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Syracuse has a plan in place for who will be Jim Boeheim’s successor, the Syracuse head coach said on Brent Axe’s “On the Block” radio show on Wednesday afternoon. 

“I’m not going to tell you or anybody when this is going to be. We have a plan in place, a good plan, an ironclad plan,” said Boeheim, who’s currently in his 46th season at the helm of Syracuse’s program, of who will succeed him. ”It’s not my decision. I’m not naming the coach like people say all the time.”

Boeheim, who is 77 years old, said after the Duke basketball game that he will be back next season. He’s also said he didn’t intend to retire before the 2021-22 season, and he reiterated that sentiment once more on Wednesday’s radio show. But he also said that he knows he can’t “coach forever,” and his time to retire will be coming.

Boeheim said the succession plan has been in place for a while, and he knows when he will retire. He would not reveal the details of that plan though, beyond the fact that he’ll return next season. 

In regard to his successor, Boeheim said he does have some input on the decision but it’s not entirely up to him. He added that he’s never had input into an athletic director hiring, assistant athletic director hiring or basketball athletic director hiring.

“And that’s fine, I’m not the athletic director, I’m not the chancellor,” Boeheim said. “But we have a plan, we obviously aren’t going to release it, because we don’t want everybody we’re recruiting against to know what we’re going to do. … But we have a plan.”

He said he promised next season’s recruits that he would coach them, and he will stick by that. 

“If I said I’m quitting now, after giving my word to these players, to me, it would look like ‘Oh, Boeheim had a bad year so he’s just going to quit.’ That’s what it would look like to me. Maybe not to you, maybe not to somebody else, but that’s what I would see. ‘He’s given his word to these players, he’s healthy, he feels great, but they’re having a bad year so he’s just going to quit,’” Boeheim said.

He emphasized that the No. 1 question recruits asked him was whether he’d be coaching, and he told them yes. Moving forward, SU may choose to explain its succession plan to recruits if applicable to them, Boeheim said. 

“We have a plan and everybody will think it’s a good plan,” Boeheim said. “There’s no solution that guarantees success. There have been cases where they had a great plan, a coach came in, and everybody was on board and the guy couldn’t win any games. And there’s plans where somebody comes in and does well. You don’t know.”

Published on March 2, 2022 at 9:24 pm

Contact Roshan: rferna04@syr.edu | @Roshan_f16