Jim Boeheim out at Syracuse after 47 years as men’s basketball coach

Photo by Isaiah Vazquez/Getty Images

Jim Boeheim won’t be returning to Syracuse for a 48th year. Adrian Autry is the Orange’s new men’s basketball coach.

Jim Boeheim is out as head coach of Syracuse Orange men’s basketball after 47 years in charge of the program, the school has announced. Boeheim’s final game was a loss to Wake Forest, 77-74, in ACC tournament on Wednesday afternoon.

Assistant coach Adrian Autry has been named as Syracuse’s next head coach.

Boeheim gave some cryptic comments about his future after the game, but no one was sure if he was returning for a 48th season at the time. You can read the full exchange between Boeheim and reporters here. Here’s a clip:

Boeheim was the longest tenured head coach in college basketball. He first arrived at Syracuse as a walk-on player in 1963. He became an assistant coach with the program in 1969, and became head coach at Syracuse in 1976. Boeheim is one of six coaches in the history of DI men’s basketball to win at least 1,000 games.

He exits Syracuse with a career record of 1,015–440, just shy of a .700 winning percentage. Boeheim led Syracuse to the national championship in 2003 alongside star freshmen Carmelo Anthony. He won 10 Big East regular season championships between 1980 and 2012.

Syracuse ended this season at 17-15 overall and will not make the NCAA tournament. Here’s the shot from Wake Forest that ended Boeheim’s career.

Boeheim had been an outspoken critic about the changing nature of college basketball. Here’s a quote from last month where he blasted his ACC rivals and accused them of buying players:

“This is an awful place we’re in in college basketball,” he told reporters Saturday. “Pittsburgh bought a team. OK, fine. My [big donor] talks about it, but he doesn’t give anyone any money. Nothing. Not one guy. Our guys make like $20,000. Wake Forest bought a team. Miami bought a team. … It’s like, ‘Really, this is where we are?’ That’s really where we are, and it’s only going to get worse.”

Our Syracuse community Troy Nunes Is an Absolute Magician wrote a wonderful tribute to Boeheim as he announced his retirement. Read it here:

With all this in mind, Boeheim’s retirement sparks the start of a new era for Syracuse basketball, especially after losing the man who basically build the team from the ground up and kept the program in headlines across nearly 50 years under the helm.

Boeheim turned the men’s team into a perennial competitor, a trademark program, and a nationally-recognized brand. I grew up watching those amazing teams from the 2000s and 2010s: Michael Carter-Williams, Jerami Grant, Tyler Ennis, Jonny Flynn, Eric Devendorf, Wesley Johnson, C.J. Fair, Rakeem Christmas, Dion Waiters, and a laundry list of familiar faces. That’s not even including the iconic names for guys like Dave Bing, Louis Orr, Pearl Washington, Derrick Coleman, and company.

‘Cuse was the team, and it shows in the Orange’s final resume under Boeheim.

And, in a city like Syracuse that struggled to stay afloat in the aftermath of Vietnam and the end of the traditional industrial boom town that was seen across the Rust Belt in the fifties and sixties, Boeheim kept ‘Cuse as a city in one piece. Amid all the turmoil, he was the one thing that remained continuous and that most of Syracuse as a community could rally around. Even as college basketball itself has seen astronomical change across the board, at least he kept the team competitive and in the headlines.

Boeheim was wildly successful on the court, but he had a reputation for ripping his own players when they were thinking of leaving for the NBA. He leaves college basketball shortly after Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, and Jay Wright also called it quits.

We’ll update this story as it develops.