Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim is a curmudgeon, and it is well documented. He has a reputation for being an ornery joke, and to his credit, he has totally leaned into that. So kudos to him for embracing it. But he won’t be doing it in the NCAA Tournament, as his team has just been eliminated from tourney contention.
Boeheim’s team, 17-14, 10-10 in the ACC this past regular season, is one and done in the conference tournament. Nowhere near the NCAA tourney bubble coming in, they were just ousted, in heart-breaking fashion, by Wake Forest in the ACC conference tournament #8 vs #9 game. It was a very exciting finish for Wake Forest, and pure schadenfreude for see Boeheim with egg on his face now.
Why?
Watch the clip above and read the quotes below, as we flash back to Oct. 15, and what he said at Syracuse Media Day.
On a very open-ended topic of what defines a season as successful, Boeheim thrashed the Big Ten and said only March Madness matters.
“If you can’t play in the [NCAA] tournament then you’re just not good,” Boeheim said. “At the end of the day, you play for the tournament.”
You already know what happened to the Big Ten in the big dance, they sent nine teams and their tournament record was 9-9. Lots of high seeds lost early on, just like the year before, when the league’s best teams made early exits. The Illini are just as guilty of this as any other conference team, although Iowa was on par with them in the choking department.
“You can say what you want about the Big Ten,” Boeheim continued, during his talking season event that doesn’t really need to exist anymore, as we definitely don’t need a talking season.
“They sucked in the tournament. To me, that’s what they did.”
“I don’t care what [The Big Ten] did during the regular season. They beat themselves. All of their wins were in their league. If you can’t play in the tournament then you aren’t good. That’s what you play for. To get to the tournament and to win in the tournament.”
There is a lot right, and there is a lot wrong there. Yes, the Big Ten “sucked” in the last two tournaments, but the idea of “beating themselves” is a stupid fallacy.
The Big Ten won some big preconference games. And while yes, the average fan overstresses the NCAA Tournament, the conference seasons and the preconference slate count as well.
It’s true the general population doesn’t care about college hoops except for in March, but if you’re Jim Boeheim, why go meathead and lowest common denominator?
Because his team sucks. They suck, as did the ACC, by their standards, last regular season. Only five teams made the tournament, and Wake Forest, 13-7 in league play, was relegated to the NIT.
Still Boeheim thinks the ACC was the superior league.
“It’s obvious who was better,” he said. “We won the most games in the tournament. So who was the best league last year in the country?
Honestly, this is really stupid, on a lot of levels.
Kudos to Jim Boeheim for actually saying something of substance, at an event where the goal is to talk but never say anything, but he’s still a total meathead moron here.
Yes, the teams in the Big Ten conference sucked in the tourney- that is undeniable. And the Big Ten has a serious problem in terms of winning the tournament. They consistently send teams to the Final Four and the title game, and they consistently lose. It has been over 20 years now since the Big Ten won it all.
But it has nothing to do with the concept of a league. There is no great generalizable truth here, as each game, each matchup, each team is different. It’s not about a conference.
More importantly, it’s not about “conference pride” as no one really believes in that. People root for their team and care about how they do, plain and simple. They do not care about how their conference rivals do. Jim Boeheim is doing nothing but wasting time batting down a straw man. Great job bro!
It won’t be long until he joins Roy Williams, Mike Krzyzewski and Jay Wright as legendary college coaches nearing the end of their careers, who had already accomplished enough that the better option was to step aside, instead of adjusting to the brave new world of having to re-recruit your own team that you already have, each and every season. There is nothing wrong with that!
It is totally understandable why the old school fraternity of coaches would have zero interest in adjusting to that. Jim Boeheim needs to realize that.
I’ve been saying for years already that his time has long passed and that he needs to step down. After the game today, ESPN Analyst Seth Greenberg said it too. Greenberg wasn’t exactly shy or understated about it either. He made his point very clearly- you have had an elite, rarified air level run Jimmy, but it is high time you step aside, and let your program finally move on.
Paul M. Banks is the owner/manager of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He’s written for numerous publications, including the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. He regularly appears on NTD News and WGN News Now. Follow the website on Twitter and Instagram.
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