Syracuse Basketball: Jim Boeheim squashes any talk about not coaching
By Neil Adler
Syracuse basketball players are coming back to the Hill the weekend of July 6, per a report, and Jim Boeheim is coaching them amid the pandemic.
Of course Jim Boeheim is coaching Syracuse basketball in the upcoming campaign. Could you imagine any other scenario playing out?
In mid-May, we published a piece that discussed the potentially difficult position that the Orange head coach could find himself in as it relates to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
While the 75-year-old Boeheim is healthy and has no underlying conditions, he is also considered in a higher-risk category to possibly develop complications if he became infected, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Medical experts have said, although not necessarily speaking about Boeheim directly, that it might not prove entirely safe for someone in his age bracket to reside on a collegiate campus this fall, especially since Covid-19 cases continue to rise in many parts of the United States.
However, Boeheim is 100 percent coaching in the 2020-21 term, he told Donna Ditota of Syracuse.com.
That echoes the sentiment of what Pete Moore, a spokesman for the Orange basketball program, tweeted to us in response to our mid-May story. Moore said of Boeheim, “If ‘Cuse plays, he’s our guy!”
I’m a huge Boeheim fan, so naturally I want him to roam the sidelines in a few months. Equally as much, though, I hope that he and all of the Syracuse coaches, players and other staff members stay safe during the pandemic.
"More from Boeheim in Ditota’s article. “I’ve been doing the same things everybody is supposed to do. I go out to dinner, we social distance at dinner. I’m playing golf. I go to the store. I wear my mask. But I have no underlying conditions. I’m healthy and I’m going to coach. 100%. And if I was really nervous about it, I could coach from 20 feet away from my players without any problem. … It’s not even a concern for me. Even if it was more of a threat, I can’t live like that.”"
His remarks aren’t terribly surprising. Boeheim bleeds Orange and loves coaching. Enough said.
Syracuse basketball student-athletes are slated to come back to Central New York in about 10 to 12 days.
‘Cuse players are aiming to return to the SU campus the weekend of July 6, writes Ditota. Under that schedule, according to Boeheim, players can have a 14-day period where they are tested for Covid-19 and “stabilized,” as he put it.
Then, as we previously reported, beginning on July 20, Boeheim and his assistants can commence summer athletic activities with their players in the gym, under a plan recently approved by the NCAA’s Division I Council.
“We’re going to try to be very smart and careful about our interactions, as all people are going to have to do,” Boeheim said.