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Jim Boeheim was coaching more than just his team in the Carmelo K. Anthony Center. It was a year after Syracuse’s 2016 Final Four run, and he’d invited a special guest to watch the group practice led by Andrew White III, Tyler Lydon and Tyus Battle. 

Boeheim’s guest, Jeff Ike, remembers how intense the practice was. How every athlete brought game-speed to each drill, how regimented and organized everything was and how detailed the advance scouting was — “’They run this out-of-bounds play 30% of the time,’ that’s what I heard when they had the breakdown session in practice,” Ike said. 

Ike, who’s been the boys basketball head coach at Jamesville-Dewitt High School since 2015, has known the Boeheim family for years. He was Buddy, Jimmy and Jamie Boeheim’s physical education teacher, and he also coached Jimmy and Buddy. At the time he visited Melo Center, Buddy and Jimmy were in the middle of a 21-4 season at J-D and on the cusp of a state title in Ike’s second year at the helm. 

Not every central New York high school basketball coach gets to learn firsthand in the Melo Center, and not every team had Boeheims on their roster. But Ike’s not the only local coach who’s molded their program based on Boeheim’s. Some teams run almost exclusively zone defense like the Orange. Lifelong Syracuse fans dictate the high school game on the sidelines and as players with much of their collective basketball I.Q. stemming from Boeheim. 

And with the start of the season delayed due to COVID-19, Boeheim’s influence is all over the high school game in central New York again in 2021.

Ike’s coaching style is distinctly like Boeheim’s. The sixth-year head coach calls the 45-year head coach occasionally to pick his brain about the zone or an offensive set. When Ike coached Jimmy and Buddy, he ran the same plays Syracuse dialed up to get Gerry McNamara open 3-point looks. He still runs them even after the two Boeheims graduated. And when designing practice plans, Ike always ponders about whether Boeheim would think something’s useful. 

“Just to be able to have somebody in the Hall of Fame of basketball, something that all little kids dream of, and I have that as a resource to ask ideas and bounce ideas off and ask questions to,” Ike said. “It’s made me a better coach.”

Forty years ago, East Syracuse Minoa coach Jim Kilpatrick was in the Carrier Dome for Syracuse’s 1981 Big East championship win over Villanova in triple overtime. But he wasn’t there in the bleachers as a fan — he was under the basket as a ballboy. 

His mom was a long-time secretary to Boeheim, and her connection led to the gig for the 8-year-old Kilpatrick. His whole perception of the sport was shaped by storied Big East rivalries and a young Boeheim pacing up and down the bench. He’d notice how teams such as Connecticut played with their heels on the baseline to try to stretch out the zone.

“It’s probably one of the reasons why I became a coach, because I learned so much being that close, watching Villanova, watching UConn,” Kilpatrick said.

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Kilpatrick thinks that seeing SU up close helps his understanding of how to play zone and how to beat it, which comes in handy often with high school basketball in central New York. He’s watched every online coaching clinic from Boeheim he can find.

Multiple teams in the Salt City Athletic Conference — a Section III league consisting of teams in the greater Syracuse area — play mostly or only zone. Liverpool, which former SU player Ryan Blackwell coaches, rode the 2-3 to the AA state championship in 2018.

Boeheim’s effect on the high school game doesn’t always stem from a personal connection, though. Fayetteville-Manlius coach Luke Tucci doesn’t know Boeheim personally but replicates Syracuse’s zone, running it “exactly the way (Boeheim) does.” Trap the short corners. Guards go over ball screens and deny the high post. Forwards take away the middle and react to a hot shooter by extending higher on the perimeter. 

“We get it all from Boeheim,” Tucci said.

He also admires the culture of SU’s program — one that fosters players like Eric Devendorf, who thrive on the court and then give back to the community. Tucci strives to replicate that. 

“As a young coach, that’s what you want as well, too,” said Tucci, who is 28 and in his third year as head coach. “You want your young players to talk about you. You want your young players to come back to games. You want people to have that family aspect around your program.”

The family aspect often starts with the common thread of Syracuse basketball.

On the brisk night of Feb. 9, the Christian Brothers Academy boys basketball team filed into its gym before 7:30 practice. The whole team had just spent the previous hour watching Syracuse’s game against North Carolina State. 

“They knew what the score was when we came in (for practice) at halftime,” CBA coach Buddy Wleklinski said. “Our kids are all aware. They know who the players are on top.” 

Jacob Works, a junior guard for Liverpool drives towards the basket. Courtesy of Jacob Works

Wleklinski’s been CBA’s head coach since 1984, a tenure that nearly mirrors Boeheim’s at SU. Wleklinski’s a Greater Syracuse Hall of Famer, and though he doesn’t consider himself a Boeheim disciple, he has applied some of Boeheim’s concepts to the CBA program. He’s committed to a specific system — in his case, man-to-man defense. He also watches Boeheim’s in-game adjustments and tries to glean information from them. 

But what Wleklinksi mostly points to as Boeheim’s imprint on the high school game is how generations of central New York kids grow up as Syracuse fans. Players grow up watching games in the Dome, idolizing players and picking up SU’s style of play. That’s all Boeheim, Wleklinski said.

Jacob Works, a junior guard for Liverpool, is one of those kids. A long-time Syracuse fan, he plays for Blackwell, running mostly a 2-3 zone and learning directly from the source. He said he and his teammates learn so much from Blackwell because his I.Q. is “just off the charts.” 

“The way Boeheim plays, and he plays with all his teams, they play up and down, shooting a lot of 3s and dunking,” Works said. “You see a lot of teams try to replicate that play style, just because (SU’s) had so much success with it. And we’ve seen it, here in Syracuse.” 

Works is averaging 21 points in Liverpool’s 3-0 start but likely won’t follow Brandon Triche and DaJuan Coleman as local high school stars who join Syracuse — he hopes to play in college, but he has only heard from small schools so far. 

Triche and Coleman are anomalies, playing in a high school basketball ecosystem that trickled down from Syracuse and then continuing at SU. Because of Boeheim, that’s often the dream. 

“I think (SU has) set a prime example around here for young kids,” F-M’s Tucci said. “Basketball’s really all we’ve got when it comes to Syracuse … But Syracuse basketball’s the Mecca.”

Published on February 17, 2021 at 11:00 pm

Contact Danny: [email protected] | @DannyEmerman