HOUSTON – Jim Boeheim laughed off the question one more time for good measure, just as he had pushed it aside ambiguously in the days prior. There was no chance he wouldn’t cut it off, delivering a response mixed with sarcasm and amusement in stark contrast to the thoughtful reflections on the careers of Trevor Cooney and Michael Gbinije.

Boeheim has said he plans to retire after two more seasons. Boeheim has said there isn’t a timetable for his retirement. Boeheim has said he has no plans to retire. So, he gave the only appropriate answer to the inevitable question after Syracuse’s season ended on Saturday night.

“Why do you guys always ask me that?” he said with a smile across his face, leaning into the microphone to project his humor on the room louder than any of his other answers.

“Make sure you ask Roy when he comes in too,” he added, referencing North Carolina head coach Roy Williams, who has also been vaguely associated with the word “retirement.” His season also isn’t the one that’s over.

After enduring a curb stomp from the NCAA, a month-long exile from anyone and nearly anything related to his team and a Selection Sunday that he gave a 10-percent chance to end in his favor, Boeheim dismissed the notion of the past season being anything but smooth sailing. Even after the No. 10 seed Orange’s (23-14, 9-9 Atlantic Coast) 83-66 loss to No. 1 seed North Carolina (33-6, 14-4) that ended SU’s tear through the NCAA Tournament one game short of a title bout with Villanova, Boeheim again pushed aside an assumption that nobody would second guess.

“I haven’t had a rough season, I had a great season,” Boeheim said. “I don’t think it was rough at all.”

This year, he coached a team who was one game away from being the lowest seeded squad ever to make the national championship game. He coached a player in Gbinije who, according to Boeheim, is the most underrated and improved he’s ever overseen in 40 years. And he coached a team that had its season on the brink of extinction twice, but fought off Gonzaga and Virginia before losing its last breath of air on the third try against the Tar Heels.

“As far as what I feel about this year, I’m more satisfied than I’ve ever been in any year that I’ve ever coached with a possible exception of the year we won it all,” Boeheim said. “I’m more proud and more happy, whatever the word is I’m looking for, satisfied, of what this team has done than any that I’ve ever coached.”

After the game, as the locker room emptied and silence settled into the room, with the exception with the mumbles of Cooney and Gbinije, Boeheim walked in and scrolled through his phone.

He sat down in the chair next to Mike Hopkins, cracking an occasional half-hearted grin, his right leg crossed over his left while he talked to his successor — whenever that succession may be — for one last time after a game this season.

“I’m happier now at the end of this year than any time I’ve ever coached,” Boeheim said. “I’m really not that tired. I had 30 days off. I could probably go another 30.”

Published on April 3, 2016 at 1:03 am

Contact Matt: mcschnei@syr.edu | @matt_schneidman