OK, time to bore you sports talk today, ‘cuz it’s a big night here tonight as SU basketball season officially begins (and none too soon the way football season is going). Our coach – Jim Boeheim – begins his 34th season tonight against Albany. In his first 33 seasons (all here at Syracuse), Boeheim had 799 wins (better than 24 wins per season), which means he’ll be trying to become just the eighth coach to reach 800 wins. Boeheim hasn’t been known exactly as a personable person over the years, but I’ve always liked him. For one thing, he’s from these parts, having grown up in Lyons, NY (about an hour west of here). Back in 1962, Boeheim passed on a scholarship to Colgate, and instead walked on to the Syracuse freshman team. He never left. By the time he was a senior, he’s earned a scholarship, was team captain, and – along with teammate Dave Bing and coach Fred Lewis – had helped take SU from the one of the worst teams of all time (including what was, at the time, an NCAA record 27 consecutive losses over two seasons) with a 2-22 record in 1961-62, to a 22-6 record and Sweet Sixteen finish in the 1966 NCAA tournament (which was a lot harder to get into back then). Boeheim went on to become an assistant coach under Roy Danforth (fun fact: my sister went to school and was good friends with Fred Lewis’ daughter, and I went to school and was good friends with Roy Danforth’s son), and took over as head coach in 1976 (becoming the first NCAA Division I coach to win 100 games in his first four seasons). Boeheim also holds the record for most 20-win seasons: 31. He’s been asked why he never left Syracuse, and has always said it was because he never wanted to go anyplace else. Of course, my favorite Boeheim quote comes from when a reporter asked him if he was looking forward to getting out of Syracuse in December to go play in a tournament in Hawaii. “Ah, Hawaii,” he replied. “Syracuse in July.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
OK, time to bore you sports talk today, ‘cuz it’s a big night here tonight as SU basketball season officially begins (and none too soon the way football season is going). Our coach – Jim Boeheim – begins his 34th season tonight against Albany. In his first 33 seasons (all here at Syracuse), Boeheim had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1919,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1918\/revisions\/1919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}