SWC75
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The Ball Rolls Down the Hill
The 1967-68 season got off to a good start, with SU blowing out George Washington, 108-68 and winning four of their first five. The one loss was disturbing, an 18 point loss at Cornell, despite an 18 point second half run by SU, an indication of how far behind we had fallen. But Cornell just had a hot night. SU was going to be alright. A pesky newspaper writer named Bob Snyder said the 4-1 start meant “nothing”, that the team wasn’t playing well. I couldn’t wait for the team to shut him up. He’s still talking. Losses to Bowling Green and St. John’s followed. A win over Penn State was followed by losses to LaSalle and St. John’s. A win over Navy gave SU the last winning record it would have for a long time at 6-5.
Then a seven game losing streak crushed SU’s season, including another loss to LaSalle and a 20 point blow-out at the hands of Bob Knight’s first really good Army team. But the most notable of these losses was the first confrontation with Niagara with Calvin Murphy on the varsity. It figured that with the SU varsity having 3 starters remaining from a 20-6 team and Ward and Austin having beaten Murphy’s Niagara frosh twice that SU would be able to win this game, which was the first one I recall televised by a local station, with its own announcers. (I think Carl Eilenberg did the play-by-play.) Murphy got his 50, which is still the Manley Field house record but this time his team outscored SU, 107-116.
At this time, for reasons that have never been made completely clear the Fred Lewis Era came to an end. Publically, he announced he was tired of being a college basketball coach. There were rumors of a player rebellion. Bob Kouwe and Ton Ringleman were suspended for the season for breaking training rules, (the paper said they missed too many bed checks). Snyder in “Orange Handbook”, says he had irritated some administrators and was spending too much time hawking an exercise machine. After a loss to Pittsburgh, Lewis announced he was leaving.
(Arnie Burdick wrote: “How long will Syracuse University authorities hold still and permit themselves to be represented and embarrassed by a lame duck basketball coach? There is no contract holding him here and as long as Fred makes no bones about the fact that he’s definitely looking he’s killing Orange cage recruiting…Elaborating on his future Dr. Lewis, now a PhD, said that coaching basketball was no longer his favorite way of making a living. It was driving him daffy and he couldn’t take it much longer…Some may feel that the disappointing record, (8-13 when the Top ten beckoned last November) may have triggered Lewis’ remarks. But even after tournament years, Fred has chased jobs at Wake Forest, the pros, name it. In fact it seems as though he’s had the wanderlust ever since he’s hit town.
The strained relations with traditional rivals that have been left by Lewis’ wake would span a huge chunk of geography in the Northeast. Basketball officials have felt the heat of Freddy’s tongue, too. He’s far from the only coach who spends the game castigating the whistleblowers But Fred has continued to rampage long after the final gun, thereby souring a good many who, at best, have a thankless task to perform.)
It was a sad ending for a guy who has never received enough credit for making this program what it was. When Fred Lewis came here we were a laughingstock, having lost a record 27 games in a row. We moved our games in to a building that was built as an indoor practice facility for the football team - and that was a great improvement over previous venues. Yet he recruited Dave Bing and Jim Boeheim and brought along Roy Danforth as one of his assistants. He produced a team that scored almost 100 points a game, (what would we give to see that now?). Because of him Syracuse basketball filled the void created by the loss of the Nationals. All that has happened since could never have happened without him.
The team wound up losing 13 of its last 20. The penultimate game was another loss to Niagara. Things had gotten so bad that Lewis had decided we had to stall to hold the score down. We succeed in holding Murphy to a career-low, (I think it was 16), and won the game 50-49. But had it come to this? Did the team that almost scored 100 a game have to stall and score half that to win? Yes, it had.
When the new coach, Lewis’ assistant and the coach of those highly successful freshman teams, Roy Danforth, took over, there were statements in the paper that the players were delighted because they felt Danforth related to them better. Eight years later, when Danforth left to coach Tulane and his assistant Jim Boeheim, took over, the players said the same thing. I suspect that if Jim Boeheim were to retire and be replaced by, say, Mike Hopkins, the players will say these things again. Typically, assistants relate to players better than head coaches because they are simply closer to them. It’s the nature of the job. Danforth was a studious-looking fellow who could do eccentric things like leading the fans in cheers or joining a recruit in the shower, fully clothed to talk to him, (as told to Bud Poliquin by Dennis DuVal). He would ride out one of the worst seasons SU ever had and pull the team through that to begin the long, slow ascendancy to the national prominence we all hoped for.
The 1967-68 season got off to a good start, with SU blowing out George Washington, 108-68 and winning four of their first five. The one loss was disturbing, an 18 point loss at Cornell, despite an 18 point second half run by SU, an indication of how far behind we had fallen. But Cornell just had a hot night. SU was going to be alright. A pesky newspaper writer named Bob Snyder said the 4-1 start meant “nothing”, that the team wasn’t playing well. I couldn’t wait for the team to shut him up. He’s still talking. Losses to Bowling Green and St. John’s followed. A win over Penn State was followed by losses to LaSalle and St. John’s. A win over Navy gave SU the last winning record it would have for a long time at 6-5.
Then a seven game losing streak crushed SU’s season, including another loss to LaSalle and a 20 point blow-out at the hands of Bob Knight’s first really good Army team. But the most notable of these losses was the first confrontation with Niagara with Calvin Murphy on the varsity. It figured that with the SU varsity having 3 starters remaining from a 20-6 team and Ward and Austin having beaten Murphy’s Niagara frosh twice that SU would be able to win this game, which was the first one I recall televised by a local station, with its own announcers. (I think Carl Eilenberg did the play-by-play.) Murphy got his 50, which is still the Manley Field house record but this time his team outscored SU, 107-116.
At this time, for reasons that have never been made completely clear the Fred Lewis Era came to an end. Publically, he announced he was tired of being a college basketball coach. There were rumors of a player rebellion. Bob Kouwe and Ton Ringleman were suspended for the season for breaking training rules, (the paper said they missed too many bed checks). Snyder in “Orange Handbook”, says he had irritated some administrators and was spending too much time hawking an exercise machine. After a loss to Pittsburgh, Lewis announced he was leaving.
(Arnie Burdick wrote: “How long will Syracuse University authorities hold still and permit themselves to be represented and embarrassed by a lame duck basketball coach? There is no contract holding him here and as long as Fred makes no bones about the fact that he’s definitely looking he’s killing Orange cage recruiting…Elaborating on his future Dr. Lewis, now a PhD, said that coaching basketball was no longer his favorite way of making a living. It was driving him daffy and he couldn’t take it much longer…Some may feel that the disappointing record, (8-13 when the Top ten beckoned last November) may have triggered Lewis’ remarks. But even after tournament years, Fred has chased jobs at Wake Forest, the pros, name it. In fact it seems as though he’s had the wanderlust ever since he’s hit town.
The strained relations with traditional rivals that have been left by Lewis’ wake would span a huge chunk of geography in the Northeast. Basketball officials have felt the heat of Freddy’s tongue, too. He’s far from the only coach who spends the game castigating the whistleblowers But Fred has continued to rampage long after the final gun, thereby souring a good many who, at best, have a thankless task to perform.)
It was a sad ending for a guy who has never received enough credit for making this program what it was. When Fred Lewis came here we were a laughingstock, having lost a record 27 games in a row. We moved our games in to a building that was built as an indoor practice facility for the football team - and that was a great improvement over previous venues. Yet he recruited Dave Bing and Jim Boeheim and brought along Roy Danforth as one of his assistants. He produced a team that scored almost 100 points a game, (what would we give to see that now?). Because of him Syracuse basketball filled the void created by the loss of the Nationals. All that has happened since could never have happened without him.
The team wound up losing 13 of its last 20. The penultimate game was another loss to Niagara. Things had gotten so bad that Lewis had decided we had to stall to hold the score down. We succeed in holding Murphy to a career-low, (I think it was 16), and won the game 50-49. But had it come to this? Did the team that almost scored 100 a game have to stall and score half that to win? Yes, it had.
When the new coach, Lewis’ assistant and the coach of those highly successful freshman teams, Roy Danforth, took over, there were statements in the paper that the players were delighted because they felt Danforth related to them better. Eight years later, when Danforth left to coach Tulane and his assistant Jim Boeheim, took over, the players said the same thing. I suspect that if Jim Boeheim were to retire and be replaced by, say, Mike Hopkins, the players will say these things again. Typically, assistants relate to players better than head coaches because they are simply closer to them. It’s the nature of the job. Danforth was a studious-looking fellow who could do eccentric things like leading the fans in cheers or joining a recruit in the shower, fully clothed to talk to him, (as told to Bud Poliquin by Dennis DuVal). He would ride out one of the worst seasons SU ever had and pull the team through that to begin the long, slow ascendancy to the national prominence we all hoped for.