SWC75
Bored Historian
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(I’ve long planned to do an ‘Upside of Jim Boeheim’ and a ‘Downside’ upon the termination of his career as head coach here. I was going to start one today and the title had a familiar ring. I’d actually done it before – twelve years ago, after the 2011 season. Then I updated it in 2014:
syracusefan.com
I decided to update that. Nine years ago was a significant time. It was the end of our great stretch from 2009-14 where we averaged 30-7 and reached the #1 ranking in three different seasons. Since then we’ve averaged 19-14 and been ranked #10 once after we shocked everyone getting to the Final Four and #25 once and that’s been it, so the updating, especially on the Downside was significant. My 2023 writing is in italics.)
- Years ago I bought a book called “The Modern Encyclopedia of Basketball by Zander Hollander. One section of it gave the year-by-year records of all the major college schools over the years. It also listed the coach each year. I couldn’t help but notice that certain schools were lucky enough to have the same coach for decades, with repeated success year after year. I couldn’t help but wonder what it was like to have been a Kansas fan over the 39 seasons that Phog Allen coached there and won 771 games or to be a Kentucky fan in the 42 years Adolph Rupp coached there and won 874 games or to be an Oklahoma State fan during the 37 years Hank Iba coached there and won 767 games. Well, we’ve gotten to see an era like that right here at Syracuse and we’ve gotten to see it because of Jim Boeheim.
(He has been here for 47 seasons and has won 1,120 games. I count all the games since he became head coach – none of this “Mike Hopkins coached 9 games” or “the NCAA took away 101 games” stuff – it’s been Jim’s team all the way and those games took place).
Syracuse Orange Men's Basketball Index | College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com )
- It's not correct that Jim "built this program up from nothing", as some have claimed. Syracuse basketball has been pretty successful for most of its history. The thing it, basketball was a minor sport on most campuses through the 1950's and in the Fred Lewis and Roy Danforth eras, we were a respected eastern program but not a national power. It was Jim Boeheim, in concert with the Dome, the Big East and ESPN that made us into a national power. Jim has won 54% of all the games Syracuse has ever won in basketball, (1,120 of 2,074). In the years BB, (Before Boeheim), when I heard the name of our city on the national news, it was always "Syracuse New York", to distinguish it from some small towns of the same name in Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio and Utah, and maybe the one in Sicily. I remember sort of resenting that. Don't they know where we are? In the years AB, we became "the Cuse".
- It’s interesting to see other coaches and schools come into national prominence and then fade while we keep on going. Some of them go in and out of phase, others just fade away. The top 25 in 1977 was led by Michigan and included Marquette, Alabama, Wake Forest, Tennessee, all of whom have been very good at times since then but also not very good at other times. It also included UNLV, San Francisco, Detroit, (coached by Dick Vitale), Charlotte and VMI. Where are they now? Over the years we’ve lost in the NCAAs to Charlotte, Western Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio State, Virginia, Georgia Tech, Navy, Indiana, Rhode Island, Illinois, Minnesota, Richmond, Massachusetts, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Duke, Oklahoma State, Michigan State, Kansas, Alabama, Vermont, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Butler, Marquette, Ohio State, Michigan, Dayton, (and now North Carolina, Baylor and Houston). How many of those schools would you rather have rooted for the last 47 years rather than SU? In the Big East conference, St. John’s Boston College, Villanova, Pittsburgh and Seton Hall have all had powerful teams at times. But they’ve not been able to maintain excellence. We even outlasted Georgetown and owned Connecticut before Jim Calhoun showed up. Even when UCONN is down, they get farther down than we seem to be in our worst years. We had 51 consecutive winning seasons, the second longest streak in history, (the record is 54 by UCLA). Somehow the temporary success of others is easier to take when you know it won’t last and your success will and that’s the feeling SU fans enjoyed for decades.
- I decided to look up the victory totals of the top schools around the country since the 1976-77 season. Here are the ones I bothered to check: North Carolina 1006 wins, Kansas 1003, Duke 997, Kentucky 979, Syracuse 948, Louisville 898, Georgetown 862, Memphis 857, UNLV 854, UCLA 851, Arizona 845, Florida 842, Connecticut 833, Oklahoma 832, Arkansas 824, Illinois 819, Michigan State 803, Indiana 793, Villanova 783, Michigan 765, Marquette 761, Maryland 741 we’re in pretty good company. We complain about the team and the coach sometimes but most college basketball fans would wonder why.
(Instead of updating this to 2022-23 I’ll just link you to a post I made when the streak reached 50 years: A look at "The Streak" )
- Another great feeling is knowing that we can play anybody, anywhere and have a shot to beat them. In an off year, (2005-06), we played eventual double national champion Florida in the Garden and the game was close until the Gators pulled it out by 5 at the end. In GMAC’s last year we lost to Cincinnati, UCONN, Georgetown and Pitt in the regular season but beat them all in New York. The next season we dominated the Hoyas- and saw them in the Final Four. In 2008-09 we beat the previous three national champions- Florida, (twice) and Kansas and the team Kansas beat, Memphis. In 2009-10 we blew out defending champion UNC. In 2011, we did the same to Michigan State. In 2013 we beat Louisville’s national champions. Connecticut has won three national championships- and we beat all three teams. Over the years we’ve played- and beaten- nearly everybody you can name who’s been any good, including everybody on the above list except Arkansas, (a game in which it could be said we beat Syracuse, because we had Arkansas beat). Who would you not want to see on the schedule next year? Anybody?
(Update: In 2015 we beat a #12 Louisville team and a #9 Notre Dame team. in 2016 we beat a #18 Connecticut team, a #25 Texas A&M team, a #20 Duke team, a #25 Notre Dame team and a #4 Virginia team. In 2017, we beat a #6 Florida State team, a #11 Virginia team and a #10 Duke team. In 2018, we beat a #18 Clemson team and a #5 Michigan State team. In 2019, we beat a #16 Ohio State team, a #1 Duke team and a #18 Louisville team. In 2020 we beat a #18 Virginia team. In 2021 we beat a #16 Virginia Tech team, a #16 San Diego State team and a #13 West Virginia team. This year we beat a #23 NC State team. And that’s our ‘down’ period.)
- Another great pleasure is watching great players play the game. According to the SU Media Guide, Jimmy’s coached 27 All-Americans: Roosevelt Bouie, Louis Orr, Danny Schayes, Eric Santifer, Leo Rautins, Rafael Addison, Pearl Washington, Wendell Alexis, Derrick Coleman, Sherman Douglas, Rony Seikaly, Stevie Thompson, Billy Owens, Lawrence Moten, John Wallace, Etan Thomas, Preston Shumpert, Carmelo Anthony, Hakim Warrick, Gerry McNamara, Demetris Nichols, Jonny Flynn and Wes Johnson, Andy Rautins, Rick Jackson, Kris Joseph and this year, CJ Fair. Most of them have been selected multiple times.
(Update: add Rakeem Christmas. We’ve had some very good players since but, as you’ve heard: induvial honors tend to follow from team success.)
- JB, in 47 years here, has compiled a record of 1,120 wins and 446 losses, a winning percentage of .715. I recall a man at work scoffing at Jim’s record, saying “Yeah, but it was all against cupcakes! Not exactly. I went through the scores in the SU Media guide and compared it to several listings in the NCAA Guide and other sources on the internet. (Disclaimer: this is a method naturally prone to human error: perusing scores and lists and keeping a stroke tally. I can’t claim the numbers are 100% accurate but the conclusions drawn from them likely are.) I looked at SU’s record in conference games, in conference tournament games, (the old ECAC playoffs in the late 70’s and the Big East since 1980), in NCAA or NIT tournament games, vs. teams that wound up ranked in the final coaches or writer’s top 25 poll, vs. teams that played that year in the NCAA tournament, (including SU’s NCAA games themselves), and SU’s record against “top coaches”, that is coaches listed in the NCAA Guide as having won more than 500 games, (as of now, not at the time of the game), or having won at least 70% of their games in at least 10 years, (again, as of now). I also looked at the team’s record in games decided by less than 10 points or in overtime and in games played home and away from the two Domes.
- JB’s all time Big East/ACC record stands at 407-206 .664, the most conference wins of any Big East coach by far. Of course, he’s the only coach was there the whole way but that’s a point in his favor, too.
(Update: our ACC record, including the ACCT from 2015 on is 89-89)
- JB is 51-31, (.622) in conference tourney games. I also checked how he did when seeded as a favorite and an underdog. He’s 31-14 as a favorite, (.689) and 20-17, (.541) as an underdog. He’s 9-5 in the NIT and 53-29 in the NCAA tournament, for a total post season record of 113-65 (.635). He’s been upset as a favorite 31 times but has pulled off 27 upsets as an underdog. He’s only been an underdog 59 times so he’s actually more likely to pull off an upset as an underdog, (46% of the time), than to be upset as a favorite, (26% of the time). And when Syracuse is an underdog, we are likely playing one of the top teams in the country.
(Update: Since 2015 we are 5-7 in ACCT games. We are 4-1 as a favorite and 1-6 as an underdog. The one win by 39 points! In the NCAAT, we are 9-4, 2-1 as a favorite and 6-3 as an underdog with the other win coming in an 11 vs. 11 ‘first four’ game. Ironically in the whole mediocre period from 2015-23, we’ve been in the NIT only once: 2017 when we went 1-1, both as a favorite. So Jim’s been a post season underdog 75 times and won 34 times: 45%. He’s 93-36 as a favorite and won that ‘first four’ game for a total post-season record of 128-78: 62%.)
- The one area where Jim comes up on the short end is vs. ranked teams. He’s 120-145 vs. teams in the final season rankings. Syracuse has generally been a ranked team itself, finishing in the top 25 twenty-five times in 47 years and the top 10 fifteen times. But many of these games have pitted a Syracuse team that was not a top 25 team against a team that was. They have at least been competitive vs. ranked teams, winning 45.3% of the time. 20.9% of JB’s games have been against teams that wound up in the top 25 in the final rankings and 12.7% of his wins have come against them.
(Update: in the last nine years we are 20-50 vs. ranked teams. We’ve been ranked in only two of those games and lost both as the lesser ranked team. Our NCAA teams were not ranked when they pulled off their upsets. JB winds up 140-195 vs. ranked teams, .417. That’s 21.4% of his games and 12.5% of his wins.)
- JB has a better record against teams that made the Big Dance, 295-227, (.565). That’s 41.2% of his games vs. NCAA teams and 31.1% of his wins.
(Update: I have us at 36-65 vs. NCAAT teams since 2015, including 3-20 these last two years. That brings it down to 331-292, still a winning record at .531. 39.8% of Jim’s games have been against NCAAT teams and 29.6% of his wins.)
- Against top coaches, Jim has a top record, 215-157, and (.578). That’s 29.3% of his games and 22.7% of his wins.
(Update: I’m not sure what criteria I used for ‘top coaches’ so I’m updating this based on the lists on pages 6-10 of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Record Book section on coaches:
http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/m_basketball_RB/2023/Coaches.pdf and Orangehoops’ page on SU’s record vs. various opponents -click on the school name for details:
Jim is 305-224 (.577) all time against the coaches on those lists. That’s 33.8% of his games and 27.2% of his wins. Coaches he’s played at least 5 times:
Rick Barnes 10-4, John Beilein 8-2, Tony Bennett 3-12, Mike Brey 20-10, Jim Calhoun 30-26, John Calipari 2-3, Lou Carnesecca 18-12, Gale Catlett 9-4, Mick Cronin 6-2, Denny Crum 3-4, Tom Davis 3-4, Jamie Dixon 8-15, Lefty Driesell 0-5, Leonard Hamilton 19-9, Ben Howland 5-4, Bob Huggins 6-1, Tom Izzo 5-1, Greg Kampe 5-0, Bobby Knight 4-1, Mike Krzyzewski 5-13, Jim Larranaga 7-7, Rollie Massimino 18-15, Rick Pitino 11-15, Eddie Sutton 2-3, John Thompson 21-25, Gary Williams 11-3, Roy Williams 6-11, Jay Wright 9-13. JB is 149-155 against coaches who have won national championships.)
- In close games, (decided by less than 10 points or overtime), where it’s no longer about the talent level but instead about who makes the plays and which coach makes the best decisions, JB is 346-201, (.633). That’s 43.1% of his games and 36.5% of his wins. He’s 40-23 in overtime.
(Update: In the last nine years Jim was 66-58 in close games: 53.2%, a significantly worse but still a winning record. Overall he wound up at 412-259: 61.4%. That’s 43.8% of his games and 36.8% of his wins. In the last nine years he’s 10-10 in OT games, making him 50-33 for his career: 60.2%)
- Jim Boeheim’s teams have a sterling home record: 562-98 (.852). Of course many of those teams were the “December” teams, imported to supply beatable opposition in the Dome from schools that won’t request a game in their place. The record away from home is perhaps a better test. There he’s 386-222, (including neutral sites and post season), a very respectable .635 winning percentage. If a coach had his team play every game on the road and he won 63.5% of the time, would you think he’s pretty good? JB’s teams are good road warriors. Only 7 of them have had losing road records, the worst being 5-9.
(Update: Over the last nine years, JB was 121-51 in the Dome: 70.3% and 51-75 away from it: 40.5%, showing the decline in our fortunes. But Jim’s overall record is 683-149 at home: 82.1% and 437-297 away from it: 59.5%)
- I’ve always felt that the real measure of a coach isn’t the heights his team reaches but rather the “floor” below which his team rarely or never falls. Basketball isn’t “rocketship science”. The same strategies and techniques are known and available to all coaches. Some schools have advantages in recruiting talent but you still have to do the hard work in keeping in contact with players and their families and saying the right things without promising too much. And the opposition is trying to do the same thing. Then you have to read people and “handle” them and “motivate” them. Finally you have game strategy and decision making. Doing those things right is as far as a coach can take it. The players have to take it beyond that if it’s going to be taken beyond that. Jim Boeheim has never had a losing record in 38 years. His worst team, 1981-82, was 16-13 and the team was that bad because his star, Leo Rautins, got hurt and missed 7 games. One other team won 19 games. Two more teams have won 20 games, the standard of success for most programs. Three teams won 21 games, four have won 22, five have won 23, (strangely) one has won 24, (24 is his all-time average and has been for years but 2006-07 was the first year his team wound up with that total), one has won 25, nine have won 26, two have won 27, two have won 28, one has won 29, four have won 30, one has won 31 and the 2011-12 team won 34 games. Jimmy has done this with a lot of talent, (although the NBA has hardly been an SU alumni club), but also with what every college coach faces: a kaleidoscopic line-up of young men who have not yet fully matured either on or off the court. Each team has to be reinvented from players who are pieces from a jigsaw puzzle for which the coach never has all the pieces. Each team lacks something: size, quickness, inside scoring, outside shooting, ball handling, rebounding, experience, leadership. But he comes up with a winner each year. Even schools like UNC, (8-20 in 2001-02), Kansas, (13-16 in 1982-83), Kentucky, (13-19 in 1988-89), Duke, (13-18 in 1994-95), Georgetown, (13-15 in 2003-04), Louisville, (12-20 in 1997-98), Arkansas, (9-19 in 2002-03), UCLA, (10-19 in 2002-03), Arizona, (4-24 in 1982-83) and Indiana (6-25 in 2008-09), have had truly bad seasons. We never do.
(Update: Well, we do now. After 45 consecutive winning teams Jim finally had a loser in his penultimate season, a 16-17 team in 2021-22. I have a correction here: Jim’s average seasonal record for his first 38 seasons was 25-8. It was 19-14 over the last nine years. The full 47 year average is 24-9. It’s still the best ‘floor’ anybody in college basketball has had over that period. Almost any fan base in America would love to be us.)
- As a result, Jim Boeheim has become one of the most successful coaches in the nation, one of the most prominent sporting figures and the most famous person in our community. He’s used his position to become a leader in raising charitable donations for many causes and had travels throughout the country on their behalf. It’s caused him to be admired as a person as well as respected as a coach. It’s not what a coach is hired for and not what he’s eventually evaluated for but it’s something that would leave huge shoes to fill for any other coach.
(He’s also married well and has a fabulous family, sort of a ‘royal family of Syracuse’ and terrific representatives for our community.)
- Nobody ever has to ask what Jim Boeheim thinks. He’s not shy about telling you. Some people find him hypersensitive and at the same time insensitive to others. Maybe so but he’s never less than honest with his feelings. After all the years of G-Rob’s trying to find the sunshine or Coach P mumbling his way through press conferences and Coach Mac before him putting on a show but avoiding the issue, listening to JB is a treat - most of the time.
- In my “Following a Legend” post, (a couple of years back) I looked at the top 25 winningest coaches of all time in both football and basketball, (Division1 only and I used total wins rather than percentages). 37 of those 50 coaches retired at the school they became a legend at. In five cases, the legend’s successor had a higher winning percentage than he did, 13.5%. The program declined after the legend’s retirement 86.5% of the time. The likelihood is that someday we will be asked by someone who didn’t experience what it was like rooting for Syracuse University Basketball in the Jim Boeheim era. And what we will say is likely to be pretty positive. All a fan can ask for is to root for a team that is good every year and has the potential for something great to happen each year and Syracuse fans have had that for 38 years.
(I updated the “Following a Legend” post two years ago: Following a Legend (Updated)
In that update I found that 74% of the time, the next coach after the legend had a worse winning percentage than his famous predecessor. I was asked to compare the later years of the legend to the new guys’ tenure. I looked at the last five years of the legend vs. the first 5 years of the new guy and the legend was still better than his successor 64% of the time.)
- There is nothing automatic about success in college sports. The identity of the coach can make a huge difference. Look at what North Carolina went through after Dean Smith left and before Roy Williams came back to bail them out. Look at Nebraska football since Tom Osborne retired. Even when a prominent coach stays, as with Joe Paterno at Penn State, there can be problems maintaining success. We have had an experience with “improving” the football program by changing the coach. So far, there have been no such problems with Syracuse basketball in the Jim Boeheim era. One poster said, trying to answer a series of posts praising JB, that he hopes SU would win the national championship this year so that Boeheim will retire and then we can get someone better as coach. We would, in that scenario, be replacing a coach that would have won 948 games and 2 national titles. Who would we get who we know would top that?
(OK, so it’s now 1,120 wins and 1 national title. Red Autry won’t come close to the first number. Maybe he can match the second. Then he could be a legend, too.)
- In the end, there’s only one Jim Boeheim. We will never see an era like his again and it’s likely nobody else will, either.
The Upside of JB
(This is an update of a post I last did after the 2010-11 season. There hadn't been much criticism of JB since then so I hadn't felt the need to repost it. Yes, there will be a "Downside of JB" post to accompany it, as there was back then.) - Years ago I bought a book called “The Modern...
syracusefan.com
- Years ago I bought a book called “The Modern Encyclopedia of Basketball by Zander Hollander. One section of it gave the year-by-year records of all the major college schools over the years. It also listed the coach each year. I couldn’t help but notice that certain schools were lucky enough to have the same coach for decades, with repeated success year after year. I couldn’t help but wonder what it was like to have been a Kansas fan over the 39 seasons that Phog Allen coached there and won 771 games or to be a Kentucky fan in the 42 years Adolph Rupp coached there and won 874 games or to be an Oklahoma State fan during the 37 years Hank Iba coached there and won 767 games. Well, we’ve gotten to see an era like that right here at Syracuse and we’ve gotten to see it because of Jim Boeheim.
(He has been here for 47 seasons and has won 1,120 games. I count all the games since he became head coach – none of this “Mike Hopkins coached 9 games” or “the NCAA took away 101 games” stuff – it’s been Jim’s team all the way and those games took place).
Syracuse Orange Men's Basketball Index | College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com )
- It's not correct that Jim "built this program up from nothing", as some have claimed. Syracuse basketball has been pretty successful for most of its history. The thing it, basketball was a minor sport on most campuses through the 1950's and in the Fred Lewis and Roy Danforth eras, we were a respected eastern program but not a national power. It was Jim Boeheim, in concert with the Dome, the Big East and ESPN that made us into a national power. Jim has won 54% of all the games Syracuse has ever won in basketball, (1,120 of 2,074). In the years BB, (Before Boeheim), when I heard the name of our city on the national news, it was always "Syracuse New York", to distinguish it from some small towns of the same name in Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio and Utah, and maybe the one in Sicily. I remember sort of resenting that. Don't they know where we are? In the years AB, we became "the Cuse".
- It’s interesting to see other coaches and schools come into national prominence and then fade while we keep on going. Some of them go in and out of phase, others just fade away. The top 25 in 1977 was led by Michigan and included Marquette, Alabama, Wake Forest, Tennessee, all of whom have been very good at times since then but also not very good at other times. It also included UNLV, San Francisco, Detroit, (coached by Dick Vitale), Charlotte and VMI. Where are they now? Over the years we’ve lost in the NCAAs to Charlotte, Western Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio State, Virginia, Georgia Tech, Navy, Indiana, Rhode Island, Illinois, Minnesota, Richmond, Massachusetts, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Duke, Oklahoma State, Michigan State, Kansas, Alabama, Vermont, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Butler, Marquette, Ohio State, Michigan, Dayton, (and now North Carolina, Baylor and Houston). How many of those schools would you rather have rooted for the last 47 years rather than SU? In the Big East conference, St. John’s Boston College, Villanova, Pittsburgh and Seton Hall have all had powerful teams at times. But they’ve not been able to maintain excellence. We even outlasted Georgetown and owned Connecticut before Jim Calhoun showed up. Even when UCONN is down, they get farther down than we seem to be in our worst years. We had 51 consecutive winning seasons, the second longest streak in history, (the record is 54 by UCLA). Somehow the temporary success of others is easier to take when you know it won’t last and your success will and that’s the feeling SU fans enjoyed for decades.
- I decided to look up the victory totals of the top schools around the country since the 1976-77 season. Here are the ones I bothered to check: North Carolina 1006 wins, Kansas 1003, Duke 997, Kentucky 979, Syracuse 948, Louisville 898, Georgetown 862, Memphis 857, UNLV 854, UCLA 851, Arizona 845, Florida 842, Connecticut 833, Oklahoma 832, Arkansas 824, Illinois 819, Michigan State 803, Indiana 793, Villanova 783, Michigan 765, Marquette 761, Maryland 741 we’re in pretty good company. We complain about the team and the coach sometimes but most college basketball fans would wonder why.
(Instead of updating this to 2022-23 I’ll just link you to a post I made when the streak reached 50 years: A look at "The Streak" )
- Another great feeling is knowing that we can play anybody, anywhere and have a shot to beat them. In an off year, (2005-06), we played eventual double national champion Florida in the Garden and the game was close until the Gators pulled it out by 5 at the end. In GMAC’s last year we lost to Cincinnati, UCONN, Georgetown and Pitt in the regular season but beat them all in New York. The next season we dominated the Hoyas- and saw them in the Final Four. In 2008-09 we beat the previous three national champions- Florida, (twice) and Kansas and the team Kansas beat, Memphis. In 2009-10 we blew out defending champion UNC. In 2011, we did the same to Michigan State. In 2013 we beat Louisville’s national champions. Connecticut has won three national championships- and we beat all three teams. Over the years we’ve played- and beaten- nearly everybody you can name who’s been any good, including everybody on the above list except Arkansas, (a game in which it could be said we beat Syracuse, because we had Arkansas beat). Who would you not want to see on the schedule next year? Anybody?
(Update: In 2015 we beat a #12 Louisville team and a #9 Notre Dame team. in 2016 we beat a #18 Connecticut team, a #25 Texas A&M team, a #20 Duke team, a #25 Notre Dame team and a #4 Virginia team. In 2017, we beat a #6 Florida State team, a #11 Virginia team and a #10 Duke team. In 2018, we beat a #18 Clemson team and a #5 Michigan State team. In 2019, we beat a #16 Ohio State team, a #1 Duke team and a #18 Louisville team. In 2020 we beat a #18 Virginia team. In 2021 we beat a #16 Virginia Tech team, a #16 San Diego State team and a #13 West Virginia team. This year we beat a #23 NC State team. And that’s our ‘down’ period.)
- Another great pleasure is watching great players play the game. According to the SU Media Guide, Jimmy’s coached 27 All-Americans: Roosevelt Bouie, Louis Orr, Danny Schayes, Eric Santifer, Leo Rautins, Rafael Addison, Pearl Washington, Wendell Alexis, Derrick Coleman, Sherman Douglas, Rony Seikaly, Stevie Thompson, Billy Owens, Lawrence Moten, John Wallace, Etan Thomas, Preston Shumpert, Carmelo Anthony, Hakim Warrick, Gerry McNamara, Demetris Nichols, Jonny Flynn and Wes Johnson, Andy Rautins, Rick Jackson, Kris Joseph and this year, CJ Fair. Most of them have been selected multiple times.
(Update: add Rakeem Christmas. We’ve had some very good players since but, as you’ve heard: induvial honors tend to follow from team success.)
- JB, in 47 years here, has compiled a record of 1,120 wins and 446 losses, a winning percentage of .715. I recall a man at work scoffing at Jim’s record, saying “Yeah, but it was all against cupcakes! Not exactly. I went through the scores in the SU Media guide and compared it to several listings in the NCAA Guide and other sources on the internet. (Disclaimer: this is a method naturally prone to human error: perusing scores and lists and keeping a stroke tally. I can’t claim the numbers are 100% accurate but the conclusions drawn from them likely are.) I looked at SU’s record in conference games, in conference tournament games, (the old ECAC playoffs in the late 70’s and the Big East since 1980), in NCAA or NIT tournament games, vs. teams that wound up ranked in the final coaches or writer’s top 25 poll, vs. teams that played that year in the NCAA tournament, (including SU’s NCAA games themselves), and SU’s record against “top coaches”, that is coaches listed in the NCAA Guide as having won more than 500 games, (as of now, not at the time of the game), or having won at least 70% of their games in at least 10 years, (again, as of now). I also looked at the team’s record in games decided by less than 10 points or in overtime and in games played home and away from the two Domes.
- JB’s all time Big East/ACC record stands at 407-206 .664, the most conference wins of any Big East coach by far. Of course, he’s the only coach was there the whole way but that’s a point in his favor, too.
(Update: our ACC record, including the ACCT from 2015 on is 89-89)
- JB is 51-31, (.622) in conference tourney games. I also checked how he did when seeded as a favorite and an underdog. He’s 31-14 as a favorite, (.689) and 20-17, (.541) as an underdog. He’s 9-5 in the NIT and 53-29 in the NCAA tournament, for a total post season record of 113-65 (.635). He’s been upset as a favorite 31 times but has pulled off 27 upsets as an underdog. He’s only been an underdog 59 times so he’s actually more likely to pull off an upset as an underdog, (46% of the time), than to be upset as a favorite, (26% of the time). And when Syracuse is an underdog, we are likely playing one of the top teams in the country.
(Update: Since 2015 we are 5-7 in ACCT games. We are 4-1 as a favorite and 1-6 as an underdog. The one win by 39 points! In the NCAAT, we are 9-4, 2-1 as a favorite and 6-3 as an underdog with the other win coming in an 11 vs. 11 ‘first four’ game. Ironically in the whole mediocre period from 2015-23, we’ve been in the NIT only once: 2017 when we went 1-1, both as a favorite. So Jim’s been a post season underdog 75 times and won 34 times: 45%. He’s 93-36 as a favorite and won that ‘first four’ game for a total post-season record of 128-78: 62%.)
- The one area where Jim comes up on the short end is vs. ranked teams. He’s 120-145 vs. teams in the final season rankings. Syracuse has generally been a ranked team itself, finishing in the top 25 twenty-five times in 47 years and the top 10 fifteen times. But many of these games have pitted a Syracuse team that was not a top 25 team against a team that was. They have at least been competitive vs. ranked teams, winning 45.3% of the time. 20.9% of JB’s games have been against teams that wound up in the top 25 in the final rankings and 12.7% of his wins have come against them.
(Update: in the last nine years we are 20-50 vs. ranked teams. We’ve been ranked in only two of those games and lost both as the lesser ranked team. Our NCAA teams were not ranked when they pulled off their upsets. JB winds up 140-195 vs. ranked teams, .417. That’s 21.4% of his games and 12.5% of his wins.)
- JB has a better record against teams that made the Big Dance, 295-227, (.565). That’s 41.2% of his games vs. NCAA teams and 31.1% of his wins.
(Update: I have us at 36-65 vs. NCAAT teams since 2015, including 3-20 these last two years. That brings it down to 331-292, still a winning record at .531. 39.8% of Jim’s games have been against NCAAT teams and 29.6% of his wins.)
- Against top coaches, Jim has a top record, 215-157, and (.578). That’s 29.3% of his games and 22.7% of his wins.
(Update: I’m not sure what criteria I used for ‘top coaches’ so I’m updating this based on the lists on pages 6-10 of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Record Book section on coaches:
http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/m_basketball_RB/2023/Coaches.pdf and Orangehoops’ page on SU’s record vs. various opponents -click on the school name for details:
Syracuse Orange Basketball All Time Series
Syracuse University Basketball all time series results, showing the record of the Syracuse Orange versus each opponent, with links showing a summary of each series.
orangehoops.org
Rick Barnes 10-4, John Beilein 8-2, Tony Bennett 3-12, Mike Brey 20-10, Jim Calhoun 30-26, John Calipari 2-3, Lou Carnesecca 18-12, Gale Catlett 9-4, Mick Cronin 6-2, Denny Crum 3-4, Tom Davis 3-4, Jamie Dixon 8-15, Lefty Driesell 0-5, Leonard Hamilton 19-9, Ben Howland 5-4, Bob Huggins 6-1, Tom Izzo 5-1, Greg Kampe 5-0, Bobby Knight 4-1, Mike Krzyzewski 5-13, Jim Larranaga 7-7, Rollie Massimino 18-15, Rick Pitino 11-15, Eddie Sutton 2-3, John Thompson 21-25, Gary Williams 11-3, Roy Williams 6-11, Jay Wright 9-13. JB is 149-155 against coaches who have won national championships.)
- In close games, (decided by less than 10 points or overtime), where it’s no longer about the talent level but instead about who makes the plays and which coach makes the best decisions, JB is 346-201, (.633). That’s 43.1% of his games and 36.5% of his wins. He’s 40-23 in overtime.
(Update: In the last nine years Jim was 66-58 in close games: 53.2%, a significantly worse but still a winning record. Overall he wound up at 412-259: 61.4%. That’s 43.8% of his games and 36.8% of his wins. In the last nine years he’s 10-10 in OT games, making him 50-33 for his career: 60.2%)
- Jim Boeheim’s teams have a sterling home record: 562-98 (.852). Of course many of those teams were the “December” teams, imported to supply beatable opposition in the Dome from schools that won’t request a game in their place. The record away from home is perhaps a better test. There he’s 386-222, (including neutral sites and post season), a very respectable .635 winning percentage. If a coach had his team play every game on the road and he won 63.5% of the time, would you think he’s pretty good? JB’s teams are good road warriors. Only 7 of them have had losing road records, the worst being 5-9.
(Update: Over the last nine years, JB was 121-51 in the Dome: 70.3% and 51-75 away from it: 40.5%, showing the decline in our fortunes. But Jim’s overall record is 683-149 at home: 82.1% and 437-297 away from it: 59.5%)
- I’ve always felt that the real measure of a coach isn’t the heights his team reaches but rather the “floor” below which his team rarely or never falls. Basketball isn’t “rocketship science”. The same strategies and techniques are known and available to all coaches. Some schools have advantages in recruiting talent but you still have to do the hard work in keeping in contact with players and their families and saying the right things without promising too much. And the opposition is trying to do the same thing. Then you have to read people and “handle” them and “motivate” them. Finally you have game strategy and decision making. Doing those things right is as far as a coach can take it. The players have to take it beyond that if it’s going to be taken beyond that. Jim Boeheim has never had a losing record in 38 years. His worst team, 1981-82, was 16-13 and the team was that bad because his star, Leo Rautins, got hurt and missed 7 games. One other team won 19 games. Two more teams have won 20 games, the standard of success for most programs. Three teams won 21 games, four have won 22, five have won 23, (strangely) one has won 24, (24 is his all-time average and has been for years but 2006-07 was the first year his team wound up with that total), one has won 25, nine have won 26, two have won 27, two have won 28, one has won 29, four have won 30, one has won 31 and the 2011-12 team won 34 games. Jimmy has done this with a lot of talent, (although the NBA has hardly been an SU alumni club), but also with what every college coach faces: a kaleidoscopic line-up of young men who have not yet fully matured either on or off the court. Each team has to be reinvented from players who are pieces from a jigsaw puzzle for which the coach never has all the pieces. Each team lacks something: size, quickness, inside scoring, outside shooting, ball handling, rebounding, experience, leadership. But he comes up with a winner each year. Even schools like UNC, (8-20 in 2001-02), Kansas, (13-16 in 1982-83), Kentucky, (13-19 in 1988-89), Duke, (13-18 in 1994-95), Georgetown, (13-15 in 2003-04), Louisville, (12-20 in 1997-98), Arkansas, (9-19 in 2002-03), UCLA, (10-19 in 2002-03), Arizona, (4-24 in 1982-83) and Indiana (6-25 in 2008-09), have had truly bad seasons. We never do.
(Update: Well, we do now. After 45 consecutive winning teams Jim finally had a loser in his penultimate season, a 16-17 team in 2021-22. I have a correction here: Jim’s average seasonal record for his first 38 seasons was 25-8. It was 19-14 over the last nine years. The full 47 year average is 24-9. It’s still the best ‘floor’ anybody in college basketball has had over that period. Almost any fan base in America would love to be us.)
- As a result, Jim Boeheim has become one of the most successful coaches in the nation, one of the most prominent sporting figures and the most famous person in our community. He’s used his position to become a leader in raising charitable donations for many causes and had travels throughout the country on their behalf. It’s caused him to be admired as a person as well as respected as a coach. It’s not what a coach is hired for and not what he’s eventually evaluated for but it’s something that would leave huge shoes to fill for any other coach.
(He’s also married well and has a fabulous family, sort of a ‘royal family of Syracuse’ and terrific representatives for our community.)
- Nobody ever has to ask what Jim Boeheim thinks. He’s not shy about telling you. Some people find him hypersensitive and at the same time insensitive to others. Maybe so but he’s never less than honest with his feelings. After all the years of G-Rob’s trying to find the sunshine or Coach P mumbling his way through press conferences and Coach Mac before him putting on a show but avoiding the issue, listening to JB is a treat - most of the time.
- In my “Following a Legend” post, (a couple of years back) I looked at the top 25 winningest coaches of all time in both football and basketball, (Division1 only and I used total wins rather than percentages). 37 of those 50 coaches retired at the school they became a legend at. In five cases, the legend’s successor had a higher winning percentage than he did, 13.5%. The program declined after the legend’s retirement 86.5% of the time. The likelihood is that someday we will be asked by someone who didn’t experience what it was like rooting for Syracuse University Basketball in the Jim Boeheim era. And what we will say is likely to be pretty positive. All a fan can ask for is to root for a team that is good every year and has the potential for something great to happen each year and Syracuse fans have had that for 38 years.
(I updated the “Following a Legend” post two years ago: Following a Legend (Updated)
In that update I found that 74% of the time, the next coach after the legend had a worse winning percentage than his famous predecessor. I was asked to compare the later years of the legend to the new guys’ tenure. I looked at the last five years of the legend vs. the first 5 years of the new guy and the legend was still better than his successor 64% of the time.)
- There is nothing automatic about success in college sports. The identity of the coach can make a huge difference. Look at what North Carolina went through after Dean Smith left and before Roy Williams came back to bail them out. Look at Nebraska football since Tom Osborne retired. Even when a prominent coach stays, as with Joe Paterno at Penn State, there can be problems maintaining success. We have had an experience with “improving” the football program by changing the coach. So far, there have been no such problems with Syracuse basketball in the Jim Boeheim era. One poster said, trying to answer a series of posts praising JB, that he hopes SU would win the national championship this year so that Boeheim will retire and then we can get someone better as coach. We would, in that scenario, be replacing a coach that would have won 948 games and 2 national titles. Who would we get who we know would top that?
(OK, so it’s now 1,120 wins and 1 national title. Red Autry won’t come close to the first number. Maybe he can match the second. Then he could be a legend, too.)
- In the end, there’s only one Jim Boeheim. We will never see an era like his again and it’s likely nobody else will, either.
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