Wait until this column crosses Jim Boeheim’s Hall of Fame desk. He’ll be lighting up lines one, two and three and turning his next news conference into a Journalism 101 lecture hall again.
Boeheim can’t solve Rick Pitino these days, and Mick Cronin can’t lose to Pitino. Yeah, the same Mick Cronin some Cincinnati fans have been grumbling about for 4-1/2 of his five seasons with the Bearcats.
And get this: Cronin followed a blueprint that Boeheim will never embrace, even if you promised him two weeks of 75-degree February days in Syracuse.
Man-to-man defense. Controlled tempo. Squeezing Pitino’s shooters around the perimeter.
Bingo. On Saturday, Louisville dispatched the Orange — for the seventh straight time — by hitting better than 48 percent (9 of 21) of its three-point shots. Kyle Kuric, a marvelous catch-and-shoot guy for Louisville, backed up the 22 points he scored against Syracuse last season with 23 more against the Orange zone. Ouch.
That, of course, helped inspire Boeheim to ask several members of the Syracuse media why they would dwell on his slump against Pitino without dwelling on the way he’s handled other Big East coaches, including Pitino, at other points during a career that carried him into the Basketball Hall of Fame six years ago.
Teasing? Not so much. Boeheim backed it up with a phone call to a radio sports talk show.
Cut the sound on that viral clip and roll video on this one: Unsettled by Cincinnati’s aggressive man-to-man defense, Louisville made a season-low four (of 17) threes in a 63-54 loss Wednesday at Fifth Third Arena.
And Kuric? Give him nine points, which is better than the zero Kuric scored when Cincinnati and Cronin started their current two-game winning streak against Pitino in the 2010 Big East Tournament.
What’s it all mean?
Whatever you want it to mean — as long as you understand that: a) Boeheim’s mini-lecture mainly proves that his competitive adrenaline is still percolating at 93 octane; b) The coach believes in his trusted 2-3 zone defense more than he believes in his putter; and c) He’s still a Hall of Famer with 850 career victories who is just as capable as about 25 other guys of directing his team into a Final Four run.
Ask anybody. Like Pitino.
“Jim recruits great players and worries about their offensive talents and puts them in what he believes is a much better defense (the trademark Boeheim 2-3 zone) to play,” said Pitino, a former Boeheim assistant who, indeed, started his career by losing seven of his first 10 to his former boss.
“He believes he hasn’t seen a zone offense yet that’s as good as a man offense. He hasn’t seen a situation yet from an execution standpoint that is any better than playing zone because he can concentrate on the two or three things the opposition will do.”
As long as we’re doing the comparison thing, let’s compare some birth certificates. Boeheim turned 66 on Nov. 17, the day after the Orange beat Detroit for their third victory this season.
I’d argue that Boeheim’s bristling at a newspaper story and chart is actually a good thing because I’ve seen too many coaches who have accomplished as much as Boeheim start reserving their bristling about the July recruiting period cutting into their tee times.
Boeheim? His tee times have to come when he isn’t recruiting Top 20 classes or helping Mike Krzyzewski coach the U.S. national teams. There’s no sign of cruise control creeping into Boeheim’s calendar.
At 66, Bob Knight was straining to hold his place in the middle of the Big 12 pack, a year from walking out on Texas Tech in midseason. At 66, John Wooden had happily eased into his remarkable retirement at UCLA.
Denny Crum was merely 64 when Louisville encouraged him to pick up his fishing rod full-time to make way for Pitino.
At 66, Boeheim is one season removed from coaching a team that was a surprising, but absolutely legitimate, No. 1 seed in the 2010 NCAA tournament. Big East coaches picked Boeheim’s 2011 team to finish third in the league. By mid-January the Orange actually were third — in the country.
Yes, Syracuse recently lost three straight games in the Carrier Dome, including a bizarre 22-point burp against Seton Hall. The Orange are 21-6 overall and 8-6 in the league, which is worth eighth place.
In other words, they’re one good spurt from roaring back into third place. That’s college basketball 2011. The picture changes as relentlessly as Kim Kardashian changes shoes.
Pitino beats Boeheim, Cronin beats Pitino and Boeheim beats Cronin (by 15) — as well as Mike Brey (by 12), Bob Huggins (by 11), Jim Calhoun (by eight) and Tom Izzo (by 14).
So go ahead and rant, Coach. Just shows me that you’ve still got it.
