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One question may decide the fate of Syracuse’s season as it enters the NCAA Tournament: Can Buddy keep this up?

This March, Buddy Boeheim has averaged 25.3 points per game on 51.5% shooting from the field, 44.2% from 3 and 92.3% from the free throw line. His latest explosion, a career-high 31 points against Virginia’s stingy defense, nearly vaulted the Orange to a monumental upset and unprecedented ACC Tournament heights. The blazing Buddy became the first Syracuse player named to the All-ACC Tournament team.

Playing the best basketball of his college career in the four games leaving up to the NCAA Tournament, Buddy has the chance to etch his name alongside recent March stars like Gerry McNamara, Jonny Flynn and Tyus Battle. And the No. 11-seed Orange (16-9, 9-7 Atlantic Coast), who are 7-2 in games when Buddy scores at least 20 points, need him to if they want to make a long tournament run.

“(Buddy) made some of the toughest shots that I’ve seen him make all year,” Jim Boeheim said after SU’s loss to Virginia. “He was going in the lane against 6-foot-4, 6-foot-5, 6-foot-6 guys. He was getting shots up. It was incredible what he did today.”

Buddy’s lived through Syracuse’s recent runs through March. He watched from home when Carmelo Anthony led Syracuse past Kansas in the 2003 National Championship. He revisited that run several times over on cassette tapes because he was too young to soak it in at the time. He was in Madison Square Garden for the six-overtime game and said he loved watching Michael Carter-Williams in 2013.

The 2016 and 2018 runs stick out to him, though. He was close with the team both years, especially the latter group, which he was set to join the next year.

“It’s just crazy how it comes full circle, and they’re texting me after games and this stuff, saying they love watching me play,” Buddy, a junior, said after Selection Sunday. “I just never dreamed of it because those were guys that were my heroes as a kid.”

Now Buddy’s recreating the kind of March performance he grew up in awe of. Three of Buddy’s highest-scoring outputs this year have come in the last two weeks — 31 against Virginia, 26 and 27 in wins over North Carolina and North Carolina State.

“Buddy just put us on his back,” Boeheim said of the NC State win. “NC State was playing great the first half. He just broke their spirit.”

Elite shooters aim to make half their field goals, at least 40% of their 3s and 90% of their foul shots. Since the 1992-93 season, when Sports-Reference started tracking 3-point percentage, only 10 college basketball players have joined the 50-40-90 club. Buddy is clearing every benchmark in March to join the club.

Buddy Boeheim grew up watching Syracuse’s greats. Now, he’s trying to add his name to the list of March legends. Courtesy of Ethan Hyman | News & Observer

It’s not just efficient shooting. Buddy is playing under control, making great reads off dribble-handoffs and pick-and-rolls. The playmaking burden on him has never been higher as defenses key in.

“A shooter like Buddy Boeheim, it’s contagious,” NC State guard Braxton Beverly said on March 10. “It can even be contagious for the other team sometimes. That’s how good of a shooter he is … Seeing him, two or three shots and just seeing the energy that he had, the other players are definitely going to feed off of him.”

Buddy’s gone on scoring tears before, too. “All junior year,” Buddy’s Jamesville-Dewitt coach Jeff Ike said with a chuckle. In the 2017 Class A regional final, Buddy scored 40 points — including seven 3-pointers — in Jamesville-Dewitt’s 65-62 win over Lansingburgh. He preceded that game with explosions of 33 and 28 points, while adding 25 in J-D’s season-ending loss to Irondequoit in the NYSPHSAA Class A Quarterfinals.

But that’s central New York high school basketball, and this is the ACC. He’s also yet to carry it over into the NCAA Tournament. In his one March Madness game as a freshman, Buddy went 0-for-6 from the floor in 39 minutes. He knows as well as anyone that true Syracuse stars perform in the Big Dance.

When SU scratched and clawed its way to the 2018 Sweet Sixteen, Battle averaged 15.4 points per game, albeit on an inefficient 32.1% from the floor. Flynn averaged 17.6 points per game in the Orange’s 10 games in March 2009, including four Big East Tournament and three NCAA Tournament contests. McNamara had several signature moments and individual runs, but none finer than his 2004 NCAA Tournament surge, when he scored 26.6 points per game and shot over 50% from 3 on an Anthony-less team.

“March is the best time of the year and we’ve had some really good runs in the past,” Buddy said. “I’m just lucky I’ve been able to be there every game and every step of the way.”

This NCAA Tournament, Buddy could join — or even surpass — some of these legendary individual March performances he saw firsthand. If he can keep this up.

Published on March 18, 2021 at 12:05 am

Contact Danny: [email protected] | @DannyEmerman