Now that the 2017-18 Syracuse basketball campaign is over, where would you place Jim Boeheim’s coaching job this season among his 42 years as head coach?
I’m still slightly bitter about the Syracuse basketball painstaking loss to Duke in the Sweet 16 of the 2018 NCAA Tournament. Not simply because Syracuse lost, but due to the fact that we nearly pulled off the massive upset.
A few less turnovers, a couple of more trips to the charity stripe, or a handful of missed dunks turned into makes, and the ‘Cuse could definitely have advanced to the Elite Eight.
Regardless, this term that recently ended proved delightful, since the Orange had a ridiculously inexperienced and thin roster, as well as extremely low expectations, yet they reached the second weekend of the Big Dance.
So with time available to reflect, I have to ask myself, and my fellow Syracuse fanatics: where does 2017-18 rank among Jim Boeheim’s best-coaching acts during his more than 40 years at the helm on the Hill?
What are the criteria for evaluating Boeheim’s coaching performances? People can have a wide range of views on this. Dominance in the non-conference slate and the regular season can be important, but there’s also the Big East and/or Atlantic Coast Conference tourneys. Finally, we of course can’t forget about March Madness.
Boeheim has gone on record in saying that your success is defined by how well you do in the NCAA Tournament. I would tend to agree. However, we should keep in mind what kind of personnel Boeheim has possessed in any given year. Are there future NBA players? Lottery picks? A deep bench?
Factoring all of this into the equation, I am fairly adamant in declaring that, given what JB had in 2017-18, this is perhaps one of the eight most-impressive coaching accomplishments in his tenure.
I feel that trying to rank these feats is a tad tiresome, so I’m going to sort them, chronologically. If you think I’m taking the easy way out, and that I’m lazy, don’t fret: I concur.