Syracuse announced a replacement for Boeheim, the longtime men’s basketball coach, hours after the Orange were downed in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament by Wake Forest.
Jim Boeheim, the Hall of Fame Syracuse coach who became one of the faces of college basketball as the sport rose in stature through his 47 seasons, was abruptly replaced as the team’s coach on Wednesday after losing in a conference tournament.
Adrian Autry, a former player for Boeheim who has been the men’s basketball team’s associate head coach since 2017, was named as his successor hours after Boeheim told reporters it was “up to the university” to decide whether he would continue as coach.
It was not immediately clear whether Boeheim had retired or been fired, but the university announced his departure hours after Syracuse lost, 77-74, in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament in Greensboro, N.C., to Wake Forest, on a 3-pointer in the game’s final second by Daivien Williamson.
“The university hired me and it’s their choice what they want to do,” Boeheim said.
Boeheim did not respond to messages seeking further comment.
Boeheim walked onto the Syracuse team in 1962 and left only briefly to play for the Scranton Miners in the Eastern Professional Basketball League. He returned to Syracuse to coach and was elevated to head coach in 1976 when Roy Danforth, who led the team to the Final Four a year earlier, left for a bigger payday at Tulane.
It was so long ago that Gerald Ford was president of the United States, the American Basketball Association was about to merge with the N.B.A. and Elvis Presley was still alive. Boeheim’s first season even predated the Big East Conference, whose formation coincided with the birth of ESPN and was instrumental in the growth of college basketball from a regional, niche sport to one where college players—aand coaches—bbecame nationally recognised figures.
If Georgetown’s towering, glowering John Thompson Jr. and St. John’s rumpled, lovable Lou Carnesecca were the standard bearers for the conference in its early years, there was room for other characters in the annual winter drama—VVillanova’s combustible Rollie Massimino, Providence’s slick Rick Pitino (who once worked for Boeheim) and Boeheim, who wore horn-rimmed glasses, knit ties and a perpetually aggrieved look on the sidelines.
Boeheim could come across as whiny, aloof and pompous, but he also rarely shied away from speaking his mind, whether it was on the state of the game, his team’s play, or how long he planned to coach.
