Jimmy Boeheim strolled in and stood behind the same podium that his father had occupied just minutes before. The 6-foot-8 freshman forward had just played in his first collegiate game, but on this night he was arguably the most important player in the building.

His father is Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim. Jimmy had been in the Carrier Dome countless times before. He’d sit with his family and watch his father coach, then would stand off to the side as his dad fielded questions from the media postgame. Now, he had just finished suiting up to play against Syracuse and was fielding the questions himself.

“When I came up here I was like, I don’t know,” Jimmy said. “This is kind of weird.

“I’ve never heard him yell from that close,” he added, drawing laughs from the media room.

Syracuse (1-0) beat Cornell (0-1), 77-45, to open up its season in a game that was never really in doubt. Instead, a lot of the attention on the game was about the younger Boeheim going up against the older one. After Monday’s exhibition game, Boeheim said he was trying not to think about the matchup. But he opened up his presser after Friday’s contest talking about his eldest son.

“Tough game today. You watch your son play your whole life and you’re pulling for two things: That he plays well and that his team wins,” Boeheim said. “I was only hoping for one of those tonight. The way he started out, though, I was a little worried.”

The start couldn’t have been any better for the younger Boeheim. Cornell won the tip and struggled to move the ball well for most of its first possession. But as the shot clock ticked down to less than 10 seconds, the Big Red found a soft spot in the Orange’s zone.

The ball whipped from the middle of the zone to the right wing, and then an extra pass to the right corner. Jimmy caught the ball there. Standing right in front of the Syracuse bench, he let fly from deep and knocked the shot down. He hit a short jumper from that same side of the court on the next possession.

“It was nice to see the first shot he got is just like in the backyard,” Cornell head coach Brian Earl said. “That’s what he does. He makes those shots.”

Members of the Boeheim family wore special T-shirts for the occasion. The shirt had a full circle with a basketball in the middle. The left side of the circle had the Cornell block “C” logo while the right side had Syracuse’s block “S.” Also, the top half of the circle was red while the bottom half was Orange.

Jimmy said that even though he had been running with the first unit in practices, he didn’t know that he’d start until today. He said that he glanced over to where his family usually sits during the pregame shoot-around. Once the game started, though, he was focused solely on the game itself.

“I thought he did a really good job of getting by,” Jim Boeheim said. “It’s hard to get past our zones and he made plays.”

Jimmy stayed aggressive in the second half. On one play, the lefty hit a running floater with his right hand from the right side. Later in the half, Jimmy tried to go straight at 7-foot-2 center Paschal Chukwu and missed the shot badly. Cornell got the offensive rebound, though and reset.

The ball got worked to the corner and as Cornell’s Wil Bathurst drove baseline, Chukwu came over to cut off his drive. Bathurst swung a pass to the middle to a cutting Jimmy. Chukwu rotated over to try and block the shot but Jimmy lofted a soft floater over the center’s outstretched arms.

The two teams lined up for the customary handshake line after the game, with SU’s Boeheim leading the way for the Orange. When he met up with his son, the head coach hugged him and whispered something to him.

Boeheim didn’t want to share what he told his son, but Jimmy didn’t mind.

“He said I came out ready to play,” Jimmy said, adding with a smile, “he said I was close to having a good game.”

Published on November 10, 2017 at 11:29 pm

Contact Tomer: tdlanger@syr.edu | @tomer_langer