Syracuse Basketball: Jim Boeheim is left off top coaches list for 2022-23

Syracuse basketball head coach Jim Boeheim endured his first losing season on the Hill in 46 years as the team’s boss during the 2021-22 stanza.

That being said, Boeheim still owns the second-most wins in the history of Division I men’s basketball, and he’s captured a national championship and advanced to five Final Fours.

Ahead of the 2022-23 term, Boeheim returns a core group of players from a campaign ago, while bringing in a strong six-member 2022 recruiting class and center Mounir Hima, a transfer from Duquesne.

Will the ‘Cuse reside on the NCAA Tournament bubble in 2022-23? Perhaps. Will the team fare better than its 16-17 record a season ago? Hopefully.

But a national writer doesn’t think Syracuse basketball boss Jim Boeheim is a top coach.

Isaac Trotter of 247Sports recently published a list of the 25 top head coaches that we would want for the 2022-23 term and beyond. He used a variety of criteria for his rankings, including career wins, Big Dance and conference achievements, recruiting at the high-school level and out of the transfer portal, and roster development.

Trotter’s list features the top-25 head coaches, along with 11 who just missed the cut. So he discussed a total of 36 head coaches, and somewhat surprisingly to me, Jim Boeheim is nowhere to be found.

Now, I recognize that the Orange stunk a term ago, and the squad has struggled through many regular seasons since leaving the Big East Conference for the Atlantic Coast Conference in the 2013-14 stanza.

But are there really 36 head coaches in the sport of collegiate hoops who are better than Boeheim? I’m the first to admit that I’m a homer when it comes to Syracuse basketball, however, I respectfully don’t agree with Trotter’s assessment here as it pertains to Jim Boeheim.

I’d love some feedback from my fellow ‘Cuse fans. If you have a chance to view this list, do you agree that Boeheim shouldn’t be included among the best coaches in college basketball?

I’m just going to include the top 10 here. At No. 1 is Bill Self of Kansas, which is all good. He won the 2022 NCAA title and has two national championships on his resume.

Following Self is John Calipari of Kentucky, Scott Drew of Baylor, Mark Few of Gonzaga, Tom Izzo of Michigan State, Tony Bennett of Virginia, Eric Musselman of Arkansas, Kelvin Sampson of Houston, Hubert Davis of North Carolina and Jon Scheyer of Duke.

It’s hard to argue against virtually any of the head coaches in this top 10, although I will say this. No disrespect to Scheyer, but he’s yet to coach a single game as the head coach for the Blue Devils.

What’s more, while a lot of these guys in the top 10 have captured national championships, Musselman hasn’t been to a Final Four, although he has reached two Elite Eights in the last two NCAA Tournaments. Boeheim, as we all know, hasn’t done that.