Jim Boeheim's final years at Syracuse had parallels to another legend

It is not hard to find a link between Jim Boeheim and Bob Knight. Of course, they tangled in the 1987 National Championship game as Knight won his third and final title with the Hoosiers and Keith Smart forever became a villain in Central New York. Combined, they had over 1,900 career wins. The two were iconic coaches, known for their steadfast dedication to the school they became synonymous with.

Unfortunately, the two also found themselves in similar situations as their decorated careers wound down. Boeheim certainly had fewer scandals, but the pair adopted flippant treatment of the media. Each slowly built themselves into a nearly untouchable and unquestionable figure at their respective schools, often ignoring criticism or making personal passes at reporters for asking hard questions. All the while, the programs they led continued to fall short of the standards of excellence each man had set during the previous decades.

I do not mean to equate Knight’s abusive tactics to anything Boeheim did during his career. However, it is easy to draw parallels to how both Syracuse and Indiana experienced long, downward slides in the final years with each coach at the school.

The Hoosiers were consistently great for the better part of 20 years. Knight reached five Final Fours between 1973 and 1992. He reached the Elite Eight in 1993 and the Sweet 16 in 1994, but that ended up being the end of Indiana’s run among the nation’s top programs. Knight continued at Indiana before his dismissal in 2000, but never made it past the second round of the NCAA Tournament in the final six seasons of his tenure.

Knight could not find a way to recapture the successes of the previous two decades as the game passed him by. As it turned out, Knight was emotionally and even physically abusive, which inevitably had an impact on his team’s play. He could not find a way to adapt from that hard-nosed, abrasive style he had cultivated in his early days of coaching at Army.

Knight did go on to coach at Texas Tech from 2001 to 2008, but never came close to the accolades he achieved at Indiana. He improved the Red Raiders program, but that improvement peaked in a singular Sweet 16 appearance in 2006.

Thankfully, Boeheim never came close to becoming that emotionally volatile. However, the on-court performances wound up feeling eerily similar.

In truth, Syracuse’s fall from blue blood status coincided with its move to the ACC in 2013. Boeheim had piloted SU to four Final Fours, 17 Sweet 16 appearances and six Elite 8 showings from 1976 to 2013. After switching leagues, SU has reached the Elite 8 just once, as a part of the team’s 2016 Final Four run. Boeheim’s bunch managed Sweet 16 appearances in 2018 and 2021 as well.

Additionally, Syracuse went from a legitimate contender each season to a team often on the bubble. SU reached the NCAA Tournament in 2014 as a 3-seed, but has been seeded 10th, 11th, eighth and 11th respectively in the team’s four trips to the Big Dance since. From when the NCAA Tournament had expanded to 64 teams in 1985 to 2013, Boeheim had never been seeded lower than eighth.

Much like Knight, Boeheim showed an unwillingness to change with the times. His commitment to running his patented 2-3 zone and failure to adapt to an era featuring NIL and the transfer portal undoubtedly factored into the Orange missing the NCAA Tournament in back-to-back seasons for just the third time in Boeheim’s tenure and his first ever losing season in 2021-22. A decade of middling results has led to Syracuse falling from the ranks of the elite.

While my focus here has been on the unceremonious endings for these two Hall of Fame head coaches, it is important to recognize that it is only possible to hold both men to these standards because of the precedent the two established at their respective schools. Each has earned their spot among the all-time greats, and we will forever look back at the end of their respective tenures with a bit of disappointment given how successful both had been previously.

However, the further we move away from Knight’s bitter firing, the more fans have been able to once again focus on the triumphs from his time at Indiana. I imagine, we will all be able to do the same with Boeheim before too long. No one will ever be able to escape the long shadow Boeheim has cast over the program. He will forever be synonymous with Syracuse basketball.

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