The Jim Boeheim Show

[SWC75]

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, in discussing the proposed new stadium, you said that we have to be open-mined and that you don’t think we can be satisfied with what we have. Are there aspects of playing the Carrier Dome that are to Syracuse’s disadvantage and what would you want to see in a new arena?”


Second hour:


“Coach, I understand there was some kind of a mix-up at the beginning of the Boston College game that forced you to begin with a starting line-up other than what you really wanted. What are the rules about the records the official scorer keeps and what your are options as a coach?”


COACH BOEHEIM

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


Matt and the coach talked about the two games that have been played since the last show:


North Carolina: “One of those teams that you can’t figure out this year. In other games they were horrendous from the free throw line. Against us, neither team shot well. Our defense was a little better. It was the hustle plays- loose balls, rebounding. We got a lot of loose balls. The fans were noisy. We made good plays when we had to and North Carolina didn’t make too many good plays.”


Boston College: “When you go on the road. It’s difficult no matter where you go or who you play unless something crazy happens. We won the game on defense. We did a good job on Hanian. He made some shots at the end. (Per the play-by-play all free throws.) Our offense wasn’t very good. It was a small crowd of 3-4,000 people but they can make a lot of noise.” Matt: “What makes for a tough road environment?” JB: “Good players… There were a couple thousand Syracuse fans there and they were loud at the end.” Matt praised the strength and conditioning people because both te4ams were tired but we seemed to have more at the end. JB: “We’ve got some great people.” Matt also praised Trevor Cooney for his steals and his dunking ability. JB: “We could have been down at the half without them and really down in the second half.”


They were watching Connecticut play Memphis. “Connecticut’s guards are real good.”


I called in my first questions. JB: “I don’t know where those quotes came from.” They came from this article:

http://www.syracuse.com/axeman/index.ssf/2014/01/jim_boeheim_on_arena_discussio.html

On the show, he continued: “The Chancellor and the Board of Trustees look at things as they do all the time. Can we improve? Do we need to think about something else? I’m not focused on it at all. The Carrier Dome is a great place to play. It’s right on campus. The only concern would be roof stability. About a new place, my only concern would be availability: when can we get to practice? This has been talked about behind the scenes for a long time. There’s a little more state money right now. There are a lot of issues. The people in charge have to take a long look at this. I have my hands full right now.” Matt noted that the two games tonight were being played in two recently opened arenas that are “state of the art”: the Fed Ex Forum and the KFC Yum Center. JB: Those are great facilities but they aren’t unique. The Carrier Dome is unique.” That sounds more like his comments in this earlier article:

http://www.syracuse.com/orangebasketball/index.ssf/2014/01/with_talk_swirling_about_new_a.html

Matt added: “Besides, we want to compete for the attendance title.”


Ed in Syracuse suggested that we lower the floor in the Carrier Dome to put more seats in there. Matt said he’s put that bon the wish list. Jim said that are more likely to raise the floor. “I don’t know how they’d configure it. But if they configure it more vertically you could get more seats closer to the court. But if you fit in the width of a football field it’s still going to be a ways away. They figured out the Dome pretty well. A revamp could be done and you could make improvements and give it some things it doesn’t have now.” Matt noted that “there have been several advancement sin stadium construction win 1978.”JB: If you had to take the Dome down that’s a lot of concrete to move. Any fix of the Dome would be done quickly so as not to miss a season. Or a new building would be built while the Dome was in use.” Matt suggested something could be done like what they do at North Carolina State where the students sit in chairs around the court. JB: “That could be looked into.


Tom from Fabius wanted to know when we stopped playing man-to-man, how slowly the change was implemented and does any other team play exclusively zone the way we do? JB: “Only Rob Murphy at Eastern Michigan plays the way we do and he’s won more games there than they have for a long time. Temple used to play zone all the time. Five years ago we struggled against LeMoyne playing man to man and we decided to just play zone all the time. It’s been good for us. It gives us more time to practice it.” Matt said it was “total commitment to the zone” that helps them not only practice it but to recruit for it. JB: “At times we’ve played good man-to-man. We’ve even had success switching to it. But you can adjust the zone and you can do it better and more if you practice it more.”


Scott in Booneville wondered if we have a 1-3-1 in our arsenal”. JB: “No we don’t have a 1-3-1 in our arsenal. It’s not a good defense vs. three point teams.”


They talked about Pittsburgh. “They had a bad shooting game vs. Cincinnati. They could have been undefeated in the Top 10.” They talked about Lamar Patterson, (Perry’s brother), who is “a great story of what happens in the Big East: players develop and get better. He’s very good on both ends of the court.” (I assume the same thing will happen in the ACC.) Talib Zanna is “super physical- the best big man we’ll see this year. You have to be aware of Zanna but the guards shoot it well. James Robinson is great point guard. They are 16-1. They are good against any defense. It’s no surprise- in the last 10 years, Pitt has won the most games of anyone in the Big East.”


Pat wanted to know if, when there is a break-away situation on defense, would Coach prefer his team foul or let them go to avoid the foul? JB: “You don’t want to give up a bucket. But you don’t want to foul and get them into a one and one. We use fouls late in the game. Even then, you want them to go for the ball. We fouled McAdoo late because he’s not a good foul shooter. BC missed some late, too.”


Pat also wanted to know his it’s true what Coach K said: If you lose less guys they will play with more intensity.” Jim wasn’t sure Coach K said that. “All coaches have to figure out how many to play- who gives you the best chance of winning. Players who make simple mistakes in practice will make worse ones in a game. I could have pulled out Trevor when he missed some shots but he’s capable of getting hot so I left him in. You can argue about it. That’s what talk radio is for.”


Randy asked what Jim is going to do about our rebounding weakness. JB: “This is the best rebounding team we’ve had in years, so the others must have been really terrible. We are rebounding better and our turnover ratio is huge. But everything can improve. Our rebounding can improve. Our offense can improve. Our defense can improve. It’s a lot better to be 17-0 and say than.”


At this point Matt started listing Syracuse’s rankings in various statistics. We are 44th in rebound margin with +5.6, 6th in turnover margin, 12 in ste4als, 12th in opponent scoring but only 89th in field goal percentage defense and 121st in three point percentage defense, JB jumped on that, demanding that Matt figure out those last two numbers without the games in Hawaii, where the basket was about the size of a hula hoop. That led to a running thing that bled over into the Gomez portion where Matt was “working on it”.

 

[orange79]

Thanks, SWC!

 

[bballbeadle]

Typical JB: “This is the best rebounding team we’ve had in years, so the others must have been really terrible." Hyuck!

 

[Alcuse01]

Interesting about the students in chairs around the court... I'd like that

 

[SWC75]

With Gomez:


Gomez recently finished second in a comedy competition at the Funny Bone in destiny USA. He won $50 but lost to an 18 year old from Rochester. Jim congratulated him for winning the money but commiserated with him for losing to an 18 year old from Rochester.


They discussed Bruce Springsteen’s new album that has gotten mixed reviews. Gomez wondered if it would still be on JB’s new I-Pad. “I like him. But I don’t listen to music much. I like it but I don’t think about it.” Jim likes the I-pad because it’s easier to read on an airplane and you can get basketball games on it, too.


Matt was still working on the team stats without Hawaii. He about had it done but it printed out “across the room”. Gomez said that some of the stats they use these days “sound like they were made up” and cited something he read that Tyler Ennis was leading the country in “Win Shares”. Neither he nor JB knew what that meant. If you look up “Win Shares” on Wikipedia:

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

you will find this sentence:

“The formula for calculating win shares is complicated; it takes up pages 16–100 in the book.”

That’s about all I need to know about it. We aren’t trying to put a man on the Moon here, just to figure out what happened in a basketball game. Coach said he looks at rebounding, turnovers, shooting percentage, etc. The simple stuff. That’s been good enough for 937 wins to date, so I guess it’s enough.


Matt finally gave us a few percentages and the differences. I decided to do some statisticizing myself:


Overall, we are averaging 72.8 points to 58.4 for our opponents. The NCAA rankings are only updated weekly and the current ones don’t include the BC game but by last week’s numbers, we would rank 165th in scoring and our scoring defense would rank #8. (Remember when we used to be thought of as a run and gun offensive team?). In Hawaii we averaged 80.3 and our opposition 71.7, which would change those rankings to 33rd and 211th. If you take Hawaii out of the sample, we are averaging 71.1 (209th) and giving up 55.6 (3rd).


On overall field goal percentage we are shooting .459 (105th) and giving up .414, (97th). In Hawaii we shot .491 (14th) to .503 (340th). Without Hawaii our numbers are .451 (143rd) vs. .394 (37th).


The NCAA doesn’t separate out 2 point field goal percentage, (as they should: it’s the most important stat in the game) but here they are: Overall: .501-.482. Hawaii .515-.582 (ouch!). Non-Hawaii: .498-.332. I think we were so focused on covering the shooters in Hawaii that we didn’t both to stop anything inside. Our opponents took 62 three pointers in three games vs. 91 two-pointers, (40.5%). We were 39/134, (22.5%).


Overall we have hit 35.1% of our treys (127th) to .332 (140th). In Hawaii: .410 (12th) vs. .387 (325th). Non-Hawaii: .341 (170th) vs. .320 (94th).


We have hit 69.6% of our free throws (168th). Our opposition had hit .670. There’s not such thing as “free throw defense” but that would ranked the opponent #252 as a free throw shooting team. In Hawaii we hit a ridiculous .887, 55 for 62 which would be #1 in the country by 90 percentage points. Our opponents hit .740 (39th). Non-Hawaii: .661 (272nd) vs. .655 (289th).


Hawaii’s rims sure helped but we did shoot pretty well on our own, especially from the line and we gave up a lot defending the threes.


Gomez complains that our RPI differs depending on who is figuring it out. JB said that it depended on what information they feed in to it. You would think that would be standard.


I called in my second question after first discussing Win Shares, per above and suggesting that Matt compute our Win Shares in Hawaii. (He declined.) I also thought the smart guys at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute could come up with a better system than RPI. JB: “The official scorer, as a courtesy is supposed to ask the coaches for their starting line-ups 10 minutes before the game. They never did and he put in the starters we had had before- he thought. It would have been a technical foul if we hadn’t started what he put down. I’ve never had that happen in 38 years. There’s a first time for everything.”


Gomez asked what would have happened if DaJuan Coleman had had to play. “He’s sore. He hasn’t responded to treatments. He’s got to be able to practice hard with no swelling. He gives us another weapon inside. This provides Tyler Roberson with an opportunity off the bench.”


Gomez described Pittsburgh as “Old School- two former Big East teams getting together.” JB: “They are still good- one of the best teams in the country.


They discussed the number of transfers playing for various teams across the country. JB: “It’s close to 500 just in D-1. Kids aren’t happy and want more and more and they don’t do any better wherever they go. But their people think they are better than what they are. Trevor Cooney could have transferred and be sitting out this year.” How does a player transfer in? “He must first get a release from the school he is attending. Then other schools can talk to him. Usually the player picks a school. Rarely, he might talk to 2-3 schools, looking for the exact right place.” JB seems to have a higher opinion of the players who transferred in, (Leo Rautins, Ryan Blackwell, Wes Johnson) than of the ones who transferred out.


Gomez brought up the Chane Behannan situation. He’s not “auditioning” for Colorado State. JB: “It was not a contentious relationship with the coach. it was an issue with the university. Coach Pitino gave him numerous chances- 2-3 suspension- to get the problem resolved. “ Gomez asked if he’d rather have a marginal player that gave him no problems or a great player who was a “maintenance guy”. JB: “When you are dealing with 18-22 year old players you are going to have issues. You have to work through them. Most guys know the deal here. You choose it. There are 8-10 players out of 3500, (I assume he means at Division 1 schools) who cause problems. We brand kids by a couple or a few. 90%+ go to class and play basketball. You don’t read about them. It’s not a story. 50-60 guys get into fights on Marshall Street over a weekend. But only athletes make the papers. Behannan’s loss will hurt them. They also lost Dieng from last year’s team. Their two big men. But they are still very good.”


Mark wanted to know how JB reacted to Trevor Cooney blowing a wide-open lay-up, calling it “a freak of nature”. JB: “He got up and was off-balance and did focus as much as he should have. You just move on and kid him about it later. When something very good or very bad happens, it’s best to just move on.” Unless… “It’s a bad pass or a bad shot, not working hard enough or being out of position on defense. It’s no good to correct it later.”


Rickie in Syracuse predicted that we will win the national championship and said that this time reminds him of our 2003 team, full of weapons with great chemistry, etc. JB: “I’ll go along with that.”


Gomez noted that we are now down to three unbeaten teams- Arizona, Syracuse and Wichita State. JB There’s a long way to go. You’ve just started when the conference schedule begins.” Gomez also noted that a couple of teams we faced with possibly having to forfeit games because they didn’t realize that their opponent had not yet re-classified as Division 2 despite joining Division 1 conferences:

http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebask.../92437/ncaa-rules-force-schools-into-forfeits

JB said the proper decision was not to apply the rules too harshly and he thinks the NCAA did the right thing in not demanding the forfeits.


Mike wanted to know if Carmelo Anthony was “a Baltimore guy or a New York guy”. JB: “He’s spent most of this time in Baltimore. He was in New York when he was younger. He has a good feeling for New York.” Did he have a favorite NBA team when he played at SU? “I don’t know. But he always wanted to play in New York. He’ll be a free agent. I don’t know what he’ll do.”


Taylor called in on a garbled cell-phone. Gomez credited him with “a keen observation”. Taylor tried again. Apparently he was asking “Does anybody ever come you to you and tell you that you stink?” or something like that. JB: “I try not to think about that.” Gomez thanked Taylor for his call and they moved on.


Tim said that Tyler Ennis and Trevor Cooney “didn’t do much vs. North Carolina. If they shoot the lights out, we are unbeatable.” JB: “Nobody ever plays good all the time. You hope when one guy’s down others will pick you up. And if the shots aren’t falling, players have to find other ways to contribute.”


They talked about the NBA. Miami has lost three in a row and were down by 32 to the Wizards at one point. “If the Heat are healthy they will be the team to beat.” Greg Oden got into a game. “Bad knees on big guys don’t just get better.” LeBron expressed “jealousy” about how many shots Kevin Durrant is allowed to take. “If he wanted to he’d take more shots. He’s LeBron. He has the ball all the time. Don’t worry about LeBron James. He’s very happy.” Anthony Bennett may have go to the “D” league. “He’s not a ‘bust’ in his first year. He’s still an 18-19 year old kid.” Actually, he’s 20:

http://espn.go.com/nba/player/_/id/2991473/anthony-bennett


The NBA is trying to crack down on flopping. “They are trying to get it out of the game with fines and punishments. They are watching ti more closely this year.” How about simply not calling it a foul? Mark Cuban said he wants to draw one more fine before David Stern retires. They remembered when Cuban had to work at a Dairy Queen for saying that Ed Rush, the NBA’s director of officiating “couldn’t manage a Dairy Queen”.


John wanted to know if the Big East has lost its “automatic qualifier” for the BCS and can they sue about it? “The decision is made by a committee they are one so they can’t sue. People were moving out because of fear that they’d lose their automatic qualifier.” Of course, if they didn’t move out, they wouldn’t have.” Maryland has its own law suit to try to get out of paying $50 million to the ACC. “You can’t blame them. The lawyers will be the big winners.”


Pat wondered how the new emphasis in the rules was affecting “defensive philosophies”. JB: “They are now calling things they weren’t calling. Conference play is usually more physical. They are trying not to have that happen. It’s too early to tell. We’ll see. Whatever they do or don’t call you have to play the game and not let it affect your play.”


Nathan in Nedrow wondered if Jim liked coaching a deep team like the Onuaku team, (I assume he means 2009-10) or one like this year’s team with more of a set line-up. “We have 7-8 guys. You can play 7 or 9. We’d like to have one more guy playing, (Coleman).”


Instant replay in baseball? “Get it right. That’s what’s important.” Clayton Kershaw’s new contract? “He’s good and they have a lot of money.” JB said that his daughter is a fan of both the Yankees and the Red Sox. “She obviously doesn’t know a lot about baseball.”


Kevin in Syracuse was a young fan. He said he liked the coach and that he was a great coach. So was his father, who could be heard in the background feeding Kevin his lines. JB: “Thanks. I need all the fans I can get.”