Jim Boeheim
Jim Boeheim
James Arthur "Jim" Boeheimis the head coach of the men's basketball team at Syracuse University. Boeheim has guided the Orange to nine Big East regular season championships, five Big East Tournament championships, and 28 NCAA Tournament appearances, including three appearances in the national title game. In those games, the Orange lost to Indiana in 1987, on a last-second jump shot by Keith Smart, and to Kentucky in 1996, before defeating Kansas in 2003 with All-American Carmelo Anthony...
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth17 November 1944
CityLyons, NY
We just played three teams I consider to be Top 10 teams and, right now, we're not a Top 10 team. It's sad we have to play great teams back-to-back ... that's not the right way. Nobody else has to do that, play back-to-back Saturday and Monday games two weeks in a row with three of four on the road. That's too much to ask.
We've got some really good teams. It's going to take a major upset for somebody to beat Connecticut. And three or four of our other teams are good enough to make a Final Four, maybe five.
We can't beat them anywhere else. They've killed us four straight games, except for the two here.
We could have lost all four games, all four.
Four guards can work wonderfully well a lot of the time. But sometimes you can take advantage of it. We can't take advantage of it. And when you can't take advantage, they'll take advantage of it.
I have a number in mind, I think it should probably be about four to six, somewhere in there. This year, more than ever, has proven that there are teams that might not get in, or might just barely get in, that can win games.
This was a heart-and-soul type of game. I've questioned the toughness of our players a couple times. When you lose four in a row and you do what we had to do to win, that's a tremendous tribute to the toughness of these kids.
This team showed more heart and guts than any team I've ever coached. And Gerry had as good a four days as anyone I've ever seen.
We're not leaving out teams that can only win one game or no games. Now the reality is that we're leaving out teams that can win two and three and four games.
For Josh Wright, who hadn't played much, to do what he did was outstanding. We needed all four of those and it took a lot of guts for him to get all four.
It was a great, great tournament. I'm really glad for Gerry. He started his career a little bit, probably a little bit too good, and where are you going to go after that? But he's come back and had four great years for us. He's got unbelievable heart; he really does.
Syracuse, New York, is like Hawaii for eight months of the year, ... The other four months, I don't care about the weather because we're playing basketball.
It's certainly a tremendous challenge. I don't know if it'll be any tougher than when we had three Final Four teams and two teams get to the Sweet Sixteen. It can't be much tougher than that, but it'll be difficult.
When they caught us, and they caught us three or four times, we kept going. Usually, when that happens, you let it go away a little bit. But these guys (Syracuse player) wouldn't let it go away.