Schadenfreude is so sweet this time of year.
A month or so ago, those fans who've always felt somehow superior to Jim Boeheim stirred each other into a fevered chorus of criticism of Boeheim over the struggles this year's team was having early on. To them, Boeheim's retirement could not come soon enough. They felt the problem was obvious: Jim Boeheim couldn't see the potential in Kadary Richmond, Jesse Edwards, and Robert Braswell. He was making a serious coaching mistake by not giving his best players the lion's share of the available PT (as they saw it from their living rooms).
Now that the season has turned around, these same critics are now proclaiming that because the increased effective participation of these key reserves in recent weeks has coincided with the impressive string of victories the team has pulled off, is definitive proof that they were right and Boeheim was wrong a month ago when they were clamoring for KR, JE, and RB to be playing more.
It's a logical fallacy.
It presumes that Boeheim was not aware of the contributions that those three players could make by the end of the season, but there is zero evidence that this is true. Indeed, Boeheim was the first to identify their potential, long before any fans were aware, but he was also aware of the mistakes they were making in practice, the kind that could cause his team to lose games with unforced turnovers and/or missed opportunities.
At no time did Boeheim say anything to suggest that he didn't believe these guys would eventually be able to help the team later in the season. He only said that he didn't think they were ready to play more...yet. So THE difference of opinion between Jim Boeheim and his harshest fan critics was only ever over when these players should be getting more minutes in games. Now...or later? The fans said now, Boeheim said later.
Boeheim said later for a reason. He's been coaching teams for decades, has seen them develop over the course of a season, correcting their mistakes, getting the newer players to a level of familiarity with The Plan to where they can come into games without putting victories in jeopardy with their errors. This is why--especially early in the season--Boeheim will ALWAYS go with more experienced players if/whenever a game is in doubt.
Let the record show that Boeheim did not play them more earlier as the fans said he should. He played them later. And we now know the outcome of Boeheim ignoring the advice of fans and stubbornly coaching his team his way. He did start to give these player more PT when he felt they might be ready to contribute, and not before. That his team has turned out to be a smashing success is a supreme tribute to Jim Boeheim's coaching genius, his ability to develop a team over the course of a season into a competitive tornado.
To those fans who are now trying to take credit for the team's current success, I say feel free to embrace whatever delusional rationalizations you wish, but understand that the coincidence of the team winning big end-of-season games and the greater participation of key reserves does NOT prove your case that they should have played more earlier.
Since Boeheim did not play them earlier, it is not logically possible to infer that doing so would have achieved anything. That experiment was not tried so it's not possible to declare it a success. But Boeheim's approach was tried and the results have been spectacular. He's made his case, but you're left with an unproven theory that is extraordinarily weak and unpersuasive, IMO.
