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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 2031325, member: 289"] PART TWO Gomez had his first opportunity to talk with Jim Boeheim of the year, (since Adrian Autry was on last week). He joked that the coach was no invited to Donald Trump’s inaugural. JB: “I’m not sure I would want to go. It just gets weirder and weirder. He seems to be putting some good people in his cabinet and I hope he listens to them or we’ll have about 8 wars.” Vice President Biden got the Medal of Freedom. “He’s a great guy. He’s always supported our teams. He leaves a message after a tough loss or a good game. He’s in it for the love of his country, not to help himself. I’m very proud to know he’s a Syracuse guy.” Louie Carnesecca celebrated his 92nd birthday on January 5th. JB: “For ten years after he retired he looked better than he did at 70.” (He was 67 when he retired in 1992.) “He calls me every year to discuss our season. His teams always played great defense and came at you the whole game.”) It helps when you have six guys on the court, including Louie.) “He never had a complaint after a game. He just shook your hand.” Eric Devendorf “talks to the players about conditioning and how to get to the basket. That’s all he’s allowed to do- talk to them. “Later, describing the ND-Miami game, expressed admiration that one of the teams had “gone the last 3-4 times right to the basket to score – it’s what you have to do late in games.” Eric was the best we’ve had at doing just that since the days of the Pearl. Lazarus Sims walked by. He was there for Mayor Minor’s speech. “He’s part of the city now.” Coach has a little time to pay attention to golf and noticed that Justin Thomas had a 59 in a tournament in Hawaii after winning there the previous week. Dan McCarthy of Syracuse was the leading money winner on the Canadian PGA Tour and won four tournaments. He’s now on the Web.com tour, which kind of Triple A for golf. “That’s a tough tour. Guys come right off that toru and win PGA tournaments.). One of the things they are bringing back to the concession stands to celebrate the 90’s at the BC game is “Crystal Pepsi”. Remember that? The coach didn’t. He’s an aficionado of soft drinks, (as am I), and he was a “Coke drinker” back then. He remembers Coke Zero, (which he didn’t like), but not Crystal Pepsi, which apparently was a colorless version of Pepsi. Regarding Grayson Allen: “He made some mistakes and admitted to it. You have to control yourself. The assistant coach backed him up. He’s been getting enough heat. He’s a good kid. In the heat of battle, you react to things.” Should we play in quarters rather than halves, as the women, the high schools and the NBA do? “We’ve been playing for two halves for so long, it’s hard to switch. I haven’t thought of any advantages or disadvantages. The time outs would be different. I don’t know if there’s any interest in changing.” Coach is suitably impressed with the UCONN women’s team, which beat #20 South Florida 102-37. “They might not lose- their toughest games are behind him. They may be better next year. They’ve got two transfers waiting to play. They had one close game. Against Florida State they had to make about 8 plays in a row to win and they made them all. A really well coached team.” JB is such a basketball guy that he even watches the women’s games, whether Syracuse is involved or not. OCC is ranked the #1 JUCO team in the country. When Tyrone Albright was there, they won a national championship, (1993). Gomez had mentioned that the first SU game he had attended was the Navy game in the NCAAs where David Robinson beat us, (1986). When I called in my second questions I mentioned that Navy went to the line 54 times in that game and we only went 21 times. Jim responded to that by saying that “We were down 18-20 points and started fouling them with 10 minutes to go.” When have you ever seen a Jim Boeheim team do that? If we’d started fouling them with ten minutes to go, we’d have run out of players long before the game ended. They talked briefly about the football championship game. “A great game.” Is there any financial benefit to SU because a conference team won? “If you make the Final Four, everybody in the conference shares the $16 million. It doesn’t matter if they won. There will be a little extra money coming in.” Matt pointed out that the league had a 9-3 record in bowl games. JB: “The league was under-rated. The same thing happened in basketball in terms of NCAA tournament production.” What does coach think about the NFL playoffs? “They’ve got some prime quarterbacks still playing. It’s fun to watch.” What about the hiring of Doug Marrone and Tom Coughlin in Jacksonville? “They will do a great job. They are smart football guys and Syracuse guys.” Bo Jackson said that he would not want his children playing football, considering what he knows now. JB: “I saw him a lot on TV. He was good at both sports but should have stuck with baseball. If you are a position player, you are much less likely to have a career ending injury. In football, you’re going to be sore for the rest of your life. Players are bigger, stronger, faster and hit harder than the old days. It’s a struggle for them to get out of bed in the morning.” The NBA MVP will be either James Harden or Russell Westbrook. Harden is averaging a triple double and Harden is close. Houston has won more games. Westbrook already had a TD in the third quarter of a recent game. He had a game where he didn’t make any threes and scored 34. If he makes threes he scores 50. “Mike D’Antoni is a great coach for point guards. He got Steve Nash two MVPs and he’ll get Harden a couple.“ They talked about our 2010 team and how we seemed to have all the NBA prospects but Butler had Gordon Heyward, who has had a good NBA career and so has Shelvin Mack, who now with Utah. “We’ve got no one but Wes Johnson”, who is barely playing for the Clippers. The Knicks “have lost a couple of close ones and can’t get it going.. They’ve got Porzingis but they have a lot of older guys. I don’t think it can be fixed. They can’t get the players they need to come to new York. Nobody wants to give up a great player for Carmelo. Gomez brought up the George Karl book and Jim repeated what he’d said last week: “He went overboard. Those players got him there. I would never criticize players in a book about what they did years ago. Gomez asked if it’s harder to coach millennials than previous generations. JB: “They still want to win. There are more distractions today. Too many kids are thinking “How can I get to the NBA?” when they aren’t going to the NBA. For a typical college starter, their chances of playing in the NBA are small, although their chances of playing someone, such as Europe, are good. We’ve had a lot of guys play in Europe. Ice Cube is sponsoring a 3 on 3 tournament involving retired NBA players. “These things usually don’t go too well. I think it will be pretty slow. Basketball is a hard game for old timer’s games. I hear John Wallace will coach one team. “ Jim’s all-time favorite baseball player is Hank Aaron. He was big Milwaukee Brave fan back in the day, (the “day” being now more than 50 years ago), and he was star struck when he got the meet Hank, who is “a great player and great role model for everybody”. They were watching the Miami Notre Dame game, which was back and forth. “Games can swing quickly. Kids can make mistakes…Notre Dame is a resilient, veteran team with guys who know how to win. Miami is very physical. Notre Dame is the bets passing team in the conference. They really know how to move the ball.” Miami was setting up for a final play with 7 seconds left, inbounding on the offensive end. “They will spread the court- there’s no time to run a play.“ Miami threw the ball away and Notre Dame won. Yup, kids can make mistakes. [/QUOTE]

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