The Jim Boeheim coaching tree has been growing for decades, but Sunday brings a matchup that feels especially fitting: the first branch and the final branch will meet at Madison Square Garden.
Rick Pitino, who spent two seasons as Boeheim’s assistant before leaving Syracuse in 1978 for the head job at Boston University, will be on one sideline when St. John’s hosts Syracuse. Gerry McNamara, who played for Boeheim, coached under him from 2009 to 2023 and then stayed one more year under Adrian Autry before taking over at Siena in 2024, will be on the other.
“It’s really amazing to see two coaches who were assistants at Syracuse over 40 years apart going against each other as head coaches,” said Tim Welsh, a former Boeheim assistant who later coached at Iona and Providence and now works as a college basketball analyst.
“Rick’s longevity is tremendous and Jim obviously was the standard-bearer. We all learned from him.”
Boeheim’s coaching career lasted 47 years, and along the way 12 of his assistants went on to become college head coaches. Some held different titles at Syracuse before moving into their own jobs.
Scott Hicks was a graduate assistant before beginning a head coaching career at Le Moyne College. Ralph Willard was a volunteer assistant during the 1986-87 season, the year Syracuse reached the NCAA championship game.
The list also includes Brendan Malone, Wayne Morgan, Tim O’Toole, Louis Orr, Rob Murphy, Mike Hopkins and Adrian Autry.
“The interesting thing about all those names is they’re all really good guys and that all stems back to Jim,” Welsh said. “Those are all good basketball people and we all kind of connected together and understood that we came from the same Jim Boeheim tree.”
Sunday’s game will be the 15th time two former Boeheim assistants have met as head coaches. The first such meeting came on Dec. 7, 1985, at the Providence Civic Center, and Pitino was part of that one as well. In that game, his Providence team beat Brendan Malone’s Rhode Island squad 78-71 behind a second-half surge led by freshman Darryl Wright.
Pitino’s coaching path has since taken him to Kentucky, Louisville, Iona and St. John’s, with NBA stops mixed in along the way. He has won more than 900 games in college, taken six schools to the NCAA Tournament, reached seven Final Fours and won national titles at Kentucky in 1996 and Louisville in 2013.
In addition to Malone and McNamara, Pitino has coached against Orr, Welsh, Willard and Murphy.
“Jim and Rick had many battles over the years, and Rick has been so successful, but when Rick was let go at Louisville, where did he go?” Welsh said. “He went up to Syracuse and hung out with Jim.”
McNamara, 43, is in his first season leading Syracuse after two years at Siena, where his Saints nearly upset No. 1 seed Duke in last year’s NCAA Tournament.
“I look at what Gerry’s doing at Syracuse,” Welsh said, “and he’s just got his team playing so hard.”
Welsh said the Boeheim connection created a bond among former assistants, even if that bond disappeared for a few hours once the games started.
“Ralph and I and Jim used to play a lot of golf together at the Big East meetings in Florida every year,” Welsh said. “We were friends, but when we faced each other in basketball season, we all wanted to kill each other. But game over and we were friends again.”
There were also plenty of meetings between coaches who had overlapped at Syracuse or worked in similar circles. Welsh and Hicks both were on staff at Syracuse in the early 1990s and later coached against each other when Welsh was at Providence and Hicks was at Loyola (Md.). Willard faced Welsh’s Providence teams twice, once while at Pittsburgh and again after moving to Holy Cross.
During the 2000-01 season, Orr at Siena, Hicks at Loyola and O’Toole at Fairfield were all coaching in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.
Welsh said familiarity with the same coaching roots did not translate into an edge.
“No advantage except you knew you better be totally prepared,” Welsh said. “You can’t think you know all their out of bounds plays or their late-game plays because we all learned to adjust from Jim.
“When I coached against Jim, I knew everything about their playbook,” Welsh added, “but I also knew in the end game, he would change. He would adjust and do different things.”
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