NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: SECOND ROUND - SYRACUSE VS WEST VIRGINIA

March 21, 2021

Jim Boeheim

Bankers Life Fieldhouse

Syracuse Orange

Postgame Media Conference

Syracuse - 75, West Virginia - 72

JIM BOEHEIM: I thought the first half, we played the best defense we've played all year long. We wanted to stay back on Culver when he tried to drive and to draw the charge, but getting him out of the game probably hurt us because they were much better with their smaller lineup, and they made it hard to defend them. Then they got on the boards big time in the second half.

But I think the key really was Marek, you know, make the decision -- the game is going to get away with 11 minutes to go, 12 minutes, if he doesn't play. He has to be in the game. We run our offense through him. He played the whole game, whole rest of the game with the four fouls. He's so key for us.

But I thought the determination we showed today -- you know, we missed shots. Buddy missed the open shots he's been making the last few weeks. At halftime, Gerry talked to him and said, just keep going. Keep looking for them. Everybody kept looking for him, and he knocked some huge shots down when they had us in a lot of trouble.

It was a great win. West Virginia's got a great team. I thought defensively we were really, really good for most of the game. We let McNeil get loose a little bit, and he hit some tough threes, and they got on the boards. They hurt us on the boards. We made some turnovers we don't usually make, but at the end of the day, we won the game. So it's a great win.

Q. Jim, you're now taking an 11 seed to the Sweet 16 for the second time in the last three years. In 2016, you had a 10 seed go to the Final Four. Does this team share any kind of characteristics or mental approach with those two teams?

JIM BOEHEIM: You've got to -- you're playing good teams. I think we made San Diego State look bad, but they're a really good team. For a while, we made West Virginia look bad, but then she showed what they have, and they came back at us really hard.

You know, you just -- you get in this tournament, and you just try to play it one play at a time. Our offense is still pretty good, even though we missed some open shots. I think we shot 50 percent, 40 something, 45 from the three, and we missed some shots. But I think Joe had a huge first half, and then Buddy got it going the second half.

Our defense, Robert's been really good on defense. Alan's just struggled on defense. It's not his offense. He's really struggled on the defensive end to rebound. We have to have defensive rebounding, first of all.

You know, Marek does so much for us. It's hard to even -- you can't even look at the stat sheet because his importance is so much more than -- I mean, he has a good stat sheet, but his importance to our team is so much. He's just a tremendous player.

And Jesse is -- Jesse's not ready yet for this level of competition. It's something I've said all year. I think he's got a great chance to be good someday, but he's just not ready for these physical guys. They just are too physical for him, and he gets pushed around too much. He got knocked completely out of the play twice last year, and they've got a layup. But it's good experience for him, and he'll learn from this.

I thought Kadary made the best play of the game. We had five seconds to get it over, and he made an unbelievable play coming up the sideline, getting that ball over half-court, getting it over to Quincy. That was just a great play he made, and we ended up getting the ball to Buddy, and he made the free throws. It was just a great play.

Q. Jim, you mentioned Buddy's struggles in the first half, but they left him open a couple of times in the second half, and he made those threes. Do you think that helped him get a little bit on a roll in the second half?

JIM BOEHEIM: Well, they didn't leave him open. We ran a play where they would double the ball, and then they would have to come back and help on the roller guy getting to the basket, and Marek found Buddy. He missed some of those in the first half, which is unusual the way he's been playing lately. He missed some wide open ones, but eventually he's going to make those. Then he ends up, he made one really tough three that we had to have right over the guy, and then he made a great pullup on the guy.

These guys are really good defensive players. I mean, they got up in us and really, really guard us. We had to be patient, spread it out. I mean, we played a great game offensively against this team. They got us a little bit on the boards in the second half, and that's something that does kind of happen to us.

You know, we made some turnovers that we don't usually make today, and that could have really hurt us, but fortunately, we were able to overcome that.

Q. Coach, you mentioned that determination a minute ago. I mean, every time West Virginia came back, you guys made the shot you had to, and you found a way to come back. A lot of people don't realize how hard that is. Just describe what it is about this team that you're able to do that?

JIM BOEHEIM: I mean, they're very determined. When West Virginia came back, we had Jesse with four and four out, and Marek had four, and West Virginia had control of the game. We got it down, and we got Buddy -- I think he got a couple shots, a couple looks right there. I think first Marek got fouled on a play going to the basket and made them, and then we got Buddy, I think, a couple times.

Then when it was six, I mean, five or six, we ran a great play, made a couple great passes, and got Robert a three. He was a little off today, but he knocked that three down. That gave us the separation. Although they kept coming at us, and they're going to keep coming at you the whole time.

This team's very determined. They've shown that. They put -- we were in a big hole, and we had to beat North Carolina and Clemson and North Carolina State on the road and home, and North Carolina State is a good basketball team. We were not going to make the tournament if we didn't win all those games. These guys deserve all the credit in the world. I mean, they're a tough bunch. They've really -- they've earned -- it's hard to make the Sweet 16.

Look around. Look at some of the teams that are out. It's really hard to get to the Sweet 16. When I started coaching, we thought that was -- you're supposed to do that. I think we went to 14 or 15 Sweet 16s, and some of them, I don't even think we celebrated, probably ten of them, I don't think we even celebrated. We just figured that's what we're supposed to do. But it's very hard. There's so many good teams. You watch all these teams that are winning that nobody knows that much about, and it's not an accident. There's just a lot of really good coaches. There's a lot of really good players.

I mean, Loyola of Chicago today was one of the most impressive teams I've seen in a long time. Illinois is really good. The Big Ten is a great conference, as we all know. They won the Big Ten, I think, or they were -- no, I guess they were close. Anyway, they're really good, and Loyola of Chicago dominated the game. That's just college basketball.

Q. Coach, talk about Sweet 16s, this is your 20th. And considering all your team has overcome and considering your son is now kind of leading the way, is this the sweetest of the 20?

JIM BOEHEIM: This is a pretty good one. There's no doubt this is a pretty good one. We've had to overcome a lot. Yeah, it's been a battle this year. It's been a real grind. We had a lot of guys up and down. Joe was up and down a lot this year. I mean, he was key in the first half tonight. He was really good.

They did a good job on Joe in the second half. He had trouble. Kadary did some good things for us in there. But, no, there's been some real up and downs and trying to get through. Yeah, I mean, this is a really good one. I didn't realize we've been to that many. That's pretty good. We want to be good. We want to be consistent. Some years we might struggle a little bit, but if we can do something in the tournament, that's pretty great.

We'd like to be good in the regular season and the tournament, but if you're not as good as you'd like to be in the regular season, then let's play well in the tournament. That's what these guys have done.

Really proud of this group. We've beaten two really, really good teams. Really proud of them.

Q. You mentioned that Marek, what he does isn't quantifiable on the stat sheet. Where would you put him in terms of his performances this season and compare him to the other ones and how important he was tonight?

JIM BOEHEIM: He's important every game. He breaks the press for us. He gets it inbounds. He's the one that makes those tough passes there. Somehow he always makes one characteristically bad pass against pressure, which he did when he threw it out of bounds, but it's okay. We spread our offense out. He knows where to go with it. He knows when to drive. He knows when somebody is going to go back door. He just sees things better than anybody else.

He's just a terrific basketball player. I mean, he really is. He's one of the most underrated players in the country. To be able to play center at 6'10", 200 nothing pounds. He's not 200 even, I don't think, and to make all the plays he makes for us on offense and defense -- I mean, drew two charges. He just -- he's really -- he's just a great, great team player. He makes winning plays that are not noticed sometimes, but they're there. They're there.

But this group -- you know, Kadary, we haven't gotten him that play all year, and he dunked it over somebody and hit a big pull-up. He fell asleep a couple times on defense, but he's getting there. Robert's really getting there. Jesse is getting experience, and I think he's learning what he has to do to play at this level.

They're a physical team, and you've got to be strong to play at this level. He needs to learn that and to really go to work and get stronger in the off-season. That will be a huge key for him moving forward.

I thought Quincy was right on the verge today. He had a good, solid game. I think he can do more. I think he's on the verge of where he can really break out. He's starting to shoot better. A couple times he lost the ball around the basket. He missed one easy one. I don't know whether that was a charge down there or not. It looked like he made a good move to the basket in the first half, but I don't know. But he's on the verge of really playing well, and we need that.

Q. Jim, you mentioned Kadary getting across half-court late in the game. I wanted to ask about that play, and just the last inbounds play from Marek to Buddy. How important were those, and what are you going to remember about them?

JIM BOEHEIM: I mean, Kadary's play was the play of the game, I think. If he didn't get that over -- I forget what exactly that was, whether it was four or two. I think it might have been four. I'm not sure. But he got that ball over in like five seconds, and he had to go to get it over, and he made a good pass at the other end. He made a good play. That was a great play.

Q. This is your third Sweet 16 since 2016, and that's more than every other program in the nation except for Gonzaga and Michigan if they win tomorrow. There's been a lot of criticism of the program during that time. I'm sure you hear it. Why do you think that might be?

JIM BOEHEIM: I don't hear it because they're from people who are inconsequential. I'm sure you go to Syracuse, right? You know what that means?

Q. I do.

JIM BOEHEIM: They don't matter.

Q. I do go to Syracuse.

JIM BOEHEIM: All that stuff on the Internet, not one sentence on the Internet matters, not one. When my boss, the athletic director or the chancellor, says something to me, I listen to that. They have not.

But as far as me worrying about what people out there who don't support our program probably in any way, they probably don't come to games or have season tickets, everybody's entitled to their opinion, but I don't listen to them.

My father taught me a long time ago, you've got to do what you think is right, and that's it. You don't listen. And if you're a coach at Syracuse for 45 years, everybody has an opinion about what we should do or shouldn't do or that we should be better or not.

Maybe the next coach will be better. That's great. I'll be happy to see that. But I do not worry about what anyone says in Syracuse. I learned a long time ago. My guidance counselor in eighth grade told me, Jim, you're not going to please everybody. He must have known I was going to be a coach.

Q. Jim, congratulations on the win. Buddy is obviously playing about as well as any player in the country right now. I think it's 28 1/2 points over the last four games. He was not a no-brainer five-star instant player. I would say that his development -- his success now is a testament to development and hard work. Could you just walk us through a little bit of how much better he's gotten during his time at Syracuse.

JIM BOEHEIM: He's worked since he was in ninth grade, Pete, and he had to work that hard from 9th grade to 12th just to get to come to Syracuse. Nobody really recruited Buddy. He was rated 300th in the country, so that goes to show you how good those recruiting services are. But he just worked hard, and he got to Syracuse. He worked hard his freshman year.

I mean, he works out with our strength coach three or four days a week during the season and in the off-season, three days. He doesn't take a week off. He shoots after games. If we play three games in a week and we don't have practice Sunday, he lifts with the strength coach, and he shoots, and he works out. Not just shooting, but working out, dribbling.

He's learned -- he couldn't put the ball on the floor. Now he can put the ball on the floor and get a shot. He's better because he can do that. He's just made himself into a player. There's a lot of guys like that. There's a lot of players out there that people didn't recruit because they weren't ready yet. And you watch them get better, and you watch them work at the game.

Dolezaj, he didn't have anything. He didn't have any place to go to play, but he's worked hard. He understands the game. Our whole team is made up of guys like that that weren't anywhere in the top 100 in the country, but they work hard. Buddy works really hard. His mother goes down at night. He'll be in the gym after a game -- he'll be in there from 8:00 to 10:00. I'm just kind of watching TV or something, and she'll come and Buddy's, Buddy's -- he's down there shooting for an hour, hour and a half, and that's hard to do. You're getting a shot up every eight seconds. It's hard to shoot on the gun more than 20, 30 minutes, and he'll do it for an hour.

He'll work out with -- Eric Devendorf has trained him and worked him out. He just works every day. He's made himself into a really good player, and the difference is he puts it on the floor and can make plays now. His defense is much better. He's moving his feet really good, covering shooters now. That was a big criticism of both him and Joe. And they're our two best defensive guards in the zone. Kadary gets more steals, but Joe and Buddy play it technically better.

But Buddy, I give him all the credit in the world. I've had a lot of hard working players, I really have. I mean, a lot of guys that just worked their tail off. I mean, he works harder than anybody that I've ever coached, and it's not close. It really is not close. He's just an incredible hard worker, and he deserves this. Both of our guys -- Joe Girard is an unbelievable worker. That's why we're here. That's why we're playing.

Like I said, I'm proud of this whole group. I mean, we were pretty bad for quite a while this year. We were getting beat 25 points. We weren't getting beat 10. We were getting beat pretty bad at Clemson, at Virginia, at Pittsburgh. We got killed. They just kept going. They just kept coming to practice, kept trying to get better. We're probably the only team in the country that was really playing at that level at one time this year.

Then we got a little better, and then at the end, we were really playing good basketball. It's hard sometimes. You can play good at the end of the year, but to take it into the tournament, it's not always easy. There are some teams that were playing really well at the end of the year that aren't in this tournament anymore. It's hard. It's hard to win in this tournament.

I think our defense helps us a little. People don't see it. It's a little adjustment, but our offense has been really good. We're playing two really good defensive teams, and we're shooting over 50 percent from the field and 50 percent total in the two games from the three. We missed a lot of open threes tonight too. It's been a great group to coach, a great group.

Q. Jim, one more about Buddy. Overall, what have you seen from him in the postseason? Especially today kind of fighting through that first half slump and then playing so well in the second half.

JIM BOEHEIM: I mean, he's just been playing great. He's been putting the ball on the floor and getting his own shot. Teammates have been looking for him, good screening. The ball is finding him when he's open. He had some really good looks today. I'm surprised he didn't make -- he was 6 for 13. I'm surprised he wasn't 10 for 13 really the way he's been shooting. I know he was disappointed himself at halftime.

He showed kind of what he's made of. I think he was 1 for 6 in the first half and probably 7 for 11 second half, something like that. That's pretty good. That's pretty good shooting. Yeah, he's a tough kid.

Growing up, he was a little underconfident. I had to boost him up a lot. I have two sons. Jimmy plays -- if you describe Jimmy, he plays golf. He hits ten out of bounds in a row, and he thinks the 11th one is going to go in the hole on a par 4. Buddy can play ten good holes and one bad one, and he thinks the next one is going to be bad.

So they just have a different level of confidence, but Buddy's gotten better. He believes in himself now 100 percent, and it's taken a while to get to that point.

When he was in ninth grade on his AAU team, he didn't start, and the guys ahead of him weren't very good. I told him, you're going to be good. You're going to be better than these guys someday. Fortunately, he not only listened to me, but he went to work and made it happen.

That's why I'm proud of him. It's not that he's good. Jimmy's good too, but they both work. They just work hard at the game. Jimmy's been home all year because Cornell couldn't play this year. They just couldn't do it. Unbelievable. But he's been home all year and worked out every day. Every day. He's worked out five or six days a week.

I admire both my sons, but I really admire both my daughters because they're hard workers. And Sissy tells everybody, she's got three state championships, and they don't have any. So she's not even a little bit, giving a little bit to her brothers.

THE MODERATOR: Coach, we appreciate you taking the time. Congratulations. Good luck in the next round.