The Jim Boeheim Show | Syracusefan.com

The Jim Boeheim Show

SWC75

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Jim Boeheim’s radio show is on Thursdays from 7-9PM on ESPN Radio in Syracuse, which is AM1200 or FM 97.7 on the dial. The show originates from Delmonico’s Italian Steakhouse on Erie Boulevard in Syracuse. The first hour, hosted by Matt Park, the Voice of the Orange, is on their general network. The second hour, which begins with the Big East season, is hosted by Gomez, a local radio personality.

The first hour is eventually, (it can take weeks) podcasted on the SU Athletics website on this page:

http://suathletics.com/podcasts.aspx


You can call into the show locally at 315-424-8599 or nationally at 1-888-746-2873. For Gomez’s portion, use 315-437-7644. Or you can submit questions from this page:

http://www.suathletics.com/sb_output.aspx?form=4


I will be posting my rough transcript of the first hour the night of the broadcast and will probably do the second hour the following day.


MY QUESTIONS/COMMENTS


First hour:


“Coach I saw a game in which a played went down inured and the other team was allowed to fast break, 5 on 4 and scored easily. Then something similar happened in the SU game when Grant went down. It seems unfair and possibly dangerous if the play goes into the area where the injured player lies. What are the rules on when play can be stopped to tend to an injured player? “


Second hour:


“Coach, we had a discussion on our forum about Syracuse players who transferred to other schools. Have you ever had a player transfer out that you really missed, in terms who what they could have brought to the team had they stays? And do you keep in contact with any other, (aside from Matt Roe, of course)?”


COACH BOEHEIM

(I have, in some instances, put together statements from different parts of the broadcast on the same subject)


The entire show was with Gomez as Matt Park was in Texas with the football team. Jim wondered what he did to deserve this. “It must be some kind of punishment.” (To have to spend two hours with Gomez.)


Gomez said that there had been a lot of bad games in the NBA yesterday. JB: “They had no way to envision that both New York teams would be this bad. The Knicks have 2-3 guys out and the Nets lost Lopez and Williams has been hurt.” Gomez asked about Jason Kidd- is he too close to the age of his players? “Age has nothing to do with it. Brad Stevens is younger than that. Jason Kidd understood the game as well as anybody but being a leader as a player is different than being a leader as a coach.” Gomez asked if having a players only meeting was effective. “I’m not sure it really helps. I’m not sold on that type of thing.”


The Lakers played competitively without Kobe Bryant. ”The Lakers hung in there and can beat some teams but they won’t beat the top teams….Kobe is better off trying to rehab and to play a bit rather than losing another whole year. He’s still a pretty good player but won’t be a difference maker. He got a contract extension because the fans love him. They need a good draft pick- a dominant player and a couple more young players.”


Golden State looks good. “They have tremendous guards, Thompson and Curry. The Clippers have a good, solid young team.” Couldn’t the NBA have scheduled a Pacers-Blazers game? “They should have known how good the Pacers can be but nobody knew the Trail Blazers would be this good. There are 5-6 good teams out west. The East has a couple.”


Gomez read that the draft lottery might be replaced by a “draft wheel” where each team would get the #1 pick every 30 years. JB: “They have the best system to get better players to bad teams, although I don’t think there should be a lottery. I think the worst team should get the best player. Fortunately this year the top 8-10 players should all be good.


Gomez shifted the discussion to the High Point game. JB: “We didn’t guard them. They banked in a couple tough shots. They hung in there with a poor performance by their best player. They were excited to play and got more excited after they got off to a good start. When that happens you have to turn up the defense. We out-scored them 26-3. Our offense was good the whole game and the defense got a lot better. All young teams have a lot of improving to do. We have a very young backcourt. “


They talked about Tyler Ennis and whether he could be playing any better. “Everything always gets better: ball handling, shooting, defense. It happens at every level. LeBron James became a better ball handler and shooter. Chris Paul was thin and became stronger. Michael Jordan’s shooting improved when he went to the NBA. “ Gomez asked about Carmelo Anthony. JB: “he’s a great scorer. His defense is under-rated. He does rebound. His ball handling and shooting has improved.”


Gomez asked about Jeremy Grant. Jim said that he just turned his ankle and he’s fine now, practicing with the team. Gomez wondered if it’s tougher for the team to get up for the game playing during the break when the students aren’t there. “You can’t ever let that affect how you play. That’s the whole purpose of playing: pride in what you’re doing and respect for the game. There’s never a good reason for a lack of effort. During the Christmas break you take what you have and go about doing what you have to do.”


A caller named George was doing a good job of celebrating the holiday season but a poor job of remaining coherent. He said he had a question for Gomez. JB: “Good. Make him do something.” George wanted to know “Gomez….How do you sleep?” Gomez wondered why he wanted to know. “Because you have a beautiful wife.” Gomez: “How do you know about my wife?” George explained that he listens to Gomez’s radio show. They thanked him for his call and moved on, but not before George predicted we’d beat Villanova by 11.


I then called in my first question, about whether play should be stopped when an injured player is on the court. JB: “The rule should be adjusted. If a player is really, really hurt they can stop it right away. Otherwise they let it go. They say they don’t want to deprive the other team of an advantage but that advantage is because a player got hurt. They think they have to play it out. In our game they didn’t see Jerami was down and didn’t blow the whistle until the play came back to him. If they knew he was down, they’d have stopped it. The rule should be looked at hard. They should make a decision of what to do.“ Gomez wondered about players faking injuries to stop fast breaks. JB: “I don’t think they think that’s going to happen.”


They talked about the football team’s bowl game. “It’s a great opportunity to get another game against a good football team. You also get exposure. It speaks to some success. But the value of the exposure is a little hard to measure exactly. But you can show players that we are a good team but there may be a chance to play here.”


Gomez talked about another big game in Texas- the 55,000 that watched UCLA play Houston in the Astrodome back in 1968. JB: it was the first big TV game. Lew Alcindor, as he was called then, was injured with a scratched eye and they lost but they crushed them in the final four later. That game and the Magic vs. Bird game were milestones in growing the game.” Gomez asked what they big game was for SU. “It wasn’t one game. It was the start of the Big East and ESPN at the same time. We’d have 6-7-8 games on national TV. Star players came into the league.” I would also cite the 1975 North Carolina game the hiring of Jim Boeheim and the other top Big East coaches- Thompson, Carneseca, Massimino and later Pitino and Calhoun and the building of the Carrier Dome. Gomez suggested the 1980 victory over Purdue was big. JB agreed that it was- it was a national TV game on a weekend. “We had a win at Louisville before that but that was a weeknight game so it didn’t have the same impact.” How about beating the Ernie and Bernie show in ’77?


They talked about Villanova, which has had “just one bad year in the last 5-6. They’ve been one of the better teams in the conference for years….They are a good defensive team. They sue pressure and aggression, good shooting with veteran guys. They’ve beaten two of the top teams in the country- Kansas and Iowa. Of course Kansas isn’t great. But they will have two of the top 5 picks in the draft. Kentucky will have 5-6 picks. Those teams will get it going by the end of the year. Nobody is dominant. Everybody has things they don’t do well. Great players leave early and you need great players to have a great team. ” Gomez asked for a comparison of the sartorial splendor of Jay Wright and Rick Pitino. JB thought it was about even “but that’s a high-end comparison”. Jim said he’s a good friend of Jay Wright who is “a tremendous guy.”


Another former league brethren: Marquette lost to New Mexico. They are “down a little bit”. Notre Dame lost a game they should have won vs. Ohio State and now they have lost Jerian Grant.


They talked about playing St. John’s and Villanova as non-league opponents. “We’ve had big games in the n on-conference schedule before. We like to play teams in our recruiting area- teams the players and fans know. These are good games to see where we are. Those games show you what you need to do.” He said that there’s a contract to play St. John’s and Villanova for two years so we’ll be playing them next year, too. “You want to be tested going into the conference With a good tournament and the ACC-Big Ten challenge and these games we get 6-8 good games. And the games in Canada don’t hurt.”


A caller asked if the ACC move has increased the responsiveness of potential recruits to SU. “I don’t think so. We’ve been recruiting at a high level for years. The ACC has neither hurt nor helped. We aren’t going to go to Georgia for a kid. The kids up here are used to the weather and more familiar with us than other. But it will probably be the best league in the country.” Gomez asked if it might make more of a difference to Scott Shafer. “He has to find the ‘under the radar’ guys. It would be tough to get a five star guy recruit from down south.”


Kevin in Buffalo wondered “who is the important guy to on Villanova to game plan against?” JB: “There’s not one guy but lots of guys can hurt you. Hillard got 25 on us last year. Pinskton, Bell, and Tyler’s brother are all good. They’ve got 7-8 guys who can score. It will be a great game to see where we have to improve.”


An old classmate from Lyons called in to wish the coach well. Coach said that it’s a town of only 5,000 so everybody knows everybody. “They put up a sign with my name on it after we won the national championship. I haven’t checked in a while to see if it’s still there.”



I’ll do the second hour tomorrow.
 
SWC, JB is wrong. the Louisville game was on a saturday night. I remember it like it was yesterday. Wesley Cox missed right at the buzzer.
 
SWC, JB is wrong. the Louisville game was on a saturday night. I remember it like it was yesterday. Wesley Cox missed right at the buzzer.


Correct. Per the Media Guide, that game was played 12/4/76:
http://www.infoplease.com/calendar.php?month=12&year=1976&submit=Go

We won at Louisville, a team we'd played several times before and never been able to beat, 76-75 on a lay-up by Cliff Warwell:
http://www.orangehoops.org/CWarwell.htm
It was easily the height of Cliff's career here, which is a great segue into my second question below, (or it will be there when I get finished typing it).

But he is right in a sense. I remember listening to that one the radio. I suspect it was a Saturday night game and they didn't televise college basketball at night in those pre-ESPN days. I remember listening to it on the radio, not seeing it on TV.
 
The second hour, (minus some stuff I attached to the first hour report, above because it was on the same subject):

Coach noted that Sports Illustrated had an article on Don Nelson, who lives on Maui. “He’s got five pieces of property, including a little restaurant. He’s lived there for 30 years, off and on. He didn’t show up at the tournament this year for some reason. He plays golf and cards, a nice life.” Jim might be looking forward to that life. But he might do it in Lyons, not Maui. “I’m not an island guy. I’m not much for beaches. All that sunshine is depressing. It would be boring.”


I called in my question about players who have transferred out of SU. “I see some of them, especially matt Roe, who came back, but I generally lose track of them. We’ve never lost somebody that really hurt us. Back when we had 15 scholarships we lost more players. They didn’t like being in that 14th or 15 spot.” (I don’t recall that we ever had that many scholarship players.) “A lot of guys weren’t playing and go where they can play. Some of them don’t go down far enough. They didn’t work through it here and they don’t work through it where they wind up going, either.” Gomez asked if anybody had ever asked to come back. “A lot of guys said they should have stayed. Trevor Cooney is a guy who might have left but he stayed and worked through it and look at him now.”


I suggested that Earl Duncan might have had a role to play on the 1989-90 team that had LeRon Ellis, Derrick Coleman, Billy Owens and Stevie Thompson but no real point guard. JB didn’t agree. “Michael Edwards was as good as Earl Duncan. Earl couldn’t get past Sherman Douglas who had a couple more years.“ Actually, Sherman had one more year and Duncan two. He averaged 14.6 points, shot 41% from three point range and hit 82% of his free throws for Rutgers. He did average only 3.7 assists per game, suggesting he was more of a combo guard. But I think he was better than Michael Edwards and a certainly a more natural point guard than Stevie Thompson, who started the year at that position.


They discussed some ex Syracuse players and where they are playing now. Louie McCroskey and Mookie Jones are playing for the Rochester Razor Sharks, under Lawrence Moten in his first coaching job. It’s a level below the NBA “D” league. Eric Devendorf, Brandon Triche and Kris Joseph are playing abroad. Jonny Flynn is back from overseas and is in the D league but rehabbing his hip. “He doesn’t have the explosiveness that is important to his game….Basketball is being played literally all over the world. It’s become truly global.”


Dave called in to ask if Jim “had a national championship squad” and praised this team for “not having a showboater”. JB: “We’ve never had a showboater. We’ve been pretty balanced in recent years. There are 20 teams that could win the national championship. We are one of them. There is no dominant team. We can beat anybody but they can beat us. Arizona looks like the bets team. Kentucky, Kansas and Duke will get better. I saw Iowa State the other night and they looked good. Wichita State is as good as they were last year. Villanova has a lot of weapons. They can score from a lot of different positions. They play good defense and are a Top Ten team. They can get there.“


They talked about Eastern Michigan. “They are very good: 7-3 or 8-4.” (7-3 with wins over Albion, Concordia of Minnesota, Robert Morris, Cleveland State, Texas Arlington, Wisconsin-Green Bay and Oakland. They have lost by 18 to Kentucky, 12 to UMASS and 5 to Purdue. They will be playing Duke while we will be playing Villanova.) They gave Kentucky a good game. They play a 2-3 zone like we do and like us they play it all the time. Rob Murphy is doing a great job. Other teams play 2-3 but not all the time. “


Gomez asked if Jim was a big football fan. “I’m a fan of all sports. I’ve seen every SU game since 1962.” (Did we have simultaneous games earlier this year?) “I’m an NFL fan.” Gomez asked about the Aaron Rodgers situation. “It’s all just a guess. They say he can play in three weeks. How about 2 weeks? It’s very difficult to play if you don’t practice all week. It won’t matter if Philly plays the way they did. They looked like a championship contender. Certain players are always going to (want to) play and you have to hold them out. I met Rodgers about 10 years ago.” Gomez: How tall is he? “I don’t know. 6-1, maybe 6-2. It doesn’t matter if you can play.”


They talked about the importance of off-season training. JB said that the NFL player’s union didn’t do their members any favors by limiting it. “The NBA has year-around trainers. They do it better than anybody else. You get hurt if you get out of shape and then try to get back into shape. Basketball players are now playing until they are 40. They used to not work out in the off-season and their careers were over by 34 or 35. We never used to stretch.“


Gomez asked about sports records that “will never be broken”. He suggested Nolan Ryan’s records, (strike-outs, no hitters), Cal Ripken’s consecutive games. Jim doesn’t think we’ll see anyone hit in 56 straight games or bat .400, “although some could get close. 100 points in an NBA game is possible but unlikely. It’s probably out of reach right now.” Kobe Bryant got 81 points in a game a few years ago. They looked it up and he was 28 for 46 from the field. “You’d have to shoot pretty good.”


Candlestick Park is now closed. Gomez wondered if Jim had ever been there. He didn’t think so. Jim’s been to Ebbets Field back in the early 50’s, to Forbes Field, Crosley Field, Fenway, Wrigley, the old Yankee Stadium. “But it’s not a bucket list thing. I’ve been very lucky. I’ve done a lot of things you’d want to be able to do. I’ve played a lot of golf courses. Now I just want to watch my kids play, to go to their games.”


He got some books for Christmas by David Baldachi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Baldacci

and Pat Williams

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Williams_(basketball)

and a Bruce Springsteen video.


Gomez asked about his pizza investment. “They put all kinds of stuff in the paper. I’m doing commercials for them. Jeremy Pulaski, (spelling?), who spent some time around our program. You don’t’ make money in the restaurant business unless you know what you are doing. I don’t invest in anything. I don’t try to make money outside of basketball.
 
Correct. Per the Media Guide, that game was played 12/4/76:
http://www.infoplease.com/calendar.php?month=12&year=1976&submit=Go

We won at Louisville, a team we'd played several times before and never been able to beat, 76-75 on a lay-up by Cliff Warwell:
http://www.orangehoops.org/CWarwell.htm
It was easily the height of Cliff's career here, which is a great segue into my second question below, (or it will be there when I get finished typing it).

But he is right in a sense. I remember listening to that one the radio. I suspect it was a Saturday night game and they didn't televise college basketball at night in those pre-ESPN days. I remember listening to it on the radio, not seeing it on TV.

It was definitely not televised. Still remember where I was and who I was with as I listened to that game on the radio. It really felt like a huge win for the program at the time. And it was.
 

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