SWC75
Bored Historian
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- Aug 26, 2011
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(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 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’s been here for 38 seasons and has won 948 games
- 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 and Dayton. How many of those schools would you rather have rooted for the last 38 years rather than SU? In the 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, (although they made a partial comeback), and owned Connecticut before Jim Calhoun showed up. Even when UCONN is down, they get father down than we seem to be in our worst years. We’ve now had 44 consecutive winning seasons, the longest streak in the country, (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 have 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.
- 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?
- 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. Let me know when Gonzaga catches up.
- JB, in 36 years here, has compiled a record of 948 wins and 320 losses, a winning percentage of .748. 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.
- 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.
- 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 28 twenty-three times in 38 years and the top 10 fourteen 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.
- 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.
- 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. (See the post below)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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?
- 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.
- 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’s been here for 38 seasons and has won 948 games
- 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 and Dayton. How many of those schools would you rather have rooted for the last 38 years rather than SU? In the 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, (although they made a partial comeback), and owned Connecticut before Jim Calhoun showed up. Even when UCONN is down, they get father down than we seem to be in our worst years. We’ve now had 44 consecutive winning seasons, the longest streak in the country, (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 have 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.
- 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?
- 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. Let me know when Gonzaga catches up.
- JB, in 36 years here, has compiled a record of 948 wins and 320 losses, a winning percentage of .748. 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.
- 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.
- 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 28 twenty-three times in 38 years and the top 10 fourteen 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.
- 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.
- 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. (See the post below)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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?
- 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.
