THE FIRST HOUR (with Matt Park)
Matt noted that this was the last show of the season. JB: “That’s a good thing.”
Matt said it was good to win the outright Big East title for only the third time overall and the second time in three seasons. JB: “It’s a great accomplishment. The league has been very close this season. There’s not much difference between 2nd and 7th.“ Matt noted that even at this late date, only three seeds for the BET had been determined: #1, #7 and #16.
I called in my first question. Coach said that the team is very confident and aware that they’ve not been beaten when full strength. “I would still like to be undefeated. There’s a little edge there. You feel like nobody can beat you. I tell them they’ve not been beaten with a full line-up.”
Matt said that, with all the success Coach’s teams have had, this team “won with breathing room. Since 2001 only one team has won the Big East by more than one game and this team has a chance to win by the widest margin ever.” JB: “It’s unusual to win every close game. Good teams can go 4-6 in close games and win 22 games. Contrary to what everybody said it’s been an advantage not to have one guy on offense. They could double-team that guy. I’d rather have 4-5 guys. It’s harder to stop you.”
They talked about the Connecticut game. “They shot it well against us both times. Boatwright and Lamb hit some off-balance threes or they’d been down by 20 at the half. 14 points in college basketball is nothing. 1-2 mistakes and they make a couple of shots and they cut into the lead. It doesn’t take long.
Matt brought up the last play. “we wanted to go to CJ because we felt they would come to him and the play would be open. If we went to Kris the 4-5 would be under the basket. On the last play we weren’t going to let them get a three. We didn’t want to lose on a three pointer with no chance to come back and win. The block was good. We made a good defensive stand at the end.”
Matt noted that it would be senior day where Scoop Jardine, a 5 year player who was already in graduate school and Kris Joseph, who is likely to be the winningest player in SU history will be honored. Matt said that Kris has 113 wins while Stevie Thompson had 114. Coach said that however many wins Stevie has, Derrick Coleman must have that amount, too. Matt had counted only games in which they had played. JB: “If they were here it, counts.” Matt said that by that measure, Kris was already in the lead.
They talked about the new DVD, available from OrangeGlory.com, the 20 Greatest Moments in Syracuse Basketball History. Matt wanted to know about the Conrad McRae shot vs. Villanova. “Mike Hopkins had made a bad to turnover to put us in that situation and then he made a great pass to Conrad. He’d made a couple of shots like that so we wanted to go to him and he made it. We had it won, lost it and then won it.“
Speaking of Mike, Mike in Oswego wondered what it will be like coaching against Coach K “next year”. JB said we’ll likely be in the Big East next year. After that “I just won’t look at the other team’s bench.” matt suggested the coach “Wasn’t big” on coaching against his friends. JB: “People make too much of that. It’s Syracuse against whoever.”
A caller thanked the coach for “two wonderfully meaningless games at the end of the season. I feel like a Yankee fan.” He wondered if any players had objected to our playing the zone defense over the years. He suggested Jonny Flynn might be one. JB: “Derrick Coleman didn’t like it but we played more man to man then. The zone has improved over the years and become a better weapon for us. Jonny was OK with it.”
Bob in Manlius said that he was just a fan, not an expert. JB: “You are not alone.” Bob said that at least he admitted it. JB: “Well there aren’t many like you.” Bob then compared CJ Fair to Josh Pace. JB: “You know more than you think. They are very similar. Both were left-handed. Josh was a tremendous player who helped us win the national championship. He was left handed like CJ. CJ is 3-4 inches taller and can shoot it a little better.“
Tom in Camillus wondered if Coach had talked to any of his colleagues in the ACC about Syracuse coming. He said he’d called Coach K as soon as the decision was made and he was happy about it, saying it would strengthen the conference.
A caller asked about something he’d heard commentators say on ESPN about how Syracuse didn’t appear to be that strong. The caller said that they’ve got to realize that we are playing conference teams- the teams that are most familiar with us and who know how to attack our zone and frustrate our offense. JB: Commentators have said a lot of good things about us this year. Some will take the other side. That’s what talk show people do. It’s more fun that way.” Matt suggested that “you’d lose your job if you didn’t think that Syracuse was a contender for the national championship this year.” JB: “People think everybody’s against us but they aren’t.”
At that point all heads turned as Julie Boeheim walked in with their kids. They were there to promote both the Hardwood Club dinner, which will have it’s biggest crowd ever at the Oncenter, 1000 people and the Basket Ball at Turning Stone, which will have Sean McDonough and the Pointer Sisters, (presumably not simultaneously).
Jim from Cicero wanted to know if joining the ACC will change the pattern of Coach’s recruiting: will he look to get more players form the south. JB: “I don’t think it will change much. We might look down there a little bit more. There are some good players in the south but many more in the north. We’ll continue to recruit in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore and New England.” Matt noted that football coaches like Doug Marrone like to recruit in the south because there are so many good football players down there. JB: “It’s not even close in basketball. Players who grow up in the south generally want to stay down there. If you spend a lot of time recruiting a player you aren’t going to get, you might lose another guy.” Matt said that people think you can just go down to Florida and get 10 good player but it’s not that simple. He noted that there was going to be some kind of football news coming up because Doug Marrone has a press conference scheduled for tomorrow.
(This and the comment about not looking over to the bench when we play Duke are interesting in regard to JB retiring: they don’t sound like a coach who doesn’t expect to be coaching in ACC.)
Pat in Syracuse opened up a very large can of worms when he said “I do respect Doug Gottlieb.” Jim immediately laughed. Pat continued. “I don’t agree with those who says he has something against Syracuse.” JB: “I don’t agree with you at all.” Pat quoted Gottlieb as saying about the UCLA mess that “if you go to the Final Four you are going to recruit some high caliber recruits with character problems.” He cited UCLA, Oklahoma and Syracuse as examples. I would have to have been a court reporter to keep up with JB’s response to that- check the pod cast when it comes up.
The gist of it: “That doesn’t make any sense to me and it doesn’t make any sense to him, either… Duke and North Carolina don’t have good character guys? We don’t?…You’re going to go by the word of players who have left the program about what goes on there?…After a game Sunday he said that Syracuse isn’t a very good team when they get selfish. Nobody on our team has been selfish all year. If they did, we wouldn’t have all the assists we’ve had…When he says we don’t rebound well, that’s OK- we don’t. When I told him that we are down 2 rebounds a game on the year but ahead by 6 turnovers he said nothing. Nothing… It’s OK to be critical but you must be reasonable…He’s said too many things over the years. He keeps talking about our schedule. He’s the only guy who constantly does this. He has a history. It’s his history….Every program has some guys who make mistakes. It happens everywhere- phone things, something stolen.” (Notre Dame had problem like that once.) Matt closed the issue by saying that Gottlieb “wasn’t exactly living in a glass house“.
All I need to know about Gottlieb was what he told Mike Lindsay after saying that “Syracuse hasn’t played anybody” and being told that they were #1 in strength of schedule at that juncture. “When you’re on TV, you say things.”
Jim in Cleveland said there was a nice article in the paper about Scoop Jardine and “it mentioned your name”. He wanted to know if playing too many games in new York could hurt the team’s chances in the NCAA Tournament. JB: “It won’t hurt you in the tournament, trust me. One year we didn’t have too many guys and it took something from us. Our goal is to play well. We’ve lost in new York and won a national championship so we know we can’t lose the national championship in New York.”
They talked about the first Louisville game. JB: “It was a tremendous defensive battle. Louisville has been playing a lot of low-scoring games. It could be that way again. Both teams would like to play better offensively. Maybe they’ll get hot and score some more.”
Matt wondered if South Florida was “in the NCAA tournament by virtue of having won 12 Big East games. JB: “It will be interesting to see how the Big East is treated. The 11 teams last year deserved to be in the tournament. They may be tougher on us this year. Teams who struggled outside the conference or who have losing steaks may be in trouble. Connecticut has to win it’s last game, (home vs. Pitt) and win 2-3 in New York. They did that last year.” (We would be #3.) “Our league is so crazy - even more so in most years. Our players deserve so much credit.”
Matt closed by asking who would win the conference awards. Coach thinks it will be Jones or Crowder for MVP. Kevin’s problem is that West Virginia hasn’t been winning the way Marquette has, which could give Jay the edge. He felt that Stan Heath would get coach of the year, although Mike Brey and Buzz Williams deserved some consideration. “We were picked to be first and that’s where we are.”
