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(There have been no articles giving details of this year’s Jim Boeheim show. I had to call into the radio station to find out that the first show will be tonight. I’ll assume there has been no changes since last year. No schedule had been posted but the show is usually on a Thursday unless there is a game or a holiday that night.)
Jim Boeheim’s radio show is on Thursdays from 7-8 or 9PM on ESPN Radio in Syracuse, which is AM1200 or FM 97.7 on the dial. The show will likely start out on Zoom and not be at a local restaurant. The first hour, hosted by Matt Park, the Voice of the Orange, is on their general network. The second hour, which usually begins with the conference season, is hosted by Gomez, a local radio personality.
You can call into the show locally at 315-424-8599 or nationally at 1-888-746-2873. For Gomez’s portion, use 315-424-8599. Or you can submit questions from this page:
Submit a Question! - Syracuse University Athletics
Or on Twitter at mattpark1 or “askBoeheim”.
The show can be heard in Syracuse on FM 99.5. It’s sometime simulcast on AM 1200 or FM 97.7. You can also get it on: TuneIn | Free Internet Radio | Live News, Sports, Music, and Podcasts
I will be posting my rough transcript the night of the broadcast focusing on my questions, the team and their last and next games and then a second post the next day on other things that were discussed.
MY QUESTIONS/COMMENTS
“Coach, firstly I’d like to congratulate you and the team on securing our 51st straight winning season. We’ve seen what happened to Kentucky this year and North Carolina last year. That’s never happened to us since the 1960’s. UCLA’ record of 54 straight winning seasons is dead ahead. (The NCAA might say that it isn’t but they don’t list consecutive winning seasons in their record book so I think unofficial victories could be applied to an unofficial record.) I think consistent success is a better measure of a coach than championships: you recruit, teach, motivate and create strategy but the players have to take it beyond that.
We’ve seen the basketball team fall behind by 20 and win the rest of the game by 28, the lacrosse team start out 6-1 and get outscored 5-17 the rest of the game, then the basketball team falls behind 14-36 and this time couldn’t come back. That’s quite a roller-coaster ride. What accounts for it? Is it effort, confidence, mental focus, fatigue, match-ups, strategies or something else?”
COACH BOEHEIM
(I have, in some instances, put together statements from different parts of the broadcast on the same subject. The quotes may not be verbatim –they are from my scribbled notes. I have not knowingly changed the meaning. In recent years they have started out doing one hour shows and then shifted to two hour shows in January. When they do two hour shows. I might do two posts: one on the night of the broadcast on the issues directly relating to the team on the other the next days on other things that were talked about.)
Matt announced that this will be the second to last Jim Boeheim Show so there will be another one next Thursday, March 4th. It will be another chance for Pat to call in to either throw down the gauntlet or smoke the peace pipe and for Cuserunner to finally get up the courage to call in and ask his question, whatever it is at this point.
JB said that the team had had “a couple of good days of practice” but that “we have a difficult stretch coming up of games on Saturday, Monday and Wednesday, a difficult challenge against three teams playing very well.” About scheduling the Clemson game: “We need games. It’s good for us.” Later Matt noted that our ‘off weekend’, (apparently everybody in the conference gets one), happened to be the last weekend of the regular season, (the ACCT begins on Tuesday March 9th): Could there be another game scheduled for that weekend, maybe a non-conference game? JB said it was “highly unlikely”.
North Carolina blew out Louisville by 45 points, their largest margin of defeat since before WWII, then lost to Marquette who had a losing record and had lost 6 of 7 before beating Butler and UNC. Louisville then beat Notre Dame by 12. Jim called it the “shocker of the year. Sometimes that happens. It’s hard to understand. UNC almost came back with the press but couldn’t convert.” This was a good lead-in to my question but made me wish that we’d played Louisville coming out of their lay off or UNC coming off their easy win over Louisville.
Matt asked if JB’s film review of the Duke game revealed anything new. “No…. we didn’t guard the three point line and the big guy changed all of our lay-ups. We made a great effort to hold them to 30 points in the second half but still didn’t play well on offense. The Notre Dame comeback was something you’d do once every 20 years. Notre Dame is pretty good. It was pretty crazy. It took something out of us. Having to press in two games wears on you. Duke is really good and shot the lights out in the first half.
After a break I called in my comment and question, (above). Matt noted the Chris Carlson article on me, Pat and Scooter. JB said that when I ask questions I’ve done the research for them and that makes them good questions. I noted that I was described as “the mint in a world of H0T Takes” and Matt laughed.
JB: “We want to be good, better than this. We’re not satisfied. We’re not satisfied. We lost Bourama. We’ve battled, persevered and won games that could have gone the other way. We want to be consistently good and really good in some years. This year hasn’t been easy for any team with all the pauses and injuries.” We went on to focus on my question about the roller-coaster results. “It can be a number of things. Virginia losing to NC State was the most surprising result was Virginia losing to NC State after Duke crushed them. It’s about college kids. Minnesota beat Michigan by 20 but haven’t won on the road. It’s not easy to figure out. Gonzaga and Baylor have figured it out. Just crazy things happen. We need to play better. Duke had two freshman guards who were hitting 25-30% from three, (actually 30% - 35%), who hit 7 out of 8. Mark Williams was a surprise inside. The surprising thing was not falling behind but the comeback against Notre Dame.” I had hoped for something more than “it’s about college kids…immaturity…just crazy things happen…It’s not easy to figure out”, etc.
Michael in Charlotte, (Alsacs), tried to call in but there were technical problems and they had to go to break to get it straightened out. He said something about the “Hulk smashed my line”, which I assume is an inside reference to people thinking that Cuserunner was Orangehulk, (or SU Hulk or whatever). He made reference to when the Olympic team in Barcelona switched to a zone to beat Spain in the Olympics. He then suggested that our current personnel is “not ideal for the zone” and perhaps when “our forwards are getting destroyed” we could switch to a man for man and catch the other team by surprise? Jim said that that was a good question and that he was “glad you asked that”. So we were off to a good start. “We are big and long enough for the zone. Our zone covers Marek- imagine him in man-for-man against the North Carolina big men. Joe and Buddy struggle a bit against quicker guards.” Michael noted that “Marquette used man-to-man when getting torched. Remember when Rocky switched to a lefty stance to win the second fight?” JB: “We change our zone. A lot of it is execution. Against Notre Dame we didn’t guard the three point line and then we did. Michigan State was at .500 playing man for man and they continued playing it because it’s their defense.” At this point Michael tried to say something but JB wasn’t finished with his point and shouted “Let me answer!...John Calipari is a great coach at Kentucky. He plays man for man all the time. They have a losing record and are still playing man for man because it’s his defense. You play your best defense. Duke and Notre Dame shoot threes better against a man-for-man than they do a zone because they see it all the time. We were #1 in the conference in three-point field goal percentage defense, even though it didn’t look like it. I think we are still #2 or 3. We stuck with what we do. Twenty years ago we played both defenses. We had personnel suited for the man-for-man then so we could play both defenses. We can’t even stop our walk-ons from scoring in practice with our man-for-man. We came back from 9 points down at halftime against NC State and we’d have lost that game and the Notre Dame game if we’d gone to our man-for-man. My job is to win. I think you know that I want to win more than you do because it’s my life. We change our zone. Man-to-man coaches change their man-to-man defenses, too. I don’t know what you do in your life but if you do something well and something else not so well and you aren’t doing what you normally do well will you start doing something you don’t do well? If you aren’t executing in your best defense you aren’t going to execute in your worst defense.” Somewhere in there was a pretty good answer but I thought perhaps JB thought he was talking to Pat. Why did we have ‘personnel suited for a man-for-man’ twenty years ago but not now?
Nick called in to announce that “it’s been a while since I watched the team prior to this season. Back in high school I went to your camp”. He recalled Kristoff Ongenaet was on the last team that he followed, which would make it 2007-09. He thought that was one of our best teams, one that “could have gone all the way”. Having established that he knew little about anything since, he noted that “people think you should retire. I’m not one of them. But is it possible that Buddy will follow in your footsteps?” JB: “No. I hope Buddy will be playing somewhere. If we were 18-2, nobody would want me to retire. I will certainly be retiring at some point., We’ll have to see what happens. It’s hard to predict the future.”
Liam in Pompey noted that we were at about the same place in the standings as Georgia Tech but admitted he knew nothing about them. He wanted a “run-down on Georgia Tech”. JB: They are one of the best teams in the league. They started slow but have veteran guys. They are playing great. They beat Virginia Tech, who was ranked #16, by 15 points. They have good size with good shooters and a good point guard….Moses Wright had 33 points and 10 rebounds in last year’s game in the Dome and we still won. He’s really good – as good as anybody. Jose Alvarado is one of the best point guards in the league. We played our best game last year down there.” (Better than the UNC game in the ACCT?)
Dave In Syracuse (Jeremycuse?) thanks Jim for “taking all these calls from all these ‘experts’ on X’s and O’s”. he noted that we’d had a series of “non-big guy big guy coaches” and wondered how Allen Griffin prepared for that job. Jim said that Allen was “doing a great job. He worked with big men in his other jobs and talked a lot of big man coaches. Mike Hopkins was still here when Allen joined us. We started out years ago with Brendan Malone coaching our big men and he wasn’t a big guy. Then Coach Fine did it for many years. Then came Mike and now Allen.” He went over our current crop of big men. “I hope Bourama will get healthy and come back. He averaged 10 points and 12 rebounds in the last six games last year and two of them were against North Carolina. Frank is really here a year early. Jesse isn’t ready yet. He needs another year. John Bol does a pretty good job of covering the area but he’s really a forward.” Matt mentioned the Pitt transfers and Jim said that the transfer portal will be “like a game of musical chairs”.
Tiana Mangakahia announced that she will go to the pros after this season. JB: “She’s ready to go and see what she can do in professional basketball. She is amazing and has a big heart. “
Josh in Boulder wondered how our defense broke down against Duke and suggested that our guys took too many threes trying to match the threes Duke was making. JB: “They know they have to do a better job. We didn’t shoot a lot of threes against Duke. They pressure you on defense and you have to try to drive past them.”
Tom in Syracuse made a reference to the team having “their backs to the wall, down 20”. JB: They never gave up against Duke but Duke was too good.”
Matt asked about the ACCT arrangements: were they satisfactory? “We’ll see when we get there. They will have fans- 25% capacity.”
No former Syracuse player made the NBA All-Star team. Matt wondered about Jerami Grant and Carmelo Anthony. “It’s tough for a young player to break in. There are more All-Star caliber players than sports on the All-Star team. Carmelo has been playing great but not enough to make it.”
Matt asked about Tiger Woods as the closing music started playing: “I’m glad he came through it. Maybe he can rehab and play golf again someday. It will take a year, at least. With that kind of an accident we can just be thankful that he’s still alive and that his life will keep going.
Jim Boeheim’s radio show is on Thursdays from 7-8 or 9PM on ESPN Radio in Syracuse, which is AM1200 or FM 97.7 on the dial. The show will likely start out on Zoom and not be at a local restaurant. The first hour, hosted by Matt Park, the Voice of the Orange, is on their general network. The second hour, which usually begins with the conference season, is hosted by Gomez, a local radio personality.
You can call into the show locally at 315-424-8599 or nationally at 1-888-746-2873. For Gomez’s portion, use 315-424-8599. Or you can submit questions from this page:
Submit a Question! - Syracuse University Athletics
Or on Twitter at mattpark1 or “askBoeheim”.
The show can be heard in Syracuse on FM 99.5. It’s sometime simulcast on AM 1200 or FM 97.7. You can also get it on: TuneIn | Free Internet Radio | Live News, Sports, Music, and Podcasts
I will be posting my rough transcript the night of the broadcast focusing on my questions, the team and their last and next games and then a second post the next day on other things that were discussed.
MY QUESTIONS/COMMENTS
“Coach, firstly I’d like to congratulate you and the team on securing our 51st straight winning season. We’ve seen what happened to Kentucky this year and North Carolina last year. That’s never happened to us since the 1960’s. UCLA’ record of 54 straight winning seasons is dead ahead. (The NCAA might say that it isn’t but they don’t list consecutive winning seasons in their record book so I think unofficial victories could be applied to an unofficial record.) I think consistent success is a better measure of a coach than championships: you recruit, teach, motivate and create strategy but the players have to take it beyond that.
We’ve seen the basketball team fall behind by 20 and win the rest of the game by 28, the lacrosse team start out 6-1 and get outscored 5-17 the rest of the game, then the basketball team falls behind 14-36 and this time couldn’t come back. That’s quite a roller-coaster ride. What accounts for it? Is it effort, confidence, mental focus, fatigue, match-ups, strategies or something else?”
COACH BOEHEIM
(I have, in some instances, put together statements from different parts of the broadcast on the same subject. The quotes may not be verbatim –they are from my scribbled notes. I have not knowingly changed the meaning. In recent years they have started out doing one hour shows and then shifted to two hour shows in January. When they do two hour shows. I might do two posts: one on the night of the broadcast on the issues directly relating to the team on the other the next days on other things that were talked about.)
Matt announced that this will be the second to last Jim Boeheim Show so there will be another one next Thursday, March 4th. It will be another chance for Pat to call in to either throw down the gauntlet or smoke the peace pipe and for Cuserunner to finally get up the courage to call in and ask his question, whatever it is at this point.
JB said that the team had had “a couple of good days of practice” but that “we have a difficult stretch coming up of games on Saturday, Monday and Wednesday, a difficult challenge against three teams playing very well.” About scheduling the Clemson game: “We need games. It’s good for us.” Later Matt noted that our ‘off weekend’, (apparently everybody in the conference gets one), happened to be the last weekend of the regular season, (the ACCT begins on Tuesday March 9th): Could there be another game scheduled for that weekend, maybe a non-conference game? JB said it was “highly unlikely”.
North Carolina blew out Louisville by 45 points, their largest margin of defeat since before WWII, then lost to Marquette who had a losing record and had lost 6 of 7 before beating Butler and UNC. Louisville then beat Notre Dame by 12. Jim called it the “shocker of the year. Sometimes that happens. It’s hard to understand. UNC almost came back with the press but couldn’t convert.” This was a good lead-in to my question but made me wish that we’d played Louisville coming out of their lay off or UNC coming off their easy win over Louisville.
Matt asked if JB’s film review of the Duke game revealed anything new. “No…. we didn’t guard the three point line and the big guy changed all of our lay-ups. We made a great effort to hold them to 30 points in the second half but still didn’t play well on offense. The Notre Dame comeback was something you’d do once every 20 years. Notre Dame is pretty good. It was pretty crazy. It took something out of us. Having to press in two games wears on you. Duke is really good and shot the lights out in the first half.
After a break I called in my comment and question, (above). Matt noted the Chris Carlson article on me, Pat and Scooter. JB said that when I ask questions I’ve done the research for them and that makes them good questions. I noted that I was described as “the mint in a world of H0T Takes” and Matt laughed.
JB: “We want to be good, better than this. We’re not satisfied. We’re not satisfied. We lost Bourama. We’ve battled, persevered and won games that could have gone the other way. We want to be consistently good and really good in some years. This year hasn’t been easy for any team with all the pauses and injuries.” We went on to focus on my question about the roller-coaster results. “It can be a number of things. Virginia losing to NC State was the most surprising result was Virginia losing to NC State after Duke crushed them. It’s about college kids. Minnesota beat Michigan by 20 but haven’t won on the road. It’s not easy to figure out. Gonzaga and Baylor have figured it out. Just crazy things happen. We need to play better. Duke had two freshman guards who were hitting 25-30% from three, (actually 30% - 35%), who hit 7 out of 8. Mark Williams was a surprise inside. The surprising thing was not falling behind but the comeback against Notre Dame.” I had hoped for something more than “it’s about college kids…immaturity…just crazy things happen…It’s not easy to figure out”, etc.
Michael in Charlotte, (Alsacs), tried to call in but there were technical problems and they had to go to break to get it straightened out. He said something about the “Hulk smashed my line”, which I assume is an inside reference to people thinking that Cuserunner was Orangehulk, (or SU Hulk or whatever). He made reference to when the Olympic team in Barcelona switched to a zone to beat Spain in the Olympics. He then suggested that our current personnel is “not ideal for the zone” and perhaps when “our forwards are getting destroyed” we could switch to a man for man and catch the other team by surprise? Jim said that that was a good question and that he was “glad you asked that”. So we were off to a good start. “We are big and long enough for the zone. Our zone covers Marek- imagine him in man-for-man against the North Carolina big men. Joe and Buddy struggle a bit against quicker guards.” Michael noted that “Marquette used man-to-man when getting torched. Remember when Rocky switched to a lefty stance to win the second fight?” JB: “We change our zone. A lot of it is execution. Against Notre Dame we didn’t guard the three point line and then we did. Michigan State was at .500 playing man for man and they continued playing it because it’s their defense.” At this point Michael tried to say something but JB wasn’t finished with his point and shouted “Let me answer!...John Calipari is a great coach at Kentucky. He plays man for man all the time. They have a losing record and are still playing man for man because it’s his defense. You play your best defense. Duke and Notre Dame shoot threes better against a man-for-man than they do a zone because they see it all the time. We were #1 in the conference in three-point field goal percentage defense, even though it didn’t look like it. I think we are still #2 or 3. We stuck with what we do. Twenty years ago we played both defenses. We had personnel suited for the man-for-man then so we could play both defenses. We can’t even stop our walk-ons from scoring in practice with our man-for-man. We came back from 9 points down at halftime against NC State and we’d have lost that game and the Notre Dame game if we’d gone to our man-for-man. My job is to win. I think you know that I want to win more than you do because it’s my life. We change our zone. Man-to-man coaches change their man-to-man defenses, too. I don’t know what you do in your life but if you do something well and something else not so well and you aren’t doing what you normally do well will you start doing something you don’t do well? If you aren’t executing in your best defense you aren’t going to execute in your worst defense.” Somewhere in there was a pretty good answer but I thought perhaps JB thought he was talking to Pat. Why did we have ‘personnel suited for a man-for-man’ twenty years ago but not now?
Nick called in to announce that “it’s been a while since I watched the team prior to this season. Back in high school I went to your camp”. He recalled Kristoff Ongenaet was on the last team that he followed, which would make it 2007-09. He thought that was one of our best teams, one that “could have gone all the way”. Having established that he knew little about anything since, he noted that “people think you should retire. I’m not one of them. But is it possible that Buddy will follow in your footsteps?” JB: “No. I hope Buddy will be playing somewhere. If we were 18-2, nobody would want me to retire. I will certainly be retiring at some point., We’ll have to see what happens. It’s hard to predict the future.”
Liam in Pompey noted that we were at about the same place in the standings as Georgia Tech but admitted he knew nothing about them. He wanted a “run-down on Georgia Tech”. JB: They are one of the best teams in the league. They started slow but have veteran guys. They are playing great. They beat Virginia Tech, who was ranked #16, by 15 points. They have good size with good shooters and a good point guard….Moses Wright had 33 points and 10 rebounds in last year’s game in the Dome and we still won. He’s really good – as good as anybody. Jose Alvarado is one of the best point guards in the league. We played our best game last year down there.” (Better than the UNC game in the ACCT?)
Dave In Syracuse (Jeremycuse?) thanks Jim for “taking all these calls from all these ‘experts’ on X’s and O’s”. he noted that we’d had a series of “non-big guy big guy coaches” and wondered how Allen Griffin prepared for that job. Jim said that Allen was “doing a great job. He worked with big men in his other jobs and talked a lot of big man coaches. Mike Hopkins was still here when Allen joined us. We started out years ago with Brendan Malone coaching our big men and he wasn’t a big guy. Then Coach Fine did it for many years. Then came Mike and now Allen.” He went over our current crop of big men. “I hope Bourama will get healthy and come back. He averaged 10 points and 12 rebounds in the last six games last year and two of them were against North Carolina. Frank is really here a year early. Jesse isn’t ready yet. He needs another year. John Bol does a pretty good job of covering the area but he’s really a forward.” Matt mentioned the Pitt transfers and Jim said that the transfer portal will be “like a game of musical chairs”.
Tiana Mangakahia announced that she will go to the pros after this season. JB: “She’s ready to go and see what she can do in professional basketball. She is amazing and has a big heart. “
Josh in Boulder wondered how our defense broke down against Duke and suggested that our guys took too many threes trying to match the threes Duke was making. JB: “They know they have to do a better job. We didn’t shoot a lot of threes against Duke. They pressure you on defense and you have to try to drive past them.”
Tom in Syracuse made a reference to the team having “their backs to the wall, down 20”. JB: They never gave up against Duke but Duke was too good.”
Matt asked about the ACCT arrangements: were they satisfactory? “We’ll see when we get there. They will have fans- 25% capacity.”
No former Syracuse player made the NBA All-Star team. Matt wondered about Jerami Grant and Carmelo Anthony. “It’s tough for a young player to break in. There are more All-Star caliber players than sports on the All-Star team. Carmelo has been playing great but not enough to make it.”
Matt asked about Tiger Woods as the closing music started playing: “I’m glad he came through it. Maybe he can rehab and play golf again someday. It will take a year, at least. With that kind of an accident we can just be thankful that he’s still alive and that his life will keep going.
