I didn't listen to it live. I caught the second hour of the show where brent played some excerpts. I've now listened to the whole interview, (from the 7-minute mark to the 25 minute mark
My observations:
- The incident with Julie had nothing to do with this and the 'plan' has been in place for some time. He called in response to Brent's article from Monday:
Axe: Jim Boeheim will always think he's the right man for the job
'The conversation' with Wildhack has already taken place.
- I still think the "ironclad plan" includes an internal promotion and the next coach has already been chosen. Autry would have left already if it's not him. I have no idea how good a coach he'll be but we'll go to an outsider only if he doesn't work out.
- The winning season streak will not be the basis for any decision making.
- He continues to insist that we haven't had any bad or mediocre seasons in the last 8 years, (he said 9 years). He said that he evaluates seasons based on what you do in the post-season. it would be 'nice' to have a good regular season, too. I agree that we haven't had a bad season yet. We found out about bad seasons when G-Rob took over for Coach P. But we have certainly been having mediocre season if you think of Syracuse as an elite program as most of us do and the fear is that we'll continue going downhill. Also, as I've said before, my idea of a good season is when we are ranked and dreaming of another national title for four months, not a couple of good weeks in March.
- He's not afraid of scaring off recruits by talking of retirement because rosters are so fluid anyway, there's no point in promising, as Joe Paterno used to, that he'll at least be coaching another four years. he used the term "shuffled", an obvious reference to poker, where you get a new hand to play each game. A college basketball coach these days gets a new hand to play each year.
- He is seriously considering going back to playing both zone and man for man because he feels the personnel he'll have last year will be athletic enough to do it. He didn't say it, but I think the stresses a zone faces with all the shooters teams have these days has caused him to rethink being 100% committed to the zone, which only dates from the 2009 LeMoyne game. (What I'd really like to see is more proactive use of defensive pressure.)
- He lumped Cole Swider with his sons as players who are leaving because that's what Cole told him at the beginning of the year. he now acknowledges that Cole is thinking about coming back. He said that Cole played man-to-man at Villanova but they had him trying to switch off on a guard which he won't have to do here. If Cole does come back, Jim likes the combination of veteran players and young players we'll have: Jesse, Frank, (John Bol?), Cole, Benny, (who he said would be great at MTM), Joe, Symir and then Peter, Maliq, Chris, Jusitn, Quadir, and maybe Judah. He wants to play that hand.