Congratulations to Jim Boeheim on his career win #800. It was an inevitable win for a coach who routinely wins twenty games a year. If the win did not come against the Great Danes of Albany (it did 75-43), it was going to happen. It seems like only yesterday that Boeheim won game #700; in fact it was a lopsided win over Providence at the Dome on February 26, 2005, with Hakim Warrick leading the way with 36 points.
Syracuse University has now won 1756 games, fifth all time for NCAA Division I basketball (only Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas and Duke have more). Jim Boeheim hasn’t coached all those games, it just seems that way. He has however won 45.5% of the games the Orange have won. As a player, Syracuse was 52-24, as varsity assistant coach, Syracuse was 139-65. So all combined, he has been involved with 991 wins for Syracuse basketball. Think about the magnitude of that number… 991. He has been involved with 56% of the wins for Syracuse basketball.
The 2008-09 season should be an interesting one to watch. It would have been a different season had Jonny Flynn, Eric Devendorf and Paul Harris all stayed. There is no doubt about that. A team with a ton of experience and talent, a rare combination in today’s NCAA. And definitely a team that could have challenged for the NCAA tournament, even though it had some weaknesses. However, I think this year’s team, as currently comprised will be an NCAA tournament team, one that will be much better in March than it is in November. It is a young team in some aspects, but it is a team with some fifth year seniors (Andy Rautins and Arinze Onuaku), and a some great potential in young players.
Let’s go Orange.
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2 comments:
I think this team will have trouble winning close games (lacking experience) but will make the tournment with a 7 to 10.
Enjoy reading, and learning about Cuse history. Keep up the good work Ray.
It's too early in the season for me to determine if the team has a 'go to' guy during crunch. Flynn and Devendorf were those guys the last two years (and Harris wanted to be that guy). I think, based on the comments from his teammates the past day or so, that Andy Rautins has the respect to be that guy. We'll have to see.
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