The First Shot
BIG EAST FLASHBACK: If you’re of a certain age, expect history to wash over your TV screens this afternoon. West Virginia meets Syracuse for the first time since 2012 when both were members of the old Big East. The Midwest Region second-round game also features that rare matchup of 900-win coaches: Bob Huggins (900-381), newly inducted with WVU’s 84-67 win Friday vs. Morehead State, against Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim (981407). However, while basking in the glow of history, know that it doesn’t favor the No. 3-seed Mountaineers. Syracuse is 22-5 vs. WVU since 1976, the year Boeheim became head coach.
“He’s got to be, if not the best, one of the best shooters in college basketball.” — Bob Huggins, on Buddy Boeheim, pictured at left
Listen to Jackson Thomas “Buddy” Boeheim speak, and he sounds very much like a coach, or a coach’s son, using phrases such as “evolution and growth” or bromides about how if you “think about that past game, then it’s going to bottle over into this game.”
Watch the kid known as “Buddy Buckets” play for his father Jim Boeheim’s Syracuse team, and he looks very much like someone described this way Saturday by West Virginia coach Bob Huggins: “He’s got to be, if not the best, one of the best shooters in collegebasketball.”
The younger Boeheim will be coming off a 30-point game whenhe and the No. 11-seeded Orange (17-9) play Sunday at Indianapolis in the second round of the Midwest Regional against Huggins’ No. 3 Mountaineers and their own guywho also already put up 30 thisweek, Miles McBride.
Buddy’s earliest NCAA tournament recollection, albeit one he calls “a 2-second memory,” was celebrating in the family living room at age 3½with his twin sister and babysitter while watching on TV as dad’s team, led by Carmelo Anthony, won the 2003 championship.
“I just remember jumping up and down,” he said. “I didn’t really know what it meant, but I just knew that something good happened.”
As he got older and could tag along, Buddy said, “Being able to go to the tournament was the highlight of my year as a kid. Being able to miss school. ... I have so many great memories of March Madness and all the runs we’ve gotten to make in the past. It’s amazing to be a part of all of those and being able to go each game and each different venue.”
Like his older brother, Jimmy, who went to Cornell to play basketball, Buddy entered the family business at an early age. But Buddy, who eventually grew to be 6 feet 6, wasn’t sure whether he would be good enough to play for his father. And Dad, in turn, says now: “I always had reservations about him playing at Syracuse.”
Whatever questions either harbored were shelved after an AAU tournament the summer after Buddy’s junior year of high school, when he impressed college coaches from around the country with his 3point shooting ability.
North Carolina coach Roy Williams “was sitting right where he was taking the 3s from,” Jim Boeheim recalled, “and Roy said, ‘You better take that kid.’ He was right.”
Now21 and a junior, Buddy leads Syracuse in scoring at 17.7 points per game and by hitting 39.1% of his shots from beyond the arc. The Mountaineers (19-9) have their own basket-filling star in McBride, who averages 16 points, 4.8 assists and 40.6% on 3s. He had 18 after halftime Friday to help beat No. 14 seed Morehead State, 84-67, for Huggins’ 900th coaching victory.