After Wednesday’s tragedy, Boeheim to coach tonight
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — When top-ranked Duke comes to town on tonight for a much-anticipated rematch against the Orange, Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim will be dealing with many emotions. It’s the team’s first game since he struck and killed a pedestrian on a dark highway after guiding the Orange to a victory over No. 18 Louisville on Wednesday night.
Doubts about whether Boeheim might miss the game were dispelled Friday when Syracuse athletic director John Wildhack announced that the 74-year-old Boeheim would be on the sideline.
“Our community is shaken. The Boeheim family is heartbroken over what happened, as we all are. This is a very difficult time,” Wildhack said in a news release. “I know that Coach Boeheim’s players gain strength from him, just as he gains strength from his players. Our entire community gains strength from each other.”
The accident happened on a dark stretch of Interstate 690 in Syracuse . Police say 51-year-old Jorge Jimenez was a passenger in a car that apparently skidded out of control on a patch of ice and hit a guardrail. Police say Jimenez was trying to get to safety when he was struck by Boeheim’s SUV. Boeheim had swerved to avoid the disabled car, which was resting perpendicular across two lanes.
Because of the accident, ESPN decided not to bring its “College GameDay” show to the Carrier Dome as planned.
FAMILIAR FAN INFRACTION: A small stuffed bulldog toy tossed onto the court Wednesday in Athens, Ga., cost the home team a game and brought back bad memories for longtime Lobos.
The Georgia-Mississippi State game was tied with 0.5 seconds remaining . Mississippi State’s Quinndary Weatherspoon missed the first of two free throws about the same time the stuffed animal came flying into the court. Officials then penalized Georgia with a technical foul for the fan’s action. Weatherspoon was given another free throw — and all the cushion he would need in a 68-67 win.
Georgia coach Tom Crean was upset: “I’ve never seen that, not without a warning and certainly without an explanation.”
Certainly, elderly Lobo fans had seen that, or something similar, on Jan. 26, 1986 — known since as The Cup game.
With the Lobos leading 70-69 and two seconds left, Miner Wayne Campbell
stepped to the foul line for a one-andone. As he shot and missed, a paper cup thrown by a fan sailed in front of his face. Official Jimmy Clarke awarded him a doover, and Campbell made both foul shots to win it before a Pit crowd of 18,219. They were Campbell’s only two points of the game.
“I was shocked,” said UNM coach Gary Colson, who called it the toughest loss of his career.
BOISE STATE-UNM: The March 6 regular-season home finale for the Lobo men against Boise State has been changed from a 9 p.m. start to 7 p.m. That will be a relief to fans who want to send off Lobos Anthony Mathis and Dane Kuiper on Senior Night before the clock strikes midnight and/or they fall asleep.
The game is supposed to stream on espn3.com. That had made the 9 p.m. time slot at which it had been listed for weeks fairly curious, if ESPN didn’t need it to provide late-night programming on one of its networks (ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU).
UNM’s basketball spokesperson on Friday offered no idea as to why the time is being changed.