Basketball
The picture (above) chosen to illustrate this story from the great central New York photographer Rich Barnes, uniquely captures the last three Syracuse basketball coaches sitting side-by-side.
Gerry McNamara’s upcoming Orange head coaching debut this fall will mark the 51st consecutive season that the program has been manned by one of the coaches pictured.
The ‘Cuse legacy extends even earlier to Jim Boeheim’s coach Fred Lewis who revived the program from the darkness of the nation’s longest losing streak in 1962, and his successor Roy Danforth who in Cinderella fashion guided SU’s first Final Four team in 1975.
The uncanny nature of a former Syracuse guard running the basketball program
Once Lewis arrived with Dave Bing (and Boeheim) and reached the pinnacle of his tenure by coming within one game of the Final Four in 1966, Roy Danforth picked up from there and took a couple of seasons to lay the foundation on which Boeheim subsequently built his Hall of Fame career.
It took Boeheim awhile (11 seasons) to reach deep runs into the NCAA Tournament , and to arrive at the 2003 national championship game with McNamara’s indelible first half impression, and subsequent four-year career of superlatives with Boeheim’s famous 2006 “overrated” press conference the epitome as to why GMac is the head coach today.
McNamara’s ascension into a full-time role with the removal of Bernie Fine from the staff in 2011, and his subsequent two-year tenure to learn the head coaching ropes at Siena put him in prime position as the Adrian Autry run failed admist the laser-fast changes in the sport.
Those changes revolving around roster management dollars affected the head coaching changes this postseason, successful coaches being lured to bigger jobs able to dictate terms on expense guarantees or leverage interest from outsiders into securing new deals to stay put.
The McNamERA Begins: The Welcome (Back) Event for new basketball coach Gerry McNamara ‘06
Next Monday afternoon (4:00 p.m. ET) the school kicks off the “McNamERA” with an introductory affair at the Miron Victory Court area of the Dome. That addition, by-the-way, is one of the standouts in the recent modernization of the building.
There will be a university-streamed speaking program similar to the most recent introductory events for Chancellor-elect Mike Haynie and athletics director Bryan Blair.
McNamara will also get a preview of his future new customary postgame Dome scene interacting with the media, when he will take questions on Monday from that location in the building.
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Read More Brad Bierman