game coaching leaves much to be desired.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Syv only retained him because? JB has more power than Syv. That is why he used Hop to try and force JB hand. Anyone who met JB for 15 minutes could have told you how that would go. After Hop refused to be involved and bolted for Washington then Svd lost

And how sad is that? The employee is bigger than his boss.

 

[IthacaMatt]

You literally said the difference between when ‘cohorts’ wanted JB out was one year. That’s not true, and reframing it as being only a “current day” characterization doesn’t make it less misleading. It’s all wishcraft anyway, so trying to make it seem like it’s a reasonable compromise to just wait and be satisfied with another year of this is just… bogus.

Not going to even go into your specious and erroneous enumerations except for the glaring two that I can see incidentally as I type this…. But, sanctions—his responsibility. Not an excuse. Coaching? To suggest that he is coaching well is ridiculous. We have glaring incompetencies at every position, his roster management is arbitrary and capricious, he doesn’t bother to even do anything for the first half of practices, etc. ad infinitum ad absurbitum…. Oh, and his recruiting sucks because his coaching sucks and he’s too old and elite kids don’t want to run the Wing-T. Not sure how recruiting is being parted out from coaching. Every other coach recognizes it’s part of the job and sucking at that sorta means you’re sucking at the other stuff too, unless you can magically transform players, and he’s not doing that and never has.

OK, but he's SO GOOD at the media part.

 

[Capt. Tuttle]

Fine. The slide is "only" the last 5 years.

The REAL question is "Is Boeheim the coach to reverse this trend?"

Answer: Without the ability to recruit top 100 players, I don't see how he can, because his in-game coaching leaves much to be desired.

I think with a bit more experience, Jim can get things reversed.

 

[Brooky03]

Fine. The slide is "only" the last 5 years.

The REAL question is "Is Boeheim the coach to reverse this trend?"

Answer: Without the ability to recruit top 100 players, I don't see how he can, because his in-game coaching leaves much to be desired.

He’s not. My position is that I don’t care if he leaves now or after next season but he should not coach any longer than that. There’s no realistic scenario where we’re good next year, so I’m just meh about it.

 

[djorange1989]

He’s said repeatedly that he wouldn’t do a farewell tour.

Also, teams can absolutely reload through the portal.

Pitt being a great example. If they can, we can

 

[IthacaMatt]

- JB said that he recruited 6 frosh to fill out the roster because he didn't want to wait for the transfer portal to open at the end of the season. He didn't say why. Ever since, he's been saying that the teams at the top of the league have more experience than us because they used the portal and we didn't. I think that decision may turn out to be the final straw. Teams in this era aren't going to go to the high schools for starers unless they are Mickey Dees. JB went to the portal for reserves and the high schools for starters. That's backwards thinking.

- I'm just tired of the whole issue and look forward to seeing what a new era could bring, whenever it starts. Then we can start arguing about the new coach.

SWC, thanks for a terrific post.

Your paragraph about JB having it both ways with the portal is right on point.

If you need experience (and the top teams seem to have it ...), then your decision to bring in 6 freshmen, rather than 4 freshman, and an experienced F and another G from the portal (4 frosh and 2 JRs/Srs) really can't be defended.

At least he did play a lot of guys this year. He hadn't done that for years and years. And maybe if he had done more of that when Buddy was on the team, we may have had more junior and senior depth on this team that we are lacking.

It's like Boeheim forgot all about roster management years ago. Our contuinuity of success, year after year, was built on having 3 key returning players every year - an adquate center who has had a year or two to learn the zone, a F who can score and rebound, and a G, either to run the offense, or to provide outside shooting (or ideally, both).

It seemed like year after year, a class would graduate, say 3 starters in 2007 (Watkins, Roberts & Nichols), but you had carry-over players like Eric Devendorf, Andy Rautins, Paul Harris and Josh Wright to supplement any freshman you bring in the next season (in this instance, Jonny Flynn, Scoop & Rick Jackson, and Donte Green). But having those 3 or 4 guys to carry over takes the load off the freshman, to not place all of our success on them.

Similarly, our best recent team in 2010, lost Andy Rautins, Arinze Onuaku, and Wes Johnson understandably went pro.

Who did we already have on the roster to step up? Kris Joseph (JR), Rick Jackson, Scoop (both SRs), Brandon Triche was a frosh, and we had James Southerland, Mookie Jones and DeShante Riley on the bench. The next season, we added Dion Waiter, Baye Keita, CJ Fair and Fab Melo to that core. That is roster management.

After 2012, we had to replace Dion Waiters, Scoop Jardine (he had that redshirt year) and Kris Joseph.
Who did we already have as returning upperclassmen? Brandon Triche and James Southerland as seniors, CJ Fair and Baye Keita as juniors, Rakeem Christmas and MCW as sophomores, and the new freshmen were Trevor Cooney, Jerami Grant and DuJuan Coleman.

Now let's look at our last Final Four in 2016.

We relied on seniors Mike Gbinige and Trevor Cooney. Our juniors were DuJuan Coleman, Tyler Roberson and Chino Obokoh. So you could clearly see the slippage in recruiting. Missing on Coleman, due to his many injuries, and having 2 other big men spots on the roster not work out at all was a key part of our collapse as a program.

We were able to recruit 3 pretty good freshmen, Malachi Richardson, Tyler Lydon and Frank Howard, but unfortunately only the worst of those 3 guys lasted more than 2 seasons with us.

But the rot had already set in on the roster. Too many misses, too many reaches.

 

[orangedave]

I'm an SU fan and a Boeheim admirer for all he's done for the basketball program and the community. But that also allows me to be a critic when it's appropriate. here is a jumble of thoughts on the topic of where we are, where we have been and where we could be going.

- He doesn't deserve to be fired. It doesn't mean Wildhack can't have "the talk".

- Wildhack may want to bring in his own man, who would be beholden to him for the job. He inherited both Boeheim and Babers.

- I'll miss Jim when he leaves. I like his shows and find his press conferences entertaining, even if they can be exasperating.

- I've posted extensive information on the likelihood of the next coach "following a legend" having a better record and it's not good. It didn't work out in football for us and the jury is very much out in lacrosse.

- The idea of cleaning out the whole staff of people who "bleed orange", which you would be doing by bringing in an outside coach, bothers me. And it might result in a mass exodus of players, (which could happen anyway, I know). I'd also be concerned about players recruited for JB's system having to do something complete different under the new coach. I'd rather promote from within and hope that that coach isn't wedded to everything JB liked or didn't like. If that doesn't work, then we can go outside the program.

- I'm not a big man-to-man vs. zone guy. If you are playing the zone badly, you're not likely to be better in the man-or-man. Zones are designed to disguise individual deficiencies. But watching our zone get torched, it's hard not to think that zones may be outmoded in the Steph Curry Era, where teams are putting up 30-40 treys a game, forcing the zone to extend out too far to maintain its integrity on the inside, where we're really getting killed.

- I do like the press. At least a token press, designed to harass and delay the other team in setting off it's offense could be done and still allow us to drop back into our zone. And a pro-active press put on to surprise the other team could be effective - moreso than waiting until we are 20 points down. This team, with improved athleticism, should have made much more use of it. Jim's contempt for the strategy, when the teams he played for back in the day, is very strange. His willingness to let games be played in half court sets when we aren't very good in them doesn't make much sense.

- Recruiting skinny centers because you've assigned them to cover both posts and both corners hasn't worked for us. We are always getting bullied inside. Guys like Arinze Onuaku, Rick Jackson and Etan Thomas couldn't play for us now.

- Our recruiting has clearly declined. We keep getting guys with triple-digit rankings on 247. Some of those guys turn out to be pretty good and some of our double-digit guys have been disappointments. But over time, if you stop getting highly rated recruits and wind up hoping for "under the radar" guys to make it big, you are going to slip into mediocrity, which we have done over those last 9 years.

- JB said that he recruited 6 frosh to fill out the roster because he didn't want to wait for the transfer portal to open at the end of the season. He didn't say why. Ever since, he's been saying that the teams at the top of the league have more experience than us because they used the portal and we didn't. I think that decision may turn out to be the final straw. Teams in this era aren't going to go to the high schools for starers unless they are Mickey Dees. JB went to the portal for reserves and the high schools for starters. That's backwards thinking.

- Since that first ACC season, when we started 25-0, we've been a middle of the pack ACC team. We were never a middle of the pack Big East team. We've never come close to winning this conference, either in the regular season or the conference tournament. And I'm not convinced this conference is better than the Big East was. We just aren't as good.

- Circumstances, such as the probation, (which can effect your recruiting for years afterwards because you want to avoid further trouble), being in a conference no longer based in the northeast and now the transfer portal and the cesspool of NIL, may mean we can't get back to what we were a decade ago, even under a new coach. But being tied to a 78 year old coach with a sarcastic style and nearly a decade of mediocre records may not be helpful, either.

- I'm just tired of the whole issue and look forward to seeing what a new era could bring, whenever it starts. Then we can start arguing about the new coach.

As always you have delivered the best response in this thread and made it worth my time to continue reading.

 

[M2MPrinciples]

Syracuse as a city may not be much to write home about, and I'm not saying it's this easy, but if Jerome Tang can get high schoolers to come to Waco, TX and Manhattan, KS, it can be done with the right hire. Whether Wildhack is competent enough to make the right hire is another can of worms, but he's not going anywhere so there's not much use complaining about that.

I lean towards the program needing a new voice from someone who has some outside perspective, but I don't think it would be the worst thing for Wildhack to call GMac/Red/Griff into his office and ask what they would need from the AD and what they would do differently from JB to bring this program into the 2020's, and then do some due diligence on the back end to make sure that whatever they say isn't just blowing smoke. And go from there.

 

[Gotothehole]

Syracuse's Jim Boeheim says there's a plan for retirement

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said Wednesday on a sports radio call-in show that there's a plan in place for when he steps down.

apnews.com

 

[MDCuse]

I support JB.

Still, I was hoping he would retire following the graduation of his sons.

Curious, how/why do you still support him? What is he doing that cause you to still support him?

 

[Fly Rodder]

Syracuse's Jim Boeheim says there's a plan for retirement

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said Wednesday on a sports radio call-in show that there's a plan in place for when he steps down.

apnews.com

This is the second plan for Boeheim’s retirement. When Syracuse was hit with NCAA sanctions in 2015 and Boeheim had 101 of his victories vacated, former assistant coach Mike Hopkins was designated to succeed him. Instead, after 25 years with the program as a player and a coach, Hopkins suddenly departed in March 2017 when he was offered the job at Washington and Boeheim continued to coach the Orange.

Yup, just suddenly departed ... no rhyme or reason ...

 

[MSOrange]

 

[TheCusian]

Eh, Axe. It comes with the territory. Hot kitchens and all that

 

[IthacaMatt]

Syracuse as a city may not be much to write home about, and I'm not saying it's this easy, but if Jerome Tang can get high schoolers to come to Waco, TX and Manhattan, KS, it can be done with the right hire. Whether Wildhack is competent enough to make the right hire is another can of worms, but he's not going anywhere so there's not much use complaining about that.

I lean towards the program needing a new voice from someone who has some outside perspective, but I don't think it would be the worst thing for Wildhack to call GMac/Red/Griff into his office and ask what they would need from the AD and what they would do differently from JB to bring this program into the 2020's, and then do some due diligence on the back end to make sure that whatever they say isn't just blowing smoke. And go from there.

Syracuse is a tremendous place for young people. What are you talking about?
We have a very good university, with some specialty programs that are best in the nation.
We have a great business / alumni network, to enhance the value of that degree.
We have historically significant, usually competitive programs in football and basketball.
There is a tremendous entrepreneurship push in this city.
There are immigrants from all over the world.
There are many restaurants featuring ethnic food.
We have the arts, concerts, dance, theater in town.
This is a great place for people to network, and to find mentors.
There is so much diversity in this town.
Affordable cost of living.
Many other well-educated young people all throughout Upstate.

 

[Toronto Cuse]

I am still a JB defender. I’m finally at a place that if he chose to retire I’d be fine with it.
But if he chose to continue id be fine with that too. What can I say… I have a lyrical soul.

 

[81South]

The school has also been very loyal to him. We went on probation not once but twice and there was never any talk about him getting fired. Both sides have been loyal. Jb is a wealthy man because of this arrangement.

Agreed.

It’s funny the people who have said he gave his life to this institution. Like he is a God and should be worshipped. Seriously? He has made a fortune coaching a game and he landed a trophy wife because of his fame. He has travelled the world for basketball with Team USA. And people think the university owes him?! No way.

 

[Cuse#1]

i dont read this board as much as i used to (having a 3 yr old will do that) , but in the past whenever boeheim got criticized or soneone wanted him gone there were always posters running to his defense saying “ he built syracuse basketball, hes in the hall of fame, we made the final 4 recently, he deserves to leave whenever he wants, youll be sorry when hes gone, etc etc”

surely theres not any of those people left is there?? even the most committed jb defenders have gotta admit his a$$ has gotsta go.

and dont call me surely.

You know there shouldn't be but I'm sure they're out there somewhere because I respond to some every once in awhile on here with it's just baffling when I read it.

The reasoning is insane, they're willing to let this guy play out his career on his terms regardless of how bad Syracuse gets.? I don't or anybody knows how can anybody understand that or even be a fan.

IMO you're a fan of boehiem, not of Syracuse basketball!

that's what it sounds like to me

 

[dasher]

Agreed.

It’s funny the people who have said he gave his life to this institution. Like he is a God and should be worshipped. Seriously? He has made a fortune coaching a game and he landed a trophy wife because of his fame. He has travelled the world for basketball with Team USA. And people think the university owes him?! No way.

Just so you know, Juli came from money. A lot of it.