JB Coaching Not To Lose...

[Millhouse]

This was in ESPN The Mag BEFORE Melo was declared ineligible

Syracuse has a history of underachieving in the postseason. Coach Jim Boeheim just doesn't see it that way. Ask him what it means to have reached "only" three Final Fours and to have won a single championship in 35 seasons and he responds curtly: "How many people have done better? How long is the list?"


Pretty long, as it turns out. Thirty-three D1 coaches have reached at least three Final Fours during their careers.

3 finals fours is better than 3 final fours?

espn the mag is unreadable. it's literally unreadable because of the design and it's figuratively unreadable because espn sucks

 

[br801]

No offense but you just don't get it, sorry just my opinion. JB will always have fans like you, loyal great fans who make up excuses as to why your team has under-performed in certain years. Kind of like, the busy white collar worker who hears a knocking coming from his engine, he is either too busy, too wealthy, not smart enough, or not inclined enough too open up that hood and find out where the knock is coming from. So he just takes it in to the same mechanic for 35 years. There is a certain gentleman's agreement and that this mechanic will have your entire Family's business because you think he's your friend. The truth is he's been ripping you off for 35 years because he never respected you in the first place.

At one time, I was a fanboy like you, in truth I was born into being an SU fanatic so I had no choice. In my house JB, was infallible 95% of the time. I figured I better get to know a bit more about the game of basketball and team of which I was born into fandom. I can be a lot of things but I will never be ignorant on any topic for which I speak. We are all wired differently so there is nothing wrong with your personality, the world does need its sheep.

I take SERIOUS offense to all of you JB loyalists who question every critic's devotion or fan-dom. Just because you are of the old school mentality who doesn't care what happens the rest of your life because Gerry, Melo and the boys brought us a title. This doesn't give you the right to judge other fans who have actually spent the time to learn the game and understand the facts. JB has helped to grow this brand of SU basketball but he is not Jesus. We can debate whether or not his management style led to a lack of control, it might be a short debate. The bottom line is he is an average game coach who has stockpiled regular season wins over 35 years.He is remarkable in that he has never had a losing season that is what makes him great, not his game-time decisions.

This is not my opinion, just sharing random people's thoughts who I have met around the country. We have basically been a laughing stock of college basketball for years going back to Paul Harris and Devendorf. As nice of a smile and interview as Flynn was, he strutted around on the court and most people basically thought he was a punk. So everyone thinks of SU as punks and all the discipline issues of the last 5 years doesn't help. Now add this years fetish show and circus and you would think you sheep errr loyalists would quiet down.

I love what he has done for SU and the community and I haven't exactly weighed in on his job security as it's none of my business. However when all of the professional basketball analysts and basically anyone who knows anything about basketball outside of folklore and wives tales is LITERALLY:
LAUGHING AT OUR COACHES DECISIONS ON THE COURT you would think the loyalists would take this time to run and hide, not call people out for being SICK AND TIRED of HORRENDOUS COACHING DECISIONS!

I am glad Hopkins is not giving JB in game advice. Another funny thought is people wonder if Hopkins will play exclusively zone, The idea that this is possible is hilarious. Coaches don't play one defense exclusively for the sake of playing that defense they adjust depending on the game/time/score.

Those disappointing games at the top of your message are not SU disappointments they are SU embarrassments! They are only in a category together because they at their core are prime examples of what is wrong with JB's on court decisions. Stop making excuses we have lost to bad teams (We got SOOOOO lucky today) because our coach is stubborn to the point of delusion. I'm glad we have him but if you don't understand the nuts and bolts of the game then just keep quiet.

What we are talking about; Short Bench, Blind Favoritism, Over use of the zone, Hating Freshmen etc.. are points of debate. Don't even get me going on a 35 yr. veteran of his craft being completely incapable of teaching efficient offense more than 1-2 times in 35 years.

Way too much there for me to respond to right now. In terms of arrogance and condescension, you've really hit it out of the park. But most of your content is a load of crap.

 

[billsin01]

And JB should get credit for these subtle adjustments in the zone that guided our team to out-rebound UNCA by only 2 when our everyone knows about our height advantage?

My statement was meant beyond today's game. In the decade that I've been following the team, I've consistently held this view. I understand that many people on this site have followed him for all 35 years and will defend him at all costs. I'd like to believe my thinking is not as a result of a single game and is fairly objective (and the prevailing thought of people not wearing orange) but maybe I AM jaded by the lack of progress since the '03 championship. In my opinion, I watched too many games (outside of this one) where merely "tweaking" the zone in the 2nd half wasn't a big enough commitment to changing the course/outcome of the game. But this isn't just about the zone, for me.

It's a broader sentiment about his coaching. Either you don't realize that there is a rebounding problem because you believe the current abilities of players can better execute the job in the scheme devised OR you recognize that there is a rebounding problem and don't make significant enough scheme changes to overcome the lack of player abilities (over the course of the whole season)...I think that is stubbornness

Dude, you said JB doesn't make adjustments essentially. I was simply pointing out that he makes adjustments every game. If you want him to make bigger adjustments, that's fine and I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you. I mean, I'd like to have seen MCW and some press in that game as well. But you don't win as many games as he has in his career and you don't put together 30-win or 25+ win seasons w/o making plenty of adjustments over the course of seasons and games.

 

[billsin01]

Post-season record: reasonable debate -- would love to have had a couple more FF opportunities in late 1980s through 1991; or with our recent strong team. We had a good team run into a red-hot Oklahoma team with an All-American center; our best recent team battled Butler without AO. This 32-2, number 1 seed, looks ripe for the picking. I don't see this as caused by JB's in-game decisions or overall approach (zone vs M2m, short bench or long, recruiting guys who are long & lean, demeanor in press-conferences), as much as by having a balanced team that has been struggling to eke out wins since mid-January. Our veterans (BT, Scoop & KJ) should show up on Saturday --

This one is a funny debate to me -- and believe me I agree that I'd love to have seen us have more postseason success and I know we've bowed out early a couple of times (Richmond, UVM were inexcusable and Butler was painful even if it wasn't really a "bad" loss).

BUT, people refer to them as chronically under-achieving in a single-elimination 64-team (mostly) tournament as opposed to OVERACHIEVING in a 30+ game regular season. I mean, it's all in how you look at it. This team, for example, is undeniably talented and certainly has basketball skill. But the laundry list of flaws -- rebounding, half-court offense, shooting, low-post presence -- makes it all the more remarkable, IMO, that they won 32 games. It's like people choose to be shocked if we lose to KSU without Melo but don't want to give credit to this team and the coaches for winning 32 of 35.

And this team is really talented. I mean, do people feel we underperformed in the tournament with the Hart-Etan teams of the late 90s and early 00s? Two really solid players and a bunch of filler? Or that we should have won the title with GMac-Roberts-Watkins in the '10 -ing games' season?

I think JB is sometimes his own worst enemy in that he has had consistent success year-in and year-out but hurt by some randomness in the tourneys. Like the Marquette loss last year is treated as some sort of upset when they beat us during the regular season. I mean, really?

Anyway, JB is not above criticism. He can certainly be stubborn, he certainly appears to be a notch below the Coach K's of the world as a coach and the Coach Cal's of the world as recruiters. But I just tend to think the tournament has a lot of randomness every year and the point is getting there often enough to make some noise from time to time. And we certainly do that.

 

[BlueCurtain]

It's nonsense to say that jb is playing not to lose because he plays a sr who has played for 4 years over a kid (MCW) who he didn't trust in regular season games..

The trust issue has nothing to do with MCW's ability to help the team NOW. Against a zone, MCW may be the their best option in the backcourt because he has the best floor vision.

 

[BlueCurtain]

I think JB is sometimes his own worst enemy in that he is hurt by some randomness in the tourneys. .

4-11, soon to be 4-12, is not the definition of random. And being "snakebitten" is just an excuse for being caught with your pants down. Tom Izzo has had his share of adversity over the years, and sometimes suffers through growing pains in the early part of the schedule, but come March he has all the bullets in the chamber locked and loaded. Right now we're Michael Corleone standing in front of the hospital pretending we even have a gun.

 

[Oakland]

Nonsense. JB had the perfect game plan today. Syracuse struggles to score in the half court, that (and not the defensive rebounding) has been the problem all year long. Despite the deficiency, if you are up against one of the fastest paced and highest scoring offenses in the country, the right thing to do is to slow it down. Take away their strengths and count on your superior players to make more plays than the other guys can.

I posted this elsewhere, but I will cut and paste it here:

UNCA is one of the best shooting teams in the nation. They came into the game averaging 52.9% on their two point shots, sixth best in the country. That is their main strength. Their other strength is drawing fouls - they free throws attempted/field goals attempted ratio was .485, third in the nation, and then they connect at over 77% from the line. Baiting them into taking almost half of their shots from three point land, robbing them of the their two strongest points, was the right strategy. Good on them for hitting enough of them to keep it close, but it was ultimately their undoing anyway.

SU won this game because of the coaching scheme. JB coached to win this one, and he did.

After a quick glance, it looks like UNCA's best win was against the RPI140 team. More than half their wins came against +200 RPI teams. In other words, their 'strengths' are based on low level teams. None of their strengths should have been a strength against SU. SU is a fast paced high scoring team. You want us to go away from our strength to beat a team that plays two levels below SU? Not me.

 

[billsin01]

4-11, soon to be 4-12, is not the definition of random. Being "snakebitten" is just an excuse for being caught with your pants down.

list the bad losses (and not the projected one next round since, well I don't need to explain that right?). Marquette -- same team this year is a freakin 3 seed. They may have even been better with Jimmy Butler last season. Butler -- even if you want to argue AO makes no difference -- ends up not only going to the championship, but doing it twice in a row. Oklahoma was better in 08-09. We should have beaten A&M with GMac injured and Josh Wright playing 30 minutes? Alabama in the sweet 16? Not great, but we were a 5-seed in the sweet 16 and, IMO, ran into a hot shooting team (50% for the game, 41% from 3).

What, Kansas in 00-01? brown-williams-shumpert-griffin-mcneil vs. Collison-hinrich-Gregory-gooden-boschee? Seriously? 2000? MSU won the national title.

I mean, seriously, this boils down to a few really ugly, sad disappointments (UVM, Richmond, maybe Butler), some pretty bad luck (losing AO, injured GMac, Melo) and then losses to good or perhaps better teams (MSU, A&M -- at least obviously comprable to that SU team sans GMac, Marquette, Oklahoma and Griffen, Missouri, Arkansas, Duke, Kansas). Alabama was hot, maybe we played poorly so put that in whatever category you want.

But honestly, 11 losses is 11 losses and may only underscore the coaching JB did to get them to that point.

 

[BlueCurtain]

But honestly, 11 losses is 11 losses and may only underscore the coaching JB did to get them to that point.

As Syracuse fans we should be grateful we even get to sniff the sweet 16, right? This inferiority complex is JB's greatest shield.

 

[pearl31]

4-11, soon to be 4-12, is not the definition of random. And being "snakebitten" is just an excuse for being caught with your pants down. Tom Izzo has had his share of adversity over the years, and sometimes suffers through growing pains in the early part of the schedule, but come March he has all the bullets in the chamber locked and loaded. Right now we're Michael Corleone standing in front of the hospital pretending we even have a gun.

ooo a movie analogy! BC takes the gloves off!

 

[billsin01]

As Syracuse fans we should be grateful we even get to sniff the sweet 16, right? This inferiority complex is JB's greatest shield.

You're not answering the question -- list the bad losses.

 

[KevMonstah]

I think one can reasonably say SU has been a disappointment in the NCAAs, regardless of their opinion of JB as a coach. You still have to look at some basic numbers:

888ish wins, #3 all time.
Roughly a .735 winning percentage.

Those are the good numbers.

3 Final Fours in 34 tournament appearances.
4-16 in the round of the Sweet 16.
I don't have it, but somewhere on this board people have gone through and examined the NCAA losses and find SU as a team loses more often to lower seeds than to higher seeds.

Those are the bad and disappointing numbers.

If the numbers in the Sweet 16 were more in line with his career winning percentage, or the losses in the NCAA were to higher seeded teams instead of lower seeded teams, there wouldn't be such an issue with his postseason coaching. I'm not saying always beat the lower seeded teams, or always win the Sweet 16 games, but those particulars relative to his coaching record are kind of weak.

Kev

 

[billsin01]

I think one can reasonably say SU has been a disappointment in the NCAAs, regardless of their opinion of JB as a coach. You still have to look at some basic numbers:

888ish wins, #3 all time.
Roughly a .735 winning percentage.

Those are the good numbers.

3 Final Fours in 34 tournament appearances.
4-16 in the round of the Sweet 16.
I don't have it, but somewhere on this board people have gone through and examined the NCAA losses and find SU as a team loses more often to lower seeds than to higher seeds.

Those are the bad and disappointing numbers.

If the numbers in the Sweet 16 were more in line with his career winning percentage, or the losses in the NCAA were to higher seeded teams instead of lower seeded teams, there wouldn't be such an issue with his postseason coaching. I'm not saying always beat the lower seeded teams, or always win the Sweet 16 games, but those particulars relative to his coaching record are kind of weak.

Kev

Disappointments come in the post-season for basically all but 4 big conference teams every year. You're not going to have a .750 winning percentage in the sweet 16 b/c you're always playing a good team at that point, seed not withstanding.

I'm with you on the notion that this program has had it's share of struggles in the postseason -- Richmond was inexcusable, UVM was inexcusable, Bama and Butler were at least frustrating, coulda beat Marquette, etc. But I think people tend to underrate the fact that JB got to the second round of the NCAAs with Deshaun williams, jeremy mcneil, preston shumpert, allen griffen and damone brown and little else. Teams like that, IMO, overachieved all season.

 

[Sgt Cuse]

3 finals fours is better than 3 final fours?

espn the mag is unreadable. it's literally unreadable because of the design and it's figuratively unreadable because espn sucks

Why did ESPN do that? The way he wrote that article made him appear hateful.

There is information and probably facts to be made about JB doing a better job in the post season. But when the article pretends to answer his question of naming who is better and they totally change the question it makes them look they have an agenda.

Same with when they take that guy's playing to seed stat. I wouldn't have guessed that JB had a record that played above seed. But anyway, then they do the "but if you take out his best years" he didn't do as well nonsense. Makes for an article that looks to have an agenda.

There must be good business in poking SU fans.

 

[Sgt Cuse]

I think one can reasonably say SU has been a disappointment in the NCAAs, regardless of their opinion of JB as a coach. You still have to look at some basic numbers:

888ish wins, #3 all time.
Roughly a .735 winning percentage.

Those are the good numbers.

3 Final Fours in 34 tournament appearances.
4-16 in the round of the Sweet 16.
I don't have it, but somewhere on this board people have gone through and examined the NCAA losses and find SU as a team loses more often to lower seeds than to higher seeds.

Those are the bad and disappointing numbers.

If the numbers in the Sweet 16 were more in line with his career winning percentage, or the losses in the NCAA were to higher seeded teams instead of lower seeded teams, there wouldn't be such an issue with his postseason coaching. I'm not saying always beat the lower seeded teams, or always win the Sweet 16 games, but those particulars relative to his coaching record are kind of weak.

Kev

Did you see the ESPN article earlier in the thread? According to that measure they devised JB has a PASE of 1.32 which exceeds expectations.

Are you sure he has been in 34 years of NCAA tourneys? I don't think so.

He is 4-16 according to you (and I doubt your numbers) in his worst round. But what were you expecting in that round? It's his record against teams that are probably among the best 16 in the country. Why on Earth would you expect the same winning percentage vs excellent competition than you would get overall? That does not make sense.

So, I get you don't like JB. But please try and make up other reasons.

 

[Van111]

I don't think I've ever seen Boeheim make any in-game adjustments. He doesn't react to the game situations like...pressing to pick up tempo, isolating Christmas in the post against tiny defenders (if for nothing else other than for him to gain confidence for future games against Henriquez, Ezeli, Sullinger, etc.), switching to man to improve rebounding, de-emphasizing 3's, etc.

Maybe when you've won almost 900 games, you get a little stubborn.

I have to say he reminds me of the old John Elway Coach, Dan Reeves. Great Coach but not willing to change his way of thinking, unless he was behind. Same with Coach JB. He is so stubborn with the 2-3 and pressing. Yes, he has mastered it better than anybody else but this years team with the 2-3 is better talented to jump in to man to man. We have alot of quick athletes, we should 3/4 press some and then fall back to a 2-3, then full court press and play a tight man to man to shake up the other team who has preparred for only the 2-3 with the cuse. I might even fall into 1-3-1 some. Point is, we could have shaken up UNC-Ash with some presses and different looks, instead we are allowing teams to become comfortable passing it for 30 seconds around our zone and are allowing them way too many open looks. Games we lost or were tight in this year we didn't run and we got out played and our rebounded, but we did just enough down the stretch to beat teams based on our depth and talent. Now if Coach JB isn't going to play his full bench, than this depth advantage we have been bragging about is for not.

 

[orange2win]

The debate on this string is similar to the one thst occurred at half time during the game. Charles Barkley said that he was dissapointed SU was sticking to the zone. He said SU has superior talent, deepest team in the country, and JB was playing right into UNCA's hands, allowing them to be too comfortable and sit back and shoot jumpers. Kenny Smith said it will never happen. Easier to convert a Democrat to a Republican. However, Smith agreed with Barkley that JB needed to make a coaching change - extend the zone - or SU would be in trouble.

The panel also agreed that with the talent SU had on the floor, the game should not be so close. Greg Anthony blamed it all on the terrible shooting by the SU starters.

With 28 appearances in the NCAA tournament, prior to this year, there is a big data base upon which to assess JB's performance in the Big Dance.

 

[Victory Lap]

This was in ESPN The Mag BEFORE Melo was declared ineligible

Syracuse has a history of underachieving in the postseason. Coach Jim Boeheim just doesn't see it that way. Ask him what it means to have reached "only" three Final Fours and to have won a single championship in 35 seasons and he responds curtly: "How many people have done better? How long is the list?"


Pretty long, as it turns out. Thirty-three D1 coaches have reached at least three Final Fours during their careers. Ben Howland did it in three straight seasons last decade. Tom Izzo has doubled that mark since 1999. Steve Fisher, Billy Donovan and John Calipari (with an asterisk) are all Boeheim's equals. Brad Stevens is just one trip behind him. By contrast, only two D1 men's coaches (Mike Krzyzewski and Bob Knight) have won more games than Boeheim, and they've combined for 16 Final Fours and seven national titles. There's clearly a disconnect.


But if, like Boeheim, you reject the premise that Syracuse has underachieved in March, chew on some PASE. The brainchild of Pete Tiernan, who runs BracketScience.com, Performance Against Seed Expectation measures teams against the typical production of a given seed. For his career, Boeheim has slightly exceeded expectations with a PASE of .132: Each tourney, he wins about an eighth of a game more than is typical for a team with the same seed. That number is reflective of his lengthy career. But if you take out Syracuse's run to the championship game as a No. 4 seed in 1996 and its national title as a No. 3 seed in 2003, Boeheim's PASE falls to an underachieving minus-.238. That's Rick Barnes territory, with just two trips to the Elite Eight and one Final Four since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.
Regardless of whether you erase those two seasons, Syracuse's recent history is alarming. Since riding Carmelo Anthony to the 2003 title, the school has yet to advance past the Sweet 16 and has a shockingly awful minus-.656 PASE, more than half a game below expectations per Dance.

I'll see your "take away the championship season" and raise you a "take away Smart's game-winner." Now we have two Nat'l titles and, who knows, maybe more (from the championship recruiting bump).


---
I am here: http://tapatalk.com/map.php?au5kvg

 

[OttoinGrotto]

But if, like Boeheim, you reject the premise that Syracuse has underachieved in March, chew on some PASE. The brainchild of Pete Tiernan, who runs BracketScience.com, Performance Against Seed Expectation measures teams against the typical production of a given seed. For his career, Boeheim has slightly exceeded expectations with a PASE of .132: Each tourney, he wins about an eighth of a game more than is typical for a team with the same seed. That number is reflective of his lengthy career. But if you take out Syracuse's run to the championship game as a No. 4 seed in 1996 and its national title as a No. 3 seed in 2003, Boeheim's PASE falls to an underachieving minus-.238.

Now wait just a second here. You mean to tell me that if you're measuring performance against seed expectation, and you take out Jim Boeheim's two best performances against seed, that his performance against seed expectation looks like its underachieving?

:bang: :bang::bang::bang:Oh LordOh LordOh LordOh Lord

Mind blown.

 

[moqui]

A SU is a fast paced high scoring team.

no, actually, we are not. SU plays at an adjusted tempo of 65.5, 201st out of 335 D1 squads. If you don't understand that basic fact, then you shouldn't even be in this conversation.

the goal of playing a game is to win it, period. Look, I understand that the majority of the fanbase thinks this team is the college equivalent of the 96 Chicago Bulls; that many of you think that SU is a juggernaut that should win every game by double digits and should beat teams you have never heard of by 25 or more. But you are wrong. This year's team, like last year's, is offensively challenged. It is a perimeter oriented team with no low post threat and very little in the way of an interior game at all. Teams like will struggle to score on most nights. That is why they play at a slower pace - they can't afford to get in an up and down game (strategically running off of turnovers and long boards when they are available are not the same thing - generate transition points when you can, but slow it down otherwise, because you cannot keep up with high scoring teams).

As I am so fond of saying: Facts are stubborn things. Asheville had two great strengths - scoring 2 point buckets and getting to the line. JB turned the game around and made them try to win from the three point line. On the season, Asheville got 49% of its points from two pointers; yesterday, it was 36.9%; on the season, they got 26% of their points at the line, yesterday it was 21.5%; on the season, they got just 24.9% of their points from the arc, yesterday it was 41.5%. Boeheim turned their offense completely upside down. It was a smart move, and it generated a victory. You can argue that he underachieves and lament that he's not Tom Izzo, but he completely outcoached Eddie SourGrapes yesterday and gets to play another round. Jeezus, he has won 32 games with a sclerotic offense and we have a chance to get to the second weekend. Take the victory and move on.

Ken Pomeroy's Asheville season stats:

 

[mikekan14]

I'm not against Boeheim. I'm not leading a donor campaign to buy out his contract. I'm really just trying to show the contrarian side of the argument to those [denialist] on this site that find Boeheim's records/accomplishments unimpeachable.

An objective analysis shows that Boeheim has underachieved against his peers. Or maybe put another way, he's overachieved in the regular season with less talent only regresses to the mean during the Tournament. You could look at ratio of Final Fours appearances to total wins, ratio of Tournament wins to total wins, and several other metrics in comparison to his peers (K, Williams, Izzo, Pitino, etc.) and decide for yourself.

Of course, numbers can't tell the whole story. Boeheim deserves a ton of credit. I'm not calling for his head. I was only trying to say that Boeheim was not making adjustments and this is perhaps because he's too stubborn. There have been plenty of coaches that have been unwilling to change (Paterno, Bowden, Bob Knight, etc.). Just suggesting that Boeheim's success gives him self-imposed immunity for adaptation. Against the shortest team in the Tournament, Cuse out rebounded UNCA by 1 at the half. After "adjustments," Cuse out rebounded UNCA by 1 in the 2nd half.

If you're ever on the football side, it's the exact same thing as when we complain about Hackett calling the same "boot with TE to the flats" play. Healthy criticism is ok. Skepticism is not necessarily a precursor to a mutiny.

This is the link to the aforementioned ESPN the Mag article (You'll need insider)...
http://insider.espn.go.com/mens-col...-upset-proofing-syracuse-orange-espn-magazine

Or I'll copy and paste if someone asks me to, just didn't want to include it in this already long post

 

[OttoinGrotto]

An objective analysis shows that Boeheim has underachieved against his peers. Or maybe put another way, he's overachieved in the regular season with less talent only regresses to the mean during the Tournament. You could look at ratio of Final Fours appearances to total wins, ratio of Tournament wins to total wins, and several other metrics in comparison to his peers (K, Williams, Izzo, Pitino, etc.) and decide for yourself.

It sounds to me like that is a very selective list of peers, i.e. 4 of the 5 active coaches that have coached in more Final Fours than JB.

 

[thebigeast44]

Wow - so many inane and condescending comments in this thread - I don't have to point out who they came from. JB is not perfect - no coach is. However, to imply that because you have studied the game and know more than JB supporters, your opinion is superior is a joke.

I need only to point out the respect that JB has from his fellow coaches. He is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame. He sits next to Coach K as a key assistant on the Olympic team. That to me says it all. Respect from people who know the game better than anyone.

 

[SyracuseFan]

The debate on this string is similar to the one thst occurred at half time during the game. Charles Barkley said that he was dissapointed SU was sticking to the zone. He said SU has superior talent, deepest team in the country, and JB was playing right into UNCA's hands, allowing them to be too comfortable and sit back and shoot jumpers. Kenny Smith said it will never happen. Easier to convert a Democrat to a Republican. However, Smith agreed with Barkley that JB needed to make a coaching change - extend the zone - or SU would be in trouble.

The panel also agreed that with the talent SU had on the floor, the game should not be so close. Greg Anthony blamed it all on the terrible shooting by the SU starters.

With 28 appearances in the NCAA tournament, prior to this year, there is a big data base upon which to assess JB's performance in the Big Dance.

There are two related things that people use to argue this topic for either side: one of these is just funny to hear and its either stated by a simpleton or a coward! I absolutely hate this intellectually simplistic argument that the apologists, loyalists always turn to. It's meant to confuse you and it works if u are not paying attention.

"Our players can't make any shots, this is our players fault and it has nothing to do with coaching"

WELLL DUHHHH, if every team made there shots every night they wouldn't be college basketball players, In fact the sport wouldn't exist.

Your job as a coach is to be there for the team & help them win when you are not shooting well right? So basically the team relies on the coach as a last resort right? The coach needs to make adjustments, game plans, Option B, substitutions and etc... basically just be effin prepared and make intelligent decisions when the players are off.

JB DOES NOT DO THIS !! Im not going to try and understand this man anymore. When he is under pressure in one and done games he completely melts down and loses any ability to think or act! I can't explain or understand that!

The manufacturing of overall record, or psa's, or tkd's & ABC'S are just a fun way of trying to prove your point. Bottom line is there have been plenty of chances to upset a team when they were on an off night were we failed.

There have been many times when JB IS JUST PLAIN OUTCOACHED. The embarassments that we've had have been because our coach failed to understand the basic concept of having wildly athletic players standing around on offense and defense while the other team has zero athletes and better shooters is creating the environment for you to lose. THERE IS NO DEBATE, NO EXCUSE AND NO IT IS NEVER THE PLAYERS FAULT WHEN YOUR OWN COACH TAKES YOUR ADVANTAGE AWAY BEFORE THE TIP.

I'm done turning a blind eye to STUBBORN IGNORANCE. There is a time when a man becomes so stubborn that he is in fact an idiot. We've clearly reached that point with blind loyalty, benching MCW and the zone or death strategy. Charles Barkley may be annoying but he understands basketball and he is laughing at our coach as are many others. No more excuses, JB needs someone to knock some sense into his thick skull.

I'm starting to believe with our infrastructure, pipelines and amazing facilities we have increased our chances to.be elite. I also believe the man who created it, is no longer the man to effectively lead it. I respect what he has done soo much that I hope we let him choose when he's done but I have zero doubt someone else could do better.

Hopkins needs a chance, he already is the coach that matters. If he falls on his face we better QUICKLY go out and PAY SOMEBODY HUGE MONEY TO KEEP US ON TOP!!

 

[OrangePA]

I'm glad you could find some theoretical excuse for today's game plan.

It doesn't explain the Vermont, Richmond, Rhode Island, Navy and a few other big fat stinkers he's laid in the tourney over the years.

I went back and analyzed it a few months ago, but JB's biggest post season problem isn't actually getting upset, it's his lack of ability to actually pull an upset. I think he's only done it 3 or 4 times, most coming in 2003 (3 times).

Oh my goodness.

We are talking about games played twenty years ago?

Say whatever you want about him, but JB is one of the most competitive people there is in the game.

Nobody wants to win more than he does - nobody.

Rather than worry about Boeheim's psyche, you should probably worry more about Kris Joseph's shooting %.

If he ups it to 20% we will win on Saturday.