Now that the Syracuse basketball regular season is over, we checked in with former Orange guard Andrew Kouwe in this week’s The Juice on the Cuse Podcast, presented by SNY.tv.
Kouwe tackled the biggest news item in the last week: What to make of Jim Boehim’s announcement of “ironclad” succession plan during Brent Axe’s “On the Block” last week on ESPN Radio.
“We have a plan in place, a good plan, an ironclad plan,” Boeheim said to Axe. “But we have a plan, we obviously aren’t going to release it, because we don’t want everybody we’re recruiting against to know what we’re going to do.”
While that may be true, Kouwe, who played at Syracuse from 2000-2004, still thinks that plan is several years from coming to fruition.
“I’ve always been in the camp that he’s going to stay longer than people think,” Kouwe says on the podcast. “I don’t see why he wouldn’t continue for another 3-5 years.”
“He just loves the game. He’s always had the passion. He’s always been a competitive person from a basketball standpoint that I’ve ever met or seen. And to me, if he’s healthy physically and mentally, I don’t see why he wouldn’t keep coaching. That doesn’t mean for another 10 years, why not for another three, four years?”
» Related: Syracuse loses steam in final minutes, bows to Miami
Another question that comes up is who will go on to replace Boeheim. Likely, it will come from within SU’s current coaching staff, which includes two of Kouwe’s former teammates: Gerry McNamara and Allen Griffin.
“It’ll be in great hands no matter what direction they go,” Kouwe says, “if they stay in the family with one of those three guys.”
Kouwe chats about a variety of other topics including why Syracuse struggled to inbound the ball under tight ball pressure in a 75-72 loss to Miami over the weekend, and his thoughts on SU’s first losing regular season under Jim Boeheim.
Afterward, Brad Bierman calls in to chat about the last minute collapse against the Hurricanes, and also chimes in on the historical significance of Syracuse’s first losing season since the 60s.
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