The Jim Boeheim Show - Before VTII | Syracusefan.com

The Jim Boeheim Show - Before VTII

SWC75

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Jim Boeheim’s radio show is on Thursdays, (Wednesdays until the Dino Babers Show ends) from 7-8 or 9PM on ESPN Radio in Syracuse, which is AM1200 or FM 97.7 on the dial. The show is at Carrabba's Italian Grill at 550 Towne Drive, Fayetteville, NY. 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. Last year they did a third half hour segment on Twitch.
Their schedule: Americu Jim Boeheim Show Starts Nov. 9 - Syracuse University Athletics

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 https://twitter.com/MattPark1 or https://twitter.com/hashtag/AskBoeheim?src=hashtag_click

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
There’s now a third segment where Jim and Gomez can be seen on camera at:
The early shows tend to be in a one-hour format. I'll post a summary of them the same night. When they do two hour shows. I will do two posts: the Matt Park segment the night of the show and the Gomez segment the next day.




MY QUESTIONS/COMMENTS

For the Matt Park Segment:

“Coach, it bothers me when I hear that only Quad One and Quad Two games matter and the only games we get positive credit is to win a game in those quads. There’s no difference between close losses and blow-out losses. Shouldn’t we have a system that gives some credit for every game but more for games against better opponents, more for road games, more for wins, more for close losses, etc.?”

For the Gomez segment:

“Coach, is there a drill for saving the ball inbounds to teammates? It seemed like every time we tried to do that, the ball went right to a North Carolina player.”

(For the third segment on Twitch I’ll improvise a question or two after listening to the rest of the show.)



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.)

“I can’t believe people say bad things about Joe Girard. He’s one of the top scorers in the league, a good passer and plays good defense. There are people who just didn’t like him no matter what he does.” [I think JB can relate.] ”And they think we can’t finish games. Against Georgia Tech they made a comeback but we finished with 8 straight points. At Notre Dame we were up 1 and got 5 stops to win. Then there was the Louisville game and the other Notre Dame game. There’s been 3-4 games where we’ve held on to leads. Against UNC we were never in the lead for 37 minutes. Joe tried to make a hustle play. Miami was an even game. They were a top 15 team, playing at home. Judah made a couple of bad decisions to go through people rather than around them. He’s a freshman…” Matt noted that Joe was leading the conference in scoring in ACC games. JB: “We didn’t get the rebound on the missed free throw. We should have been holding the ball on the last play, (with a one point lead because we rebounded the miss). Judah won the Notre Dame game on a similar play.” Matt noted that Michael Jordan said that he’d failed to make his last shot 422 times in his career. JB: “He, (Judah), has a low turnover rate with high assists. It’s his nature to be aggressive. He was learning to shoot the ball. It was not an unnatural motion.

I called in my question about evaluating teams for the NCAA tournament. “You can play the #1 team and play the #25 team and get the same credit for it, even though there’s a huge difference between the #1 and #25 team. But here’s a big difference between playing the #30 and #31 teams but there’s won’t be a big difference between the teams themselves. There could be a big difference between the #30 and #49 teams but not in the credit you get for playing them. It makes no sense. At the end of the day, you have to win. But it’s important to see the differences and not just go by the numbers. The lower schools aren’t going to get any Quad 1 wins. Gonzaga spent years getting 12 seeds because of that. There’s so many good teams out there. There’s almost no difference between #30-50.” [See above.] Matt noted that we were #99 and UNC #32 in the ‘Net’ rankings going into the game. “A Q1 loss doesn’t help but it could increase your net ranking.” We are now #97:

JB said that we’ve gotten a lot better as the season has progressed, especially now that we are playing league games. “Competition makes you better. We lost by 18 to Colgate and 20-30 to Illinois, (actually, by 12 to Colgate and 29 to the Illini), and Miami and North Carolina are better than those teams so we are a lot better than we were then….We’ve improved in every area since the season began. Monmouth is 1-15 and they had a lead on us. ”

A caller said that one move Benny Williams had made in that game convinced him that Benny must be one of the better players on the team. [I assume he meant the drive and lay-up late in the first half.] JB: “He’s starting so we know he’s one of the best players on the team. He hasn’t produced enough of those moves. His rebounding and defense can be much better. Whether he starts or not he’ll play but one move isn’t going to get it done. You can always change the lineup. Guys who are going to play are going to play.”

They went over recent ACC scores. Virginia Tech beat Duke with no foul being called when a celebratory punch from Michael Collins hit Kyle Filipowski. JB: “The league should make an explanation. I don’t know what to make of it. It’s not a basketball play. Intent is not part of the rule. If you shot a gun off and the bullet killed somebody you’re going to jail.” Matt suggested that metaphor hits close to home with the Alec Baldwin situation. JB said “I don’t know how you can blame an actor for that when there’s so many people running around with guns they know are loaded doing crazy things.” Matt steered the conversation back to the ACC. NC State continues to win, beating Notre Dame 85-82. “Smith got hurt but he’s back and Joiner, Burns and Morsell can score. Notre Dame could have beaten us twice and won 2-3 other games. I was surprised that Miami beat Florida State so easily. State had bene playing better. Louisville played well for 32 minutes (before losing to BC by 10). Wake Forest lost by 2 at Pitt. “Pittsburgh is the oldest team in college football. They are older than 3-4 NBA teams.”

On this day 20 years ago, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Oakland Raiders in the Super Bowl, 48-21 and Syracuse beat Miami 54-49 in Miami, (followed by the Lamizana game at Rutgers), which lead to a discussion of the worst offensive games JB has seen. His choice: the following year’s overtime win over Pittsburgh 49-46. It’s also the third anniversary of Kobe Bryant’s death. “Kobe went after it every day with everything in his body. Everybody has to respect that.”

Virginia Tech “is a loud place to play but we’ve played well there. We really should have played them in the afternoon. Now we’ll get back early in the morning and have a game Monday.” The ACC Tournament will be wide open. “Everybody will think they have a team that can do damage.”

JB doesn’t like slow starts “but if you’re going to fall behind, you might as well do it early.” [If you must.]

Virginia is” the hottest team in the conference, having won 5 in a row.” [If you are as good as Virginia, are you ‘hot’ or just good?] “We never really got back into that game. We shot the lights out and got some momentum but we never really got back in the game. They have veteran plays and brought in some transfers, too.”

This was the first time JB recalled winning the rebounding battle from North Carolina, “but we had 4-5 bad turnovers and they shot a lot of free throws.” [And we shot almost none.]

Joe is near to hitting the 1,500 point mark, (he’d be one of 25). JB: “He’s had a great year and needs to keep going.”

Can Justin Taylor play the ‘2’? “It’s his natural position and he’s better there defensively. It’s a good spot for him down the road.”

In the NFL, “I normally like Mahomes. But you have to be impressed with the Bengals. The Eagles are really good. As to the Niners- will a rookie quarterback fade?” Matt noted that Joe Burrow, who is 6-5, was an all-state high school basketball player. “It’s easy to imagine what kind of player he must have been.”

Gomez rook over at this point. They went back over the UNC game. “A couple of calls made the difference. We were behind for 38 minutes. That makes it tough to win. Our major crime was not getting the rebound. Judah should have changed directions. He made a bad decision where to go….We finished twice against Notre dame and against Louisville….Joe had 12 +6 (first half and second half) against the best defender in the league. He opened things up for Judah and Jesse. We scored enough. We just got 2 questionable calls, maybe more. A guy shooting only 22% from three makes 4 straight. Chris made some really tough shots to get us back in it…We won in the box score but not on the scoreboard.”

Jim’s answer to my first question encouraged me to escribe my alternative plan to him during the Gomez segment to see what he thought of it. I mentioned that Brent Axe did not like it. Jim said
“I like it already”. There are 363 Division 1 teams. Ranked them with mathematics with the best team getting #363 and the worst #1. You divide that by 10 and that’s the number of points you get for playing them, 36 if you play the top ranked team, (or 360-362) none, (0.1) if you play the bottom team, (or #2-9). Then you apply the point differential in the game. If you lose to the top team by 10, you get 26 points instead of 36. If you beat the #204 team by 5, you get 25 points. Then you can add on bonuses for being on the road, (say 5 points) and for winning the game instead of losing it, (10). Using that system, our loss to Colgate gets us 10 points, our loss to Illinois 11, our win over Virginia Tech 51 points and the losses to Miami 28 and North Carolina 30. All games count but games against better teams count more. Close losses count more than one-sided loses but wins still count for more than losses. Teams will play hard for 40 minutes because the final score matters, although we might want to put a cap on margin of victory to avoid teams scheduling really bad opponents to roll up the score. Jim thought it was a good plan and a good thought to balance teams but it was too radical. He said not to expect a lot of changes. [If they ever did something I thought of, it would be a first.] “They have to pay attention to where you really are, rather than Quads. Take everything into consideration. It’s hard to tell how good a team is unless you watch a lot of games….20 wins doesn’t mean anything anymore. To get to the NCAAs, you need quality wins. We had a couple of bad loses, which we haven’t had in a while.”

“Kentucky turned their season around when they replaced a small guard with a bigger one.” Connecticut went from 14-0 to 16-6. “They got everybody contributing. They were playing 8-9 guys and then they cut down and began losing. I’m shocked.”

Damian Lillard “can put the ball in the basket.” He just had a 60 point game. He’s like Steph. He can shoot it from anywhere.”

They switched to Twitch and I decided to type my question about “saving the ball” drills in there. Jim said that they don’t do drills on it. “How do you do drills to not jump off a bridge? Our guy should have been there but he was on the outside.” Does he mean Chris Bell?
Syracuse's save turns into go-ahead basket for UNC - ESPN Video

“You can’t get upset when a player is trying to make a play”.

Gomez asked if it’s true the whole team is eligible to come back next year. JB said it is. “And 3-4 guye could leave. We tried to get a couple of guys but not very hard. If more people leave than expected, we’ll go to the transfer portal.”

Gomez inquired about Jim’s knee, which has “arthritis, like every old guy. It was really painful early in the year.” [Aren’t we early in the year?] “It’s better now”. I hope that’s not the knee he hit leaving the press conference.
Gomez asked if the questioner was a student. JB: “Was it a student? We’d just come back vs. Georgia Tech. Virginia Tech, a real veteran team, lost 5 straight close games. Judah was in transition. I’ll always let him try that shot. It was time to go….Benny is shooting better. He’s a finesse player. At 6-9, he needs to go inside sometimes. He had 2 rebounds in 20 minutes. We have not been able to prevent early 3’s. UNC was 4 for 5. That’s unusual….Whoever plays better plays more. There’s no formula where you pull a guy after 8 minutes.”

“The league doesn’t acknowledge officiating mistakes. They try to enforce the principle of verticality. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t….We usually shoot more free throws , due to the zone.” [And because we drive to the basket so much.]

Geno Auriemma barked at a reporter going in for halftime vs. Tennessee:
Geno Auriemma was FIRED UP about the refs heading into halftime | ESPN College Basketball
Gomez asked if he would get fiend for that. Jim thought so. Then he looked up the halftime score. Connecticut led, 40-36, (and went on to win, 84-67). “You can yell and scream all you want when you’re ahead.”

Gomez read where Sam Snead had 41 holes in one in his golfing career. Each club in his bag produced one, except for the putter. JB remembered Art Wall as the all-time champ with 11. Jim has had two holes in one. The most recent was at the Kaluhyat course at Turning Stone at a hole with a big dip in it so he couldn’t see it go in. The first one was years ago at a charity event at the Duke course. That was an elevated green and he didn’t see that one, either. There was a $10,000 prize for it and he’s barely picked his ball up when the PA announcer said that “Coach Boeheim has graciously decided to give the money to the charity.” Nobody had asked him about it and in those early days, he could have used the money!

Buddy Boeheim’s G-league team beat Elijah Hughes’ twice in a week. Buddy played well in the first game, not in the second. He works out with the Pistons sometimes.

“If any woman in professional shorts deserves a shot at a head coaching job, it’s Becky Hammond. And there’s no reason she couldn’t do it. But we aren’t moving in that direction.”

Jim agrees with Charles Barkley, (there’s a news flash!), that NBA players shouldn’t be taking time off for “muscle strains and pulls. They’ve always had them. They aren’t going to tear it. And coming back to play 20 minutes is made up stuff. What if you need them for 23 minutes?”
Look: Charles Barkley's Message For NBA Players Going Viral
“Michael Jordan wanted each fan to see him at his best because it might be the only time they’d see him.” Joe DiMaggio had a similar quote:
“Late in his career, DiMaggio was asked why he hustled on a play that meant little in a game that had little bearing on the Yankee’s fate that year. "Because there is always some kid who may be seeing me for the first time," DiMaggio explained. "I owe him my best." This was perhaps DiMaggio’s career credo, a personal statement of his abiding work ethic.” Do people have ethics anymore?
 
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“We tried to get a couple of guys but not very hard.”

Well, at least he’s honest about it. smh
I think it might be by design...I don't know.

If they bring in another crop of new guys, the freshmen today might feel like they are being recruited over, and if they are not getting PT now or starting now, that may nudge them to jump into the portal. So to recruit new guys with such a large freshmen class just in case of attrition at seasons end may just make it more likely to happen. But then with Joe gone, Jesse gone, Judah gone, Benny not turning the corner, they have to work harder...unless they have reasons to believe Joe and Jesse are coming back.
 
I think it might be by design...I don't know.

If they bring in another crop of new guys, the freshmen today might feel like they are being recruited over, and if they are not getting PT now or starting now, that may nudge them to jump into the portal.
it’s the coach’s JOB in any sport to try to recruit over the current roster and improve the product. That message should be made clear from Day 1.
 
I think it might be by design...I don't know.

If they bring in another crop of new guys, the freshmen today might feel like they are being recruited over, and if they are not getting PT now or starting now, that may nudge them to jump into the portal. So to recruit new guys with such a large freshmen class just in case of attrition at seasons end may just make it more likely to happen. But then with Joe gone, Jesse gone, Judah gone, Benny not turning the corner, they have to work harder...unless they have reasons to believe Joe and Jesse are coming back.

I agree with JB that this last recruiting class might one of his best and in the old days, that might set up the program for multiple seasons of success. But it's a huge gamble in this era of the portal and NIL. He's always saying, when discussing successful ACC teams "They're a veteran team. They brought in a lot of transfers." That's the way to build teams today. You can lose all your depth, as we did a couple years ago, and no one in the portal is coming here to back-up, although we've had mazing good luck with Torrence and Hima. Use transfers for open spots in your starting line-up or your tightest rotation and bring in freshmen to fill out the roster. Maybe we'll wind up doing that in the future.
 

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