Jim Boeheim ready for his 39th season at Syracuse

JOHN KEKIS
AP Sports Writer

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — Jim Boeheim goes into his 39th year as head coach at Syracuse with lots of new faces and the usual firm resolve to make something happen when it counts most.

“I think our biggest challenge is that we lost our three leading scorers two years in a row now, and we lost our best defensive player coming off the bench,” said Boeheim, who has 948 career victories and turns 70 in November. “Huge losses, the most that we’ve had in a while. But we have a couple starters back, we have experience at guard, we have experience inside, and we’ve got a lot of young guys who are going to get an opportunity to prove themselves.”

Last season began with 31 straight wins — six in the preseason and a school-record 25 to open the regular season — that vaulted the Orange to No. 1 in the nation. Hope for a second straight trip to the Final Four ended with a thud, though, in the third round of the NCAA tournament when the Orange offense stalled against Dayton in a 55-53 loss, their sixth setback in nine games. The untimely swoon left them at 28-6.

The Orange lost an awful lot from that team: leading scorer C.J. Fair and inside defender Baye Moussa Keita exhausted their eligibility, and standout point guard Tyler Ennis and forward Jerami Grant left for the NBA.

Out with the old. In with the new.

Syracuse has another strong incoming class: 6-foot-6 guard Malachi Richardson, a five-star recruit; 6-2 point guard Kaleb Joseph, who helped Cushing Academy of Massachusetts to its second straight New England Prep School Athletic Conference championship; and 6-9 forward Chris McCullough.

Joseph is in line to take over for Ennis and already has impressed.

“I think his progress has been good,” Boeheim said. “He’s as hard a worker as any point guard we’ve ever had — probably as any guard we’ve ever had. And he understands the game.

“There’s really two tests for a freshman: how do you handle practices and how does he handle game conditions? Nobody knows the answer to that,” Boeheim said.

Center Rakeem Christmas returns for his final season and will offer solid defense in the middle as well as a bigger dose of leadership. But big Dajuan Coleman has been plagued by knee injuries that have limited his play and development in his first two years. He played in only 13 games in 2013-14 before season-ending surgery in January and remains a mystery man as November approaches despite eight months of hard work.

“Nothing’s changed,” Boeheim said. “He’s very limited. We have no real timetable right now. We’re hopeful that he will do something in November, but exactly what that will be, we really don’t know.”

That makes 6-foot-10 Chin Obokoh, who played high school ball in nearby Rochester, an important man on the bench. A deft shot-blocker with a lot to learn on the offensive end, Obokoh was forced to sit last season because the NCAA claimed he was improperly reclassified after arriving in Rochester from his native Nigeria.

The Orange missed all 10 shots they attempted from 3-point range in the loss to Dayton, the first time in 664 games they had failed to convert a 3-point attempt as shooting guard Trevor Cooney and Ennis sputtered at the wrong time.

Cooney returns for his junior year and will be counted on to be more consistent. He was the Orange’s main option from long range last season and had eight games with at least five 3-pointers last season while shooting 90 of 240 (37.5 percent) from behind the arc. The team needs another long-range option now that Ennis (30 of 85, 35.3 percent) has departed.

Duke transfer Michael Gbinije, a 6-7 swingman who played in every game, was a bright spot against Dayton, going 4 of 5 from the field as he stepped up his play at the end of the season.

“I’ve seem big improvements in (Michael Gbinije) and big improvements in Trevor,” Boeheim said. “I think Trevor has worked hard. He’s obviously a great shooter, but he’s doing other things. I think those two guys are very key for us, and Kaleb.”

While Ennis was a leader who displayed remarkable poise for a freshman, the Orange’s three other first-year players didn’t get much meaningful court time. Tyler Roberson saw action in 20 games, starting once, and shot 14 of 47 (29.8 percent), while Ron Patterson and B.J. Johnson played in only 10 games apiece, combining for 42 points. Chinonso Obokoh, a 6-foot-10 native of Nigeria who played high school ball in Rochester, redshirted.

“Some freshmen really are able to step up right away. Other freshmen you kind of watch them and you realize maybe they need a little more time,” Boeheim said. “So we are just going to have to wait and see what happens. How well they’ll adjust to the games is the next question, and I don’t have the answer.”

He will soon. Syracuse, expected to crack the preseason AP Top 25, has exhibition games against Carleton (Nov. 2) and Adrian (Nov. 10) before opening the season Nov. 14 at home against Kennesaw State.

Boeheim also has a multiyear NCAA investigation into the school’s athletic department to cope with. College sports governing body and Syracuse officials were expected to meet at a hearing in late October. The meeting before the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions will determine whether the school has committed NCAA violations and if it will be punished, and the men’s basketball program is a focus.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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