Jim Boeheim’s 1st season as SU’s head coach foreshadowed next 46 years of success

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The morning after news broke about Jim Boeheim’s retirement, Dale Shackleford texted his former coach to thank him for the four years Shackleford played at SU and congratulated him for his accomplishments. 

Boeheim was grateful for Shackleford, too. Shackleford remembered his perfect 8-for-8 shooting night against Louisville which brought Boeheim the first ranked win of his head coaching tenure. 

“He texted me back and said ‘well thanks for getting me off to a good start,’” Shackleford said.  

It was a good start. With thicker glasses and a litany of checkered suits, Boeheim led the Orange for the first time in the 1976-77 season. He discovered his coaching style after taking over for Roy Danforth, focused on getting the most out of his players while giving them the freedom to be themselves on the court. SU went 26-4, won 11 straight games in the regular season and made the Sweet Sixteen in the NCAA tournament, foreshadowing a successful next 46 years. 

“He is Mr. Basketball at Syracuse University,” Danforth said. “The program is what he made it.”

Danforth and Boeheim both played under Fred Lewis, who coached Danforth at Southern Miss before taking over the Syracuse head coaching job in 1962. Lewis brought the zone to SU and Boeheim, a walk-on freshman, became the next player to master it. A year after Danforth took over Lewis’ job in 1968, he hired Boeheim as a graduate assistant and soon promoted him to a full-time assistant. 

“When you associate with people, you grow with them and you learn from them, they learn from you,” Danforth said. “It’s a give and take relationship.”

As an assistant, he wasn’t much older than a lot of Syracuse’s team — only 10 years older than former Syracuse guard Larry Kelley. He worked with players individually, teaching Kelley how to be more patient on the court. 

“He helped me to stay positive. He was a really smart assistant coach,” Kelley said. “He was destined to be a head coach.”

Boeheim was an assistant when the Orange reached the Final Four in 1975. Danforth spent another year at SU but was offered the head coaching job at Tulane on April 1, 1976, leaving Syracuse following four straight NCAA Tournament berths. 

The university was ready for a national search. But Danforth and the players wanted Boeheim to take over. Shackleford said some of the players would’ve transferred if Boeheim didn’t get the job. Boeheim was also direct in his interview with the athletic department, ready to take the head coaching job at the University of Rochester if Syracuse didn’t hire him.

“They changed their thinking rightfully,” Danforth said. 

Roosevelt Bouie met Boeheim at a camp when he was 16, immediately acknowledging  the depth of his basketball knowledge from their initial conversation. He wasn’t aware of Boeheim’s hire until the morning after the announcement on April 3, 1976. Bouie’s coach at Kendall High School found him right before class to inform him that his “buddy” just received the head coaching job. Bouie walked straight into the school, called Boeheim and signed to go to Syracuse the next day.

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Boeheim made two things clear in his first practice before the 1976-77 season. He wanted every player to learn how to put their hand up and say “my fault” whenever something went awry. And he didn’t want to run a play 30 times, trusting that they only needed a few attempts to get it right.

“Coach told us ‘If I had to tell you three or four times, I might as well not play you,’” Shackleford said. 

Bouie said Boeheim didn’t need to yell back then. When Bouie kept his back turned to someone in the high post, Boeheim reminded him not to do that and it never happened again.  They learned fast, also taking lessons from Rick Pitino, an assistant coach at the time. 

“We listened, we paid attention, we wanted to play basketball the right way,” Shackleford said.

Boeheim also made sure his team could run. Throughout the year, he wanted to use a 1-2-2 offense with a heavy emphasis on transition scoring. On the defensive end, he wanted to utilize the zone too, which Danforth ended up moving away from in his last few seasons. The team ran a mile three times a week in the preseason, mixed in with some 40-yard sprints, to get prepared. 

Practices were supposed to be tougher than games, Bouie said. In one of Syracuse’s final sessions before its opening game against Harvard, Boeheim reminded Bouie that he should be so tired after every practice that he shouldn’t be able to reach his sneakers in the locker room. 

“‘I can teach you how to play basketball. I can’t teach you how to work hard,’” Boeheim told Bouie.

Boeheim was honest if players weren’t working hard enough. Kelley said Boeheim got on him at halftime once for not diving at a loose ball against Tennessee in the NCAA Tournament. Kelley  wanted to save himself against the 6-foot-7, 230-pound Bernard King but Boeheim expected him to put his body on the line. Kelley played with more aggression in the second half, scoring 22 points in SU’s overtime win. 

“A player in the end, in the middle, in the beginning is going to give you what you got if you’re honest with them,” Kelley said. 

While Danforth was set on running certain plays, Boeheim gave players leeway on both sides of the ball, Kelley said. The freedom helped every player perform to the best of their ability. Five players averaged double digits in scoring and Bouie recorded 9.4 points per game. On defense, the players were well-versed enough to communicate switches without consulting Boeheim. 

“He gave us all the green light when we felt something would work a little better,” Shackleford said. 

That coaching style was why every player on Syracuse’s 1976-77 squad really wanted to play under Boeheim, Kelley said. And it was why SU attracted better players in each season after.

“(The program) never went backwards, it continued to get better,” Kelley said.