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early every part of the last half-century of Syracuse men’s basketball history began with one thing: An introduction. With Jim Boeheim meeting a teammate, recruit, coach or staffer.
There are few in college sports as synonymous with his alma mater as Boeheim, who grew up outside Syracuse, played at Syracuse and is in his 45th season as head coach. The Hall of Famer has mentored countless young men from around the world, including 18 All-Americans, dozens of future pros and numerous champions.
Here are several of those players’ first memories of Boeheim, from before SU hired him as head coach to today:
Roosevelt Bouie, 1976-1980
30-year-old Boeheim was leading Syracuse’s summer camp, a typical duty for assistant coaches, when he met Bouie, who was then 16. Alongside Louis Orr, Boeheim’s first recruit, Boeheim and Bouie developed a rapport that set the Syracuse men’s basketball program in motion.
Bouie wanted a coach with the same temperament as his father. He didn’t want a Bobby Knight-type who would scream at him when he inevitably made mistakes on the court. That wasn’t how he’d been raised, so he didn’t know how he’d respond to such a coaching style.
“Coach Boeheim was a man of a few words, just as my father was,” Bouie said. “I figured, if something went wrong, he wouldn’t jump up and scream and throw things, he’d come over and talk to me and try to figure out what happened.”
Bouie was recruited to programs nationwide — Oklahoma, Michigan State, Duke, Georgia Tech — but wanted to stay close to his hometown of Kendall, New York. In the spring of 1976, with former head coach Roy Danforth departing for Tulane, Syracuse began a national search for its next coach. But Boeheim, then 32, believed he was next in line.
When Syracuse didn’t commit to Boeheim, he took an interview with the University of Rochester. He later returned to the SU search team and said he’s either bringing Bouie and Orr to Syracuse or to Rochester — their choice. At the time, Bouie had no idea of Boeheim’s plan. But had Syracuse balked and Boeheim ended up at Rochester, would he have followed?
“I have to say, he could’ve convinced me,” Bouie said.
Roosevelt Bouie played a major role in Jim Boeheim’s hiring as Syracuse’s head coach. Daily Orange File Photo
Hal Cohen, 1976-1980
Cohen, a steady guard for Boeheim’s first teams as head coach, doesn’t remember the exact moment they met — it must’ve been at a summer camp when Boeheim was still an assistant, he said.
The biggest Boeheim “first,” though, was the new head coach’s first media blow-up. It was 1977, and a freshman named Magic Johnson brought his Michigan State team to town for the Carrier Classic. Johnson dazzled, but he coughed up nine turnovers in a 75-67 loss for Michigan State, Cohen said.
Led by senior forward Marty Byrnes (19.9 points per game), Syracuse won the in-season tournament at Manley Field House. But the media members in attendance voted for the flashy Johnson, not Byrnes, as the most valuable player.
“When they went to announce the MVP, we assumed it would be Marty,” Cohen said. “We’d never heard of a player not on the winning team to win the MVP.”
Boeheim, too, apparently assumed as much.
“Boeheim was very annoyed with the writers at that point,” Cohen recalls. “That was the first chair toss of his career during a postgame interview. (He) walked off the podium and threw the chair.”
Herman Harried, 1984-89
When Harried first met Boeheim, he thought he was a quiet, lowkey guy. He went to dinner with SU’s staff and had a brief meeting with Boeheim in his office.
Harried spent five years at Syracuse, missing one because of a knee injury, and was a reserve player on the 1987 team that advanced to the Final Four. But what stood out to Harried the most was Boeheim’s intelligence — it’s his greatest asset, he said.
“He can counter things that other coaches and teams are trying to do on the fly, which you got to be pretty good to be able to do,” Harried said.
Stephen Thompson, 1986-90
Growing up in Los Angeles, Thompson dreamed of attending UCLA. But then the Big East started to grow in popularity and get more broadcasts on ESPN. Syracuse, Boeheim and the Carrier Dome got more attention.
Boeheim traveled across the country to Thompson’s house for a recruiting visit in 1984 or 1985. Thompson was 16 years old at the time, and everything about the meeting was “mesmerizing,” he said.
Boeheim pitched that Thompson’s style of play — getting up and down the floor in transition, getting to the rim, playing good one-on-one defense — would mesh perfectly with Syracuse’s system, and he compared his potential role to Georgetown’s David Wingate. He thought Thomspon could even lead the Orange in scoring as a freshman, although that didn’t happen after mononucleosis limited him.
Thompson, now an assistant coach at Oregon State, averaged 18 and 17.8 points per game his final two seasons before spending a year in the NBA and playing professionally overseas. He became an honorable mention All-American his junior and senior seasons at Syracuse, too.
“The vision of what they saw came to fruition as my career went on, for sure,” he said.
Mike Hopkins, 1989-1993 (assistant coach 1995-2017)
Even though he grew up on the West Coast, Hopkins loved watching the Orange play as a middle schooler. He remembers the image of Boeheim and Georgetown coaching legend John Thompson face-to-face at midcourt. Hopkins became a “huge fan” of Pearl Washington and Rafael Addison.
So when Boeheim visited his home in San Mateo, California, Hopkins was in awe.
“It was like you were talking to a god,” Hopkins said. “Coach Boeheim, he’s just so tough, so competitive. Never back down. So when I met him, you saw the different side. You saw the funny, smart, caring and just honest and real.”
Boeheim was up-front with him about how Hopkins would fit into the program, something Hopkins has emulated as an assistant and now as head coach at Washington. Hopkins even has a Boeheim impression that’s calm and almost satirical, complete with hand gestures and a nasally voice.
“Just really appeal(ling), really simple, really authentic,” Hopkins said. “I think that’s why we had a lot of success in recruiting in the program.”
John Wallace, 1992-96
Boeheim had a recruiting message that sold the Rochester native when the two first met.
“Syracuse University needed Derrick Coleman, Billy Owens, and now we need John Wallace,” Wallace remembers Boeheim telling him.
Owens and Coleman were the best forwards in the country when they were at SU. Wallace wanted to match them, and attending Syracuse made him one step closer to that, Boeheim told him.
“I’ll never forget him saying that to me,” Wallace said. “Coach has always been the best at instilling confidence in you.”
Wallace went on to become an All-American and two-time All-Big East player. He scored 2,119 points at SU, fewer than only Coleman and Lawrence Moten.
Malik Campbell, 1997-99
Having Boeheim and Orr on his front porch in the city of Buffalo was “a pretty big deal,” Campbell said. Neighbors who drove by glanced toward Campbell’s house, turned away, realized it was Boeheim and glanced again. Campbell had initially signed to play football at Maryland, turning down a football offer from SU, but that opportunity eventually fell through.
Because of that, Campbell had a year after high school to play AAU basketball, and that’s where Orr spotted him. In the pre-social media era, the Syracuse basketball coaching staff knew nothing of his previous football offers, or that football coach Paul Pasqualoni was recruiting him once again.
“Both of them were offering me, but neither one of them knew because I wasn’t playing football at the time,” Campbell said. “Pasqualoni didn’t know I was playing basketball post-grad, Boeheim and Coach Orr didn’t know I was a football player.”
Campbell, now an assistant basketball coach at Buffalo State, spent two seasons as a reserve guard for Syracuse before transitioning back to football full-time. But that’s when his relationship with Boeheim really grew, he said, and Campbell would stop by Boeheim’s office to pick the head coach’s brain — and Boeheim remained loyal to the relationship the two created on the front porch.
Clay McKnight, 2000-03
McKnight’s first introduction to Boeheim came at Mater Dei High School in California, where McKnight’s father was the high school coach for Syracuse recruits Hopkins and LeRon Ellis.
McKnight — who was Syracuse’s director of basketball operations and later worked with USC, Oregon State and UCLA — learned that you needed to be prepared about a subject before talking to Boeheim about it because “he will eat you alive if you don’t,” McKnight said. He observed how much Boeheim read to ensure he was sharp on a variety of topics, something that stays with him today.
“Outside of my dad, Coach Boeheim is the next person I have all the respect in the world for because of who he is and what he stands for,” McKnight said via text. “Genuinely nice person to his core, loyal to the bone and very intelligent.”
Ella Plowman | Asst. Digital Editor
Carmelo Anthony, 2002-03
Anthony thinks it was probably “like pulling teeth” to get Boeheim to travel to Baltimore to see him play a high school game.
But Anthony wasn’t just any recruit. That much was clear. Still, his talent didn’t initially entrance Boeheim.
“I remember he fell asleep coming to recruit me,” Anthony said. “I remember that, watching the game, he fell asleep. I looked over, and I see him nodding off in the chair.”
That didn’t prevent SU from signing the most important player in program history, though.
“My first time meeting him, though, it was a connection,” Anthony said after a recent Portland Trail Blazers practice. “There was an energy that we had. Guys that we knew had mutual guys that I grew up, grew up watching, grew up looking up to. That he coached prior to that. And just his connection he had with Baltimore city as a whole. How comfortable he was being in that environment. Being around him, coming to Baltimore, coming to my games and watching me play.”
Anthony believed Syracuse was the heart of the Big East, and that meant something to him. He thought Boeheim was the perfect person to leave his mark on the legendary conference with.
They did that — and then some.
Josh Pace, 2001-05
About a decade before he became a key spark off Syracuse’s bench during the 2003 title run and became a constant in its starting lineup his final two years, Pace was a member of the “Orangemen” in his Griffin, Georgia, recreational basketball league.
He didn’t know anything about where Syracuse was or who coached the actual team. All Pace knew was that his father, Larry, coached the group of 9-and 10-year-olds wearing blue and orange uniforms, the group that won the league’s championship that season.
Pace met Boeheim years later at a Team Georgia AAU practice, when Boeheim and then-assistant Troy Weaver stopped by to watch him. Pace said he flashed his all-around skillset that day — dunking a couple times, facilitating on offense, blocking shots on defense — and soon after, Boeheim and Weaver returned for an in-home visit.
June, Pace’s mother, wasn’t sold on her son attending a school so far away, though. During the visit, she started to tear up. But Boeheim walked her outside, talked for a few minutes, and when they returned, June had changed her mind.
So Pace went to Syracuse and won the program’s only national championship — with the real Orangemen.
Eric Devendorf, 2005-09 (assistant strength coach 2016-18)
Long before jumping on the scorer’s table during Syracuse’s classic six-overtime Big East Tournament championship game against Connecticut, Devendorf — a Bay City, Michigan native — was verbally committed to Michigan State.
But when he changed his mind about the Spartans, Syracuse was the first school to show interest. Boeheim and Weaver flew to Detroit to watch one of Devendorf’s AAU practices. Several powerhouse programs attended various practices, Devendorf said, but it wasn’t everyday a coach like Boeheim came and offered a scholarship right on the spot.
“It was the first time he’d seen me play, and that was the first time I met him, and he offered me a scholarship,” Devendorf said. “It was pretty exciting, man. It was pretty cool.”
The interaction showed Devendorf that he was a priority for the Orange. Devendorf played three seasons in orange, had a subsequent stint as an assistant coach and has pursued recent philanthropic work in the Syracuse community.
Ella Plowman | Asst. Digital Editor
Andy Rautins, 2005-10
Rautins attended Jamesville-DeWitt High School and lived right down the street from SU. So after school or practice, he’d make his way to Manley Field House. SU always left the doors open during practice, Rautins said, so he’d watch and see how close the team was to finishing up. When it did, he jogged onto the floor.
Because his dad, Leo, had also played for Syracuse, Rautins had seen Boeheim before. SU was his dream school, and Rautins hoped that Boeheim, or any coach, would notice him taking shots in their gym.
“I did more recruiting on my own accord to Syracuse than they ever did for me,” Rautins said. “Which may have helped in the process, I’m not sure.”
One day, as a sophomore or junior in high school, Boeheim did see him. As Rautins worked through his shooting progressions, Boeheim walked through the field house and stopped to say hello. He told Rautins to keep working hard.
“Maybe one day, you never know what could happen,” Boeheim said.
Mookie Jones, 2008-12
As one of the top high school forwards in the country – Jones beat Jimmer Fredette’s Glens Falls team in the 2007 New York State title — Jones met his fair share of college basketball coaching powers. He’d met Rick Pitino at Louisville. Tom Crean at Marquette offered him a scholarship. So did St. Johns, DePaul and Rutgers.
Some of those other coaches, Jones said, told the Peekskill High School graduate not to go to SU. But Jones saw through the recruiting tactics when he first met Boeheim on his official visit.
“Then you meet this man, and his relaxing soul was just telling you, ‘You’re a priority and we want you to come here and be a part of our program,’” Jones said of Boeheim. “Enough said, you don’t have to say more than that. “
Boeheim and Hopkins — “I can’t leave Hopkins out of it,” he said — weren’t like the others. Jones was sold on Boeheim’s energy and presence.
“He doesn’t try to oversell the program like a lot of people do to get kids to come here. Very laid-back,” Jones said. “But he means business. He’s told us a lot of things that maybe as a kid, 17, 18-year-old kid, you don’t understand, but he leaves you some things to think about.”
Jerami Grant, 2012-14
By the time Boeheim came to a couple of Grant’s AAU games, he’d already established himself as a legend. Potential recruits’ perspectives of him reflected that.
Grant, who’s now with the Detroit Pistons, was no different.
“He’s a good dude,” Grant said. “Great coach, obviously. One of the best coaches in college history. He knows how to put wins together. I mean, he’s great.”
Boeheim and assistant coach Adrian Autry paid the promising four-star forward special attention, he said. They met with his mom at his house and saw him play several times before he signed.
Carmelo Anthony said that Jim Boeheim fell asleep while watching his game when he came to recruit him. Daily Orange File Photo
Trevor Cooney, 2011-2016
A two-time state champion from Wilmington, Delaware, Cooney skyrocketed up recruiting rankings. The 6-foot-4 guard was his high school’s all-time leading scorer and became the No. 1 prospect in the state and 17th-ranked shooting guard in his class.
“I think it might’ve been my in-home visit junior year of high school,” Cooney recalled. “I do remember kind of meeting him for the first time, just kind of being in awe of him just because of what he has done for the game of basketball, and the legacy that he has.”
Cooney, who scored 1,437 points in his SU career, was too nervous to remember much of the conversation.
Tyler Lydon, 2015-17
Growing up in Hudson, New York, Lydon was always a Syracuse fan. But playing at SU wasn’t realistic for him until his freshman year in high school, when he was on the Albany City Rocks AAU team. Some small Division I schools began to recruit him, but they were honest: You’re probably a little too good for us.
Lydon ended up going to the Syracuse Elite Camp. As he competed in the Carmelo K. Anthony Center, Boeheim looked down from his high-rising office. It was a “surreal feeling,” Lydon said.
“Being from a super small town in upstate New York, I never thought in a million years that I’d be meeting with him,” Lydon said.
At one point, Lydon noticed Boeheim had walked down from his office and begun talking to his dad nearby. “I’m like, ‘What is going on right now? Is this real life?’” Eventually, Lydon joined them when the scrimmage ended, but he was too star-struck to remember much of the interaction.
Lydon later helped lead Syracuse to an improbable Elite Eight run as a sophomore before declaring for the NBA Draft early.
Quincy Guerrier, 2019-present
Guerrier, the clear MVP of this year’s Orange, grew up in Canada. Syracuse was his dream school. He often thought about playing for the Hall of Famer.
“When I first saw him, he told me some stuff about how he (saw) me in the future and what I can do for the program. I was just grateful to meet him, and now to play for him.”
Photo Illustration by Photo Editor Emily Steinberger.
Published on February 7, 2021 at 9:31 pm
Contact Danny: [email protected] | @DannyEmerman
