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'll be alright. We need a few days off, we'll be ready to play. It's sad that you have to play such great teams back to back then you have six days off. It's not the right way to play your best basketball. I am proud of the way we've battled back though. This has been a very difficult way to start.
We've got bad foul shooters, what can I say? We won.
These guys wouldn't let it get away. Gerry wouldn't let it get away. He amazes me. He's got more guts that anyone I've ever coached.
He couldn't get a breath, but he was the guy making plays for us. If he had been out one minute, we would have lost the game.
Let the assistant coach come up to me and say, 'Gerry McNamara is overrated.' I'd like to see one of those guys come up to me and say that. He's been double-teamed all year, and the coaches voted him first team all-conference. The head coaches, they don't know (expletive), I guess.
These guys have grown, stepped it up and grown up. That should help us a lot this next week. Gerry made the big plays, but these other guys stepped it up. I think that's why we're going forward, and it's given us a little better opportunity now.
Some guys win one game once in a while, in a year or two. I don't think anybody's ever won four games in a row by making 'the' play of the game. That's pretty special.
Connecticut is a team that can beat anybody, anytime, anyplace. They're the best team in our league, in the country. They've been there. They know what they're doing. They've got veteran guys who know how to play, know how to win.
Defensively, we did a good job, as well as you could expect at this stage of the year. We really helped each other. Our inside guys did a nice job. We really didn't give them too many open looks. We were very good.
I had to laugh when our student newspaper called him overrated. Without Gerry McNamara, we wouldn't have won 10 games this year. The other guys just aren't ready. They needed him. We wouldn't even have a chance to play this game without him.
I'd like to show it to some of these guys (at the head table), ... It's as close as they'll ever get to one.
If the other guys had played better all year, I'm sure (McNamara being called overrated) never would have come up.
He made some bad choices and got in some bad situations but we need him to make plays. We don't have other guys to make plays.
I don't want a doubling-type thing. I think there should be some teams added. I'm not looking at it like one or two. I'm not looking at 20 either. I think there should be an expansion of the tournament. Whatever seems to fit.