The Hall of Famer took the blame for SU’s embarrassing loss to St. John’s.
The Syracuse Orange suffered their fifth loss of the season on Wednesday at the hands of St, John’s, 93-60.
Brutal.
“This game is all on me, I didn’t get them ready to do what we needed to do,” SU head coach Jim Boeheim said following the loss. “We just didn’t execute on defense or offense, and St. John’s did.”
A little surprising that coach Boeheim took 100 percent of the blame. However, the team didn’t look ready, they didn’t look focused and Chris Mullin’s group came to play.
“I don’t think I am with this team,” Boeheim said about whether he knows what he’s doing with this year’s team. “They’re not doing what we need to do to win.”
“We’re gonna go home, and then come back, and go back to work and try to get back at it. If we don’t get better, we’re not gonna win many. A lot better.”
Andrew White III was held to a season-low two points on 1-of-6 shooting from the floor, including 0-of-2 from three-point range. This came after a 14-point performance against Georgetown, where White made one field goal in the final 38 minutes.
“I don’t think we executed very well on offense,” Boeheim said of White’s struggles. “Again, that’s my fault. I’m in charge of that and we didn’t execute very well. Teams are going to deny him as much as they can. We thought we could get stuff inside. We just weren’t good enough in there.”
St. John’s — for a second straight season — tore the Orange up from three-point range. Last season, Mike Hopkins was at the helm and didn’t have any answers. This season, more of the same. The Johnnies hit 12 three-pointers on Wednesday.
“Our defense was horrible,” Boeheim said. “Bottom line.”
Why was St. John’s able to find open space behind the three-point-arc?
“That’s a good question. That’s what they did. We didn’t execute our defense at all. That’s why. It’s the same thing they did last year, and they hurt us last year with it. We thought we had an answer, we didn’t execute. We let the ball get in places where we wanted it not to get.”
Over the course of his four-minute and 28-second press conference, Jim Boeheim repeatedly said, “It’s on me.” He didn’t want his players receiving any blame, despite their lackluster performance.
“We’re not very good,” Boeheim said. “If we don’t change, play better defense, get better movement and get better guard play, it’s gonna continue. This won’t change.”
We’re 12 games into the season, and half of the team — maybe more — doesn’t understand how the 2-3 zone operates.
Should it have progressed to a higher level by now?
“I would say yes, it should have,” Boeheim said. “But it hasn’t. Again, that’s something that I have to deal with. That’s my fault, my responsibility. I have to coach better and we have to play a lot better. We got a lot of games left and a lot of difficult games left. The way we’re playing right now, we can’t win many of those games. That’s what I see.”
Syracuse has some much-needed time off before returning the court on Dec. 27 against Cornell.
