NEW ORLEANS - He hasn't been losing Final Four games forever. It just seems that way. Maybe that's because Jim Boeheim has a talent for looking miserable, even when he's not.

It's the face. It's not a basketball coach's face.

It's bookish, pinched, pained. Roy Williams has more 0-fers in the Final Four than Boeheim. Williams' Kansas teams are in their fourth, one more than Syracuse under Boeheim. But Williams has this big, open, Southern mug, to match the soft North Carolina drawl he has retained even after 15 years in Lawrence, Kan.

When his teams lose big games, Williams tears up. Boeheim looks like he just swallowed a cod.

1987's The Scream

Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim smiles during a news conference. (AP photo) | ZOOM |

The money memory of Jim Boeheim is not of Boeheim at all. It's of Indiana's Keith Smart, making that baseline jumper with five seconds left, to win the 1987 title game. That game was here, in the Superdome, lending a twisted symmetry to this year's Final Four. Which player drains the Food For The Soul shot this time? Who makes Boeheim look like the Edvard Munch painting all over again?

In 1996, the day before Kentucky beat Syracuse to win the national title, someone asked Boeheim if he'd ever watched the tape of the '87 title game. Boeheim said no, which was partly true. I was working in New York in the fall of '87 and made the trip to Syracuse to visit Boeheim and relive his lousy memory.

He watched the tape with me, until the last minute or so. Then he walked out of the room. I watched Smart's shot with an assistant coach.

"You can only judge a coach by what he's done over a long period of time. (That) doesn't mean you have to win a national championship," Boeheim said last week.

Coach Paul Westhead said to Boeheim not long ago, "You've outlasted them."

"That's really the way I look at it now," Boeheim said.

He is 58 years old and has three kids under the age of 5. That'll give a man perspective. If that's not enough, Boeheim also has survived prostate cancer. "I'm not as harsh," he said last week. "I have my moments. But I've definitely changed."

Boeheim has more NCAA Tournament wins without a title than anyone else, ever. That makes him the Phil Mickelson of college basketball. That doesn't mean Boeheim isn't a great coach.

Four fateful seconds

One sign of great coaching is to coach something your opponent can't figure out. Boeheim did just that in the East Regional final Sunday. He slapped that 2-3 zone on top-seeded Oklahoma like a pair of leg irons. Syracuse has played that defense probably since Boeheim started there, in 1976, but never better than it did last weekend. Oklahoma scored all of 47 points and lost by 16.

Of the four teams here - Texas, Marquette and Kansas are the others - Syracuse has the least experience and, arguably, the least talent. The Orangemen play Texas Saturday. They could meet Williams and Kansas Monday night. One tortured soul's nightmare would be vanquished.

"A tremendous experience" was how Boeheim described the '87 visit here, "for five days, 39 minutes and 56 seconds. Maybe we'll get the other four seconds this time."

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