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Monday's night's postgame press conference has obscured an important men's basketball win, coach Jim Boeheim's 850th, and one that virtually clinched a top-half finish in the toughest conference in the country.

After a 63-52 win over West Virginia Monday night, coach Boeheim voiced his displeasure with the Syracuse Post-Standard's Feb. 12 sports headline, “How has this man beaten Jim Boeheim six times in a row?”, which referred to Louisville coach Rick Pitino's recent success against his former boss.

The headline was eye catching and inflammatory. I guess that's mission accomplished for a headline writer, whose name doesn't appear. I'll admit the bold red 6 and rhetorical question did earn the piece a spot atop my Pile To Be Read Later, although I didn't actually skim it until yesterday morning.

Donna Ditota's story was based on black-and-white statistics and comparatively innocuous. Still, the editorial tact risked warranting the impassioned response that Boeheim was well within his rights to unleash.

Boeheim's primary objection to the large type was that it dealt with just a sample of what happened to be the six most recent games, not the other (by my quick count) 10 matchups over the four-decades span of the pair's consistently excellent coaching careers.

“I don't think you can judge people – players, coaches – on a little segment, like this,” Boeheim said with his fingers pinched a half-inch apart. “When you start judging people on a little segment, I think you're on really very poor journalistic grounds.”

For the record, Boeheim vs. Pitino:

· SU vs. Providence, '86-87: 5-0 (in '86 & '87 seasons)

· SU vs. Kentucky. '94-97: 1-3 (Boeheim's Orangemen won the first)

· SU vs. Louisville, '06-present: 1-7 (Again, the first was a win)

· In 17 total matchups: Pitino 10, Boeheim 7

· Throw out the most lopsided result each way, and the total scoring margin over 25 years is just 22 points. And none of those points has been scored by either Jim or Rick, the college running mates to Hall-of-Famers Dave Bing and Julius Erving, respectively.

It could've been worse. Arguably the most infamous headline in newspaper history, “Dewey Defeats Truman”, was about just one game.

(Also obscured, by the way, is that our local paper is widely praised for the quality and quantity of its SU sports coverage.)

All this does beg the discussion of how we might go about evaluating coaches relative to one another. Quotable football coach Bum Phillips said the legendary Bear Bryant was so good, he could “take his'n and beat your'n and take your'n and beat his'n."

While I suppose that compliment could apply to both Pitino and Boeheim, and Jamie Dixon and Jay Wright, etc., I'd offer these nuggets:

· The well-worn aggregate win milestones, the “fastest to ___”, the record 33 20-win seasons and so on.

· My personal favorite: Boeheim is 36-20 over his career in overtime games, when presumably both teams are pretty evenly matched. The Orange have won a remarkable 20 of their past 23 OT games, a stretch that goes back to the 1996 Final Four run.

· Boeheim submitted John Beilein Monday as a coach he's had a significant winning streak against. National champions and coach-of-the-year types like John Thompson and Mike Brey are on that list too.

· The fact that it's deemed front page newsworthy that a coach has a six-game win streak on you could be thought a tribute.

It went unsaid Monday night, but Boeheim is uneasy about coach comparisons of virtually any kind. He has no interest in talking about his competition with a given coach, only his players against the opponent's lineup.

Boeheim, a 2005 Hall-of-Fame inductee, is a coach's coach. His work with USA Basketball, Coaches vs. Cancer and countless clinics are evidence of that.

Although he's as competitive as anyone you'll come across, he doesn't take the stick-it-to-'em pleasure you might expect in his one-sided records against former player Louis Orr, past assistant Tim Welsh or one-time camp aide Bobby Gonzalez.

Boeheim's Syracuse Orangemen beat P.J. Carlesimo's Seton Hall Pirates 21 straight times between 1983 and 1992. Gary Williams's squads at American, Boston College and Maryland have regularly been whipped by Boeheim's teams.

Those last two are among Boeheim's closest friends in the industry. Boasting of his personal dominance over them is not something he's prone to. Bringing it up over a 4-footer on their occasional golf vacations is a different story.

Matt's Musings: My first job out of SU was with a professional baseball team in Kannapolis, North Carolina, the home town of Dale Earnhardt. I can still remember the horns blaring around my apartment complex (just off Earnhardt Boulevard) when the Intimidator finally won the Daytona 500 in 1998.
An American icon died at Daytona 10 years ago this week. I'm not a NASCAR fan in the least, but going silent for the third lap, as is planned this weekend, is one of the coolest tributes in any sport. R.I.P., #3.

This Weekend's Broadcasts:
Tom./8:45 a.m.       TK99                       Free Parking with Gomez & Dave
Tom./5:00 p.m.       ESPN97.7               Guest spot on Disturbing the Peace
Tom./7:00 p.m.       TK99/ESPN97.7     AmeriCU Jim Boeheim Show
Sat./2:30 p.m.         TK99/ESPN97.7     #17 MBB vs. Rutgers
Mon./5:30 p.m.       TK99/ESPN97.7     #17 MBB @ #15 Villanova

I'd be happy to field your questions on anything regarding the Orange. Shoot me an email to the Radio Mailbox.

Syracuse University Athletics

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