Boeheim Maintains a Passion as Intense as His Defense

Boeheim Maintains a Passion as Intense as His Defense

By WILLIAM C. RHODEN

Published: March 31, 2013

Syracuse had earned its fourth trip to the Final Four under Boeheim, routing Marquette, 55-39, on Saturday night. For a fourth consecutive N.C.A.A. tournament game, the Orange’s 2-3 zone defense had made a good coach look unprepared and rendered a good team ineffective.

With his family, university chancellor and athletic director looking on, Boeheim conducted a clinic on postgame coaching decorum. Humorous, engaging and insightful, Boeheim, chin resting on fist, combined a touch of Lonesome George Gobel, a little Rodney Dangerfield and a bit of Jack Benny.

Asked the source of his motivation after so many years, Boeheim quipped: “You’re getting older. You’re still writing, aren’t you?”

“I enjoy trying to get a team to play at a high level,” he said. “Obviously we lost in this game last year, and it’s such a disappointment, it’s such a bad feeling, the lows that you get in this profession, but it makes — when you break through and when you get there, it makes it so much better. That’s what this profession is.

“You know, I don’t think there is anybody involved in sports as a coach or a player that ever wants to walk away.”

Syracuse’s trademarks under Boeheim have been a fluid, up-tempo offense and the vaunted 2-3 zone. At its best, the zone forces instinctive players to abandon instinct and intuition and to think rather than react. The zone negates aggressiveness, slows down the offense and forces turnovers.

In 1996, after Syracuse upset Mississippi State, a more athletic team, to reach the championship game, Boeheim said that the zone did not negate talent but that it made talent do different things. Seventeen years later, the Orange zone continues to frustrate opponents.

“One of the things about playing against a zone is that you can’t dictate who’s going to score,” he said. “I can dictate who’s going to shoot; in man to man, you can’t do that. Playing man to man, whoever you want can get a shot. If you want two guys to shoot, two guys can shoot the whole game. You can’t do that against a zone. You got to get the shots you can get, and we’re not going to give you some of those shots.”

After the news conference, Boeheim spoke to a group of reporters about wide-ranging subjects. Someone noted that Boeheim did not seem terribly excited. He said he was thinking about the Final Four, about how important it would become over the next 24 hours to bring his team down from the excitement of winning the East Region.

“I told the players, ‘You’re happy today, but you’ll be twice as unhappy if you lose in the next game or two,’ ” he said. “That’s the reality. I didn’t know that when I was younger.”

Boeheim led Syracuse to the championship game in 1987 and lost to Indiana in the closing seconds. “I was so happy to get to the Final Four for the first time, we had a chance to win, and it took me 16 years to get over it,” he said. “If you lose in that game, you don’t get over it.”

“I’ve lost two Final Four games,” Boeheim added. “It’s not a good feeling.”

A couple of weeks ago, I suggested that this might be a great time for Boeheim to consider riding off into the sunset. Faced with an ongoing N.C.A.A. investigation and new challenges in the Atlantic Coast Conference next season, why not leave? He has a trophy case filled with accolades, a Hall of Fame induction, and now a fourth trip to the Final Four and a shot at a second national title.

After Saturday’s game, I asked Boeheim if he minded the retirement questions.

“I don’t get annoyed,” he said. “I am getting close to retirement. I could retire; there’s no doubt. I don’t care who you are; if you’re 68 and you’ve been doing something for 37 years, you probably do think a little bit about when it’s time to get out. It just hasn’t been the time yet.”

He added: “The one thing I’ve always wanted to be careful about is not to get out when you don’t want to. I don’t want to get out and then say, ‘I wish I didn’t get out.’ Let’s face it: when you’re doing something you really like to do, there’s no reason to get out if you don’t feel like you should.”

Boeheim has spent most of his life at Syracuse: as a student, a walk-on player, an assistant and a head coach. This will not be an easy life to leave.

“I just feel very lucky to have been able to have done what I’ve done,” he said.

He related how one of his friends, an older coach, knew it was time to retire. “He used to tell me he would come down on the highway, and he turned right to go to work and left to go on vacation, and he said, ‘You know, Jim, one day I came down there and I went left, and that was it.’ ” COPY http://www.nytimes.com/