http://www.sportingnews.com/college-bask...eim-syracu

Sporting News' College Basketball Coach of the Year: Jim Boeheim, Syracuse
Mike DeCourcy

If only everyone had listened to Jim Boeheim when he spoke last summer, we might be handing the Sporting News 2010 Coach of the Year Award to someone else. And wouldn't that be a dreadful mistake?

It's not simply a matter of Syracuse prematurely losing three starters who led last season's team in scoring, including Jonny Flynn, who was selected in the NBA draft lottery. Boeheim never was daunted by that development.

"Our frontcourt will be the best we've had here for many, many years," Boeheim said last June. "I'm very happy—as happy as I've ever been with a group coming back, in terms of what they did to get better," Boeheim said in September.


Jim Boeheim led Syracuse to a 15-3 conference record this season.Boeheim's performance in the 2009-10 season should not be viewed as extraordinary merely because he took a team with minimal expectations and drove it to a Big East championship and No. 1 national ranking. The elements that made his work exceptional this season run much deeper.

It's more that Boeheim found potential in so many players others underrated or overlooked and then drove them to greatness. Not a single player in SU's rotation was an elite recruit. Five of the top 10 players weren't top 100 players. There is no McDonald's All-American.

It's not easy to accomplish what John Calipari has at Kentucky. First, a coach must attract elite, NBA-level talent. Then he must convince those players to play with effort, intelligence and commitment to a common goal.

It's obviously tougher, though, to find less talented players than John Wall or DeMarcus Cousins and conceiving a method by which they can achieve similar results.

"When I came in, he took me in as if I'd been here for four years," star forward Wesley Johnson, a transfer from Iowa State, said of Boeheim. "I learned a lot from him just while sitting out. I think it's a blessing for me playing for a Hall of Fame coach and him teaching the things he taught me."
Syracuse went 15-3 in a Big East Conference that included 13 teams ranked among the top 80 in the Ratings Percentage Index standings. The Orange won the championship of the 2K Sports Classic by blowing out California and North Carolina (both seemed like a bigger deal at the time). SU defeated Memphis, Florida and Cornell in non-league games.

Perhaps the trickiest maneuver Boeheim executed with this team was his decision to start freshman Brandon Triche at point guard and position veteran Scoop Jardine as the first guard off the bench.

This allowed Triche to help SU establish its defense early in games and also put Jardine in a role of providing an energy boost when he entered games.

"Whatever coach tells me to do, I embrace that so much because first of all, he's a Hall of Fame coach," Jardine said. "Second of all, he knows what he's talking about. He's the head man. If you don't listen to the head man, you're crazy. We're all a family. If you want to win, we've all got to be together."

Mike DeCourcy is a writer for Sporting News. E-mail him at decourcy@sportingnews.com.

Great year for the Orange and Boehiem. He deserves it.

I think the Orange can handle our XCoach and KY-U easily in the Final Four.



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well deserved,

It's a nice honor for a class act...

(03-09-2010 12:03 PM)Cletus Wrote:  Great year for the Orange and Boehiem. He deserves it.

I think the Orange can handle our XCoach and KY-U easily in the Final Four.



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Thanks for the kind words...I hope you are right.