After Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim got hit with a pair of T’s in the closing seconds of Saturday’s 66-60 loss to Duke, he declared he’d not regret his public implosion, a reaction CBS Sports.com’s Gregg Doyel — quick to label Boeheim, “brilliant, fascinating, frustrating” — finds unconscionable (“what he did with 10.2 seconds left to play very clearly — not possibly, not probably, but clearly — cost his team whatever chance it had to win the game”)
What if the guy who freaked out at the officials on Saturday night hadn’t been Jim Boeheim, but one of his players? What if Boeheim had kept his cool as valiantly as C.J. Fair, but C.J. Fair had stormed around the court cursing at officials until he was ejected, allowing Duke to turn a two-point game into a six-point victory?
Would Boeheim be OK with that?
What if the media had asked C.J. Fair if he regretted his late-game explosion, and Fair had responded in the negative: “Not today, not next week.”
Would Boeheim be OK with that?
Would you?
You know what this says to me? It says Boeheim is putting himself ahead of Syracuse. He’s OK with his tantrum because it was his tantrum. Syracuse needed to win? Syracuse needed to solidify its spot as the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament? Maybe so, but Syracuse didn’t need any of that as badly as Jim Boeheim needed to pitch a fit.