SON-SATIONAL
Buddy Boeheim has risen from afterthought to lifting his dad’s program back to NCAA tourney
Buddy Boeheim wouldn’t call this a dream. Dreams are imagined, thought to be possible if everything goes according to plan one day.
This — becoming Syracuse’s leading scorer, the key to its run to a surprising NCAA Tournament — wasn’t a scenario he ever pictured.
“I always wanted to play here, but I never thought I would be able to be in this position I am to help lead our team and be a big player,” the son of Hall of Fame coach Jim Boeheim told The Post over Zoom in the lead-up to the 11th-seeded Orange’s Midwest Region firstround game against No. 6 San Diego State on Friday night. “It just shows you what hard work can do. I never thought I would get this good.”
Buddy’s dream was to play for Syracuse. He’s been around the program his entire life. If all went right — absolutely everything — maybe he could be a contributor as an upperclassman one day, he thought.
Buddy wasn’t a highly ranked prospect. He was never the best player on his high school team. He didn’t start in AAU until his junior year. A 6-foot-6 junior shooting guard, he was rated as a three-star recruit. Before his senior year, he had a big summer on the AAU circuit with City Rocks, averaging 13.5 points and shooting 55.9 percent from 3-point range in the prestigious Nike Peach Jam. Gonzaga offered him a scholarship. Other big schools were interested.
He was a tireless worker. His mother and Jim’s wife, Juli, recalled him working so much in high school, she would have to tell him it was enough on several occasions.
As his stock began to rise, the entire Syracuse coaching staff went into Jim’s office one day and said they wanted to offer his son a scholarship, which Juli recalled as a “groundbreaking moment.” Jim didn’t want to push his son on his staff.
A few days later, Juli told Buddy the school was going to offer him a scholarship.
“He looked at me with big eyes, like, ‘Oh really?’ ” she recalled. “I knew what he was thinking.”
As a child, Buddy was a ballboy along with his older brother Jimmy, who played for Cornell. He would literally cry for hours after losses, Juli said. When his father would get home, the tears would start up again. He wouldn’t want to go to school the next day, fearful that someone would ask how the team did the previous game.
“He’s been crying since he was 2 ¹/₂, 3 years old about Syracuse basketball,” Juli said. “He’s 21 and he’s had 19 years of that emotion and love and passion [for the program].”
Before the decision was made that Buddy would attend Syracuse, Jim spoke to a number of different coaching friends who had coached their sons. It isn’t necessarily easy, but it is worth it, they all said.
Jim said when it comes to his son during games, 90 percent of his focus is as a coach and 10 percent as a father. He’s trying to see how he can help his son the player, like all the other Syracuse players. But Jim, 76, doesn’t dismiss the pride factor watching Buddy perform, particularly now that he has emerged.
“It’s fun to watch him as a parent,” Jim said. “It’s a great privilege to coach your own son, there’s no
question about that.”
Each year at Syracuse, Buddy has shown progress, going from a 3-point specialist as a freshman reserve to arguably the team’s most important player as a junior. This year he’s the Orange’s leading scorer at 17.3 points per game, one of its top playmakers and is shooting career-bests from the field (42.5 percent), at the free-throw line (87.8) and from long range (37.3).
He struggled early in the season, Syracuse went on an 18-day pause and he missed three games with COVID-19. When he returned, he was hard on himself, taking ownership of the team’s struggles following losses. After one bad game, Jim had a talk with him.
“Relax,” he told Buddy. “You’ve already beaten the expectations put on you. Just go out there and play.”
That was one major advantage of coaching his son. Jim knew when to be hard on Buddy and when to give him confidence. Just like his first two seasons, Buddy improved as March neared. He’s been at his best late in the year, helping Syracuse turn a disappointing season into an NCAA Tournament bid by winning six of its last nine games. He’s scored in double figures in nine straight games, scoring 21 points or more five times. His last game was his best, a career-high 31 points in a buzzer-beating loss to Virginia in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals.
“Getting 31 points against Virginia is like getting 45 against most teams,” Jim joked. “We’ve had trouble scoring 31 against them as a team in three quarters [of a game].”
After years of watching his father’s teams make March memories from a distance, he will have a chance to make an NCAA Tournament run of his own.
“It’s just so awesome and surreal because this kid grew up totally absorbed and consumed with Syracuse basketball,” Juli said. “It’s breathtaking. I could just cry.”