Syracuse Basketball: Buddy Boeheim dropped from Jerry West contention

Syracuse basketball senior shooting guard Buddy Boeheim is having a great 2021-22 campaign, and he has put forth a magical Orange career.

But the 6-foot-6 Boeheim will not win the 2022 Jerry West Award, an annual recognition honoring the top shooting guard in men’s collegiate hoops.

Not too long ago, Boeheim was among the 10 players who remained in the running for this prestigious award. However, the number of finalists for the 2022 Jerry West Award has gotten reduced to five contenders, and Boeheim didn’t make the cut.

This isn’t terribly surprising, given that the ‘Cuse (15-15, 9-10) is having a disappointing 2021-22 stanza. Then again, this development in no way diminishes what Buddy Buckets has done this term or throughout his four years on the Hill.

Syracuse basketball senior Buddy Boeheim is out for a shooting-guard award.

Per the Web site for the 2022 Jerry West Award, the five finalists are Arizona’s Bennedict Mathurin, Kansas’ Ochai Agbaji, Purdue’s Jaden Ivey, UCLA’s Johnny Juzang and Wisconsin’s Johnny Davis.

Let’s be honest. All of these finalists suit up on squads that have been ranked in the top-10 to the top-15 nationally for a sizable portion of the 2021-22 season.

I thought it was pretty cool that Boeheim had amounted to a top-10 finalist for the 2022 Jerry West Award. At the time of this writing, Boeheim placed No. 2 in the Atlantic Coast Conference in scoring, at 19.0 points per game, along with 3.5 rebounds and 3.2 assists.

In the present term, he’s logging 38.1 minutes per affair while connecting on 40.6 percent from the field, 33.3 percent from beyond the arc, and a stellar 88.1 percent from the charity stripe.

I believe that Boeheim, as Syracuse basketball planned to play its final regular-season game of 2021-22 this Saturday afternoon at home versus Miami, has entered the top 15 on the all-time scoring list for the Orange program, which is magnificent.

Boeheim, who torched the competition as the ‘Cuse made a surprising run to the Sweet 16 about a year ago, has evolved his offensive repertoire in his Orange tenure to include not just 3-point shooting, but also a terrific mid-range game and a solid ability to get to the rim.

As a sophomore, Boeheim tallied more than 15 points per contest. He upped that to nearly 18 points a game as a junior, and now Boeheim is at 19.0 points per encounter as a senior.

His father, Syracuse basketball head coach Jim Boeheim, has said more than once that Buddy Boeheim isn’t coming back after 2021-22, even though he could elect to take an optional fifth year granted to all college basketball players by the NCAA due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

I’ve said it several times of late. Buddy is an outstanding young man, on and off the court, and what he’s done in a ‘Cuse uniform over the past four years has proven absolutely sensational.