I'M BACK

Doggy-dog... I have finally been stricken with the inspiration to once again contribute to the Manual Buzzer.

Sports is the main focus of this blog, but this is a slow week or so for sports. The UConn Huskies just delivered one of the least-satisfying Title Games of all time, the NBA Playoffs—and those of something called the "N. H. L."—don't begin until next week, and the while Major League Baseball has finally returned, I forgot to show up for my Fantasy league's draft and was subsequently auto-drafted one of the worst teams ever assembled.

I was going to deliver a post about the end of the Syracuse basketball season, but everything was said pretty well by SteveDep, Pappy, and Danny Mac in the very entertaining podcast. I'll just quickly put in my two cents and say that I think you guys were a little tough on Jim Boeheim. The Marquette game was not his finest display of coaching—James Southerland, come on down?—but at this point, don't we kind of know what we're getting into with Jimmy B? More often than not, Top-100ish recruits (but not necessarily blue-chippers) who fit the system, and a very laissez-faire approach to in-game coaching that tends to result in disappointing post-season performances against more disciplined teams, but with a Final Four run thrown in every 10 years or so when the right pieces and matchups come together.

That Marquette debacle was not fun to watch, and neither was Butler last year (though Onuaku's absence mitigates that), or the A&M game in 2006, or the God-forsaken Vermont game in 2005, or any game against Pitt or Louisville this decade, but Boeheim is a heck of a coach and recruiter who has taken a medium-sized school in a desolate city nobody wants to live in and turned it into a top-10 all-time basketball program and has maintained a ridiculous level of consistent success over 30+ years. (Seriously, where else can this be matched? UCLA was just a few games over .500 a short time ago. UConn missed the NIT in a similar span. Even North Carolina floundered under Matt Doherty. Duke and Kansas are about the only schools that have matched Syracuse in terms of being consistently good over the span of Boeheim's career.)

I can't defend the guy to the death and I agree with a lot of what you guys said, but without Jim Boeheim, Syracuse would probably be a Temple/Xavier/Gonzaga (best case) or Seton Hall/Providence/DePaul (worst case) type program with mid-majorish talent. We'd be Notre Dame football post-1993, except minus those 70 years where we kicked ass. And despite all the crap that makes Boeheim frustrating to watch/root for, I'm not totally convinced the Hopkins torch will be passed without a hitch and I'm dreading the day Jimmy B finally does step down. It's easy to point out the negatives and take him for granted after another crippling loss, but I think we all knew this team never really had the legs to win a title, and on a large scale, the positives of Jim Boeheim far outweigh the perceived negatives.

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I had another sub-post queued up to follow what was supposed to be a 100-word in defensor Boeheimis about the ridiculous new beer/shot combo, the Baghdad Pipe Bomb, but I need something to bring me back here. The Buzzer may—should?—have a semi-regular feature similar to the EDSBS Digital Viking Guide to Spicy Living about all things non-sports that contribute to our fine lives.