Tuesday, May 21st, 2013
As Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim draws ever closer to his milestone 900th victory, there’s been widespread discussion about where he ranks amongst the all-time great college basketball coaches.
During the telecast of the Long Beach State game, his 897th victory, ESPN commentators Bob Wischusen and Seth Greenberg, suggested that if there were a Mount Rushmore of college basketball coaches, Boeheim would surely have his face on the peak, along with the only other Division I men’s basketball coaches to win more than 900 games, Bob Knight and Mike Krzyzewski.
Where does Boeheim rank all time?
» More from Nate Federman: Should Syracuse be worried about its outside shooting?
My gut reaction to the statement was that they were being wildly hyperbolic and the other Syracuse fans I spoke with all seemed to agree. As Brian Higgins, of the Syracuse IMG Sports Network suggested to me, if there really were a college basketball equivalent of Mount Rushmore, and the coaches on it paralleled the presidents on the real Mount Rushmore, it would probably break down something like this:
It’s hard to argue with that, but perhaps Naismith, and his career 55-60 record at Kansas, gets knocked off the coaching mountain despite inventing the sport. If that happened, Boeheim still doesn’t make the cut. Bobby Knight and his 902 career wins, 5 Final Fours, and 3 National Championships slides into the fourth spot.
But what if they added a fifth head to the mountain—would it belong to Boeheim who currently has 898 wins, has been to 3 Final Fours, and has won 1 National Championship? Well, he’d certainly be in the conversation, along with Lute Olsen, Eddie Sutton, Jim Calhoun, and perhaps even Rick Pitino, but that fifth spot would have to go to Dean Smith, with his 879 career wins, 11 Final Fours, and 2 National Championships. Or perhaps Smith would get the fourth spot and Knight would get the fifth spot, but in either case, Boeheim wouldn’t.
» Related: Is Syracuse an ‘elite’ program?
So how many heads on this hypothetical mountain would there have to be for Boeheim to find his likeness carved into the granite? In my personal opinion: seven. Boeheim gets his beautiful scowl etched into stone before the likes of Olsen (781 wins, 5 Final Fours, 1 National Championship) and Sutton (804 wins, 3 Final Fours), and Pitino (629 wins, 6 Final Fours, 1 National Championship), at least for now, but, and this makes me very sad to write, Jim Calhoun gets the nod before Boeheim.
Calhoun over Boeheim? Blasphemy you say? Well, a head-to-head comparison between the two shows that Calhoun deserves the nod and frankly it’s not really close. Boeheim gets the edge in career victories as Calhoun “only” has 866. Both Boeheim and Calhoun have 9 regular season Big East Championships, but Calhoun has 2 more Big East Tournament Championships (7 to 5). Calhoun has developed more NBA players, who have had better NBA careers than the guys Boeheim has produced. Calhoun only has one more Final Four than Boeheim, but he’s won 3 National Championships, two more than Boeheim has.
Boeheim has sort of been the Karl Malone of college coaches. Much like Malone did, Boeheim puts up very good numbers every season (he has more 20 win seasons than any other coach) and much like Malone, there have been a lot of seasons (Malone played 19 seasons in the NBA, Boeheim is in his 36th season as head coach at Syracuse). While Boeheim has consistently been very very good, he’s never really had a stretch where he established himself as truly dominant coach, just like Malone never established himself as a truly dominant player. Boeheim elevated an already established program. Calhoun on the other hand, turned Connecticut basketball from nothing into something special. And once he turned UCONN into a powerhouse program, he had one of the more impressive runs in modern NCAA history, winning 3 championships in 12 years. So it suffices to say, advantage Calhoun. At least for now…
» Related: Why have Syracuse players disappointed in the NBA?
Calhoun is gone, retired, done. Boeheim is not. So discussing his legacy at this point is a little like guessing the ending of an M Night Shyamalan movie, 60 minutes in. Boeheim is at the top of his game, winning more games over the past three seasons than during any three-year stretch in his career. And if there’s one thing we know about Boeheim, it’s that for all his talk about not worrying about his legacy, he does care. A lot. He wants to go down as one of the greats. He wants to distinguish himself from Calhoun and from Knight (perhaps as a little payback for what happened in the ’87 championship game).
He wants to be on the Mount Rushmore of coaches. And that’s very good news for Syracuse fans, because I get the sense that Boeheim won’t be satisfied with 900 wins. He’ll coach for at least another four years in order to become the second coach ever to amass 1000 wins (I’m assuming Coach K will get there first). He wants to prove he can win in the ACC. And he wants another national championship, or at the very least another Final Four, a trip he’s made in every decade since the 80′s. So when it’s all said and done and James Arthur Boeheim finally steps down, you can bet that if it’s to him, there won’t be any discussion about his legacy, everyone will agree his face belongs on that mountain.
For more Syracuse coverage, Like our Facebook page and follow us @TheJuiceOnline.
Tags: Basketball, Jim Boeheim, Syracuse
More From: Nate Federman
They always rate coaches solely by the number of games they’ve won. What about using the standard of what their winning percentage is (as in baseball )?
With this method, Adolph Rupp is the clear winner.
In his day they played home and home with all the major school, and without the 10 to 12 early season
cupcakes schools now schedule.
It’s an interesting idea and certainly a piece of criteria that I should have included in my piece. Rupp is 3rd all time in win percentage (.8218), Wooden is 4th (.8039), Dean Smith is 16th (.7758), Coach K is 20th (.7628), Boeheim is 29th (.7471), Knight is 66th (.7062), and Calhoun is 74th (.6966).
But like any singular metric, win percentage doesn’t tell the whole story, as coaches play schedules with wildly different degrees of difficulty. Also, there’s substantially more parody in college basketball today than there was 20, 40, 60, or 80 years ago, making it even more difficult to compare coaches across generations.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much in the way of advanced stats when it comes to comparing coaches (especially coaches from different generations), so we’re forced to rely on fairly unscientific metrics (like wins, NCAA tournament appearances, Final Fours, and Championships).
*parity not parody, although yes, there’s much more parody in college basketball too.
Nate…Let’s consider useing four metrics; Total wins, percentage of games won, NCAA titles, percentage of NCAA games won.
These common elements would serve to best compare the different time periods.
I think those are solid metrics. Here are some numbers (W-L, win percentage) for career NCAA tournament records:
John Wooden (47-10, .825)
Coach K (79-24, .767)
Jim Calhoun (51-20, .718)
Dean Smith (65-27, .707)
Bob Knight (45-25, .643)
Jim Boeheim (48-28, .628)
Adolph Rupp (30-18, .625)
One other tiny point: for the purposes of this discussion, I was looking at candidates for the Mount Rushmore of coaches, which is a little different than “best coaches ever,” and the a reason why total wins (even as a flawed metric) is such an important stat. One can make a rather compelling argument that coaches like Self or Izzo or Pitino or even Calipari may be better coaches (based on win %, tournament win %, and perhaps even tournament results), but it’s hard to place any of the aforementioned guys in the discussion for all-time coaching icons, because they simply haven’t had the longevity of the other coaches on my list. Perhaps anyone of those guys will retire as an all-time great, but much as Boeheim’s legacy is still being written, those guys have a long long ways to go before theirs are clear.
This could be a study in subjectivity, but you could build a Mount Rushmore by starting with 800 wins as the basis to be considered. If a candidate wins any of the four metrics he is on the mountain. If he wins two metrics he is on the front of the mountain.
You could add a fifth metric to use as tie breaker.
I’ll let you do the math. The fact that Rupp, Wooden and Smith only played 25- 30 games(compared to the current 40 games)should be considered.
only
I like your idea, although I might make my base-point a little lower, maybe 700 wins, and I’d add an exception clause: something like, if a coach has won 5 or more National Championships, they get to be considered regardless of win total (mainly so John Wooden, 10 championships, but “only” 664 career wins would still be eligible). That would also go a long way towards making sure Rupp and Smith get their due despite playing fewer games per season. It would also help balance the historical differences between winning a championship when the tournament was 16 or 32 teams vs. today’s format which features 68.
In any case, you’re right. This is largely a subjective exercise, but as far as subjective exercises go, I think doing the research for this led me to the belief that Coach K, Coach Wooden, and Coach Rupp are objectively three sure-fire icons for the mountain. Perhaps things get a bit murkier after that, but fairly solid arguments can be made without the benefit of advanced stats.
Nate…I totally agree; Wooden, Rupp and Coach K are on the mountain. If there are only four spaces on the mountain…Jim is not yet up there.
[...] Jim Boeheim approaches his 900th win, The Juice Online meditates on whether his steely countenance would grace a college basketball Mount Rushmore of coaching greats. Sacrilegiously, the author argues that the Syracuse legend would be the seventh choice, behind [...]
I liken Boeheim more to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Hank Aaron than Karl Malone.
Yes, Malone was great for a long time but he never won a title.
Jabbar and Hank Aaron (never had more than 47 HR in a season) are better comps. For Malone: think Eddie Sutton.