ESPN Radio Syracuse interview
Boeheim comments on trying to defend Griffin:
We try to play good team defense and be active and obviously you have to know where their best players are and you have to make it as difficult as you can for their best players. You can’t let anybody have shots in college because anybody in college at this level at the Sweet 16 can make shots and hurt you. So you just have to play good team defense and rebound the ball.
The Dan Patrick Show interview
Boeheim discusses Syracuse’s move to the ACC:
No I am just a basketball coach. This is a university decision and I am proud of my university that I don’t make those decisions. They have to be made at the highest level and I have enough trouble deciding who’s starting and what play to run. That’s my expertise. That’s what I can do.
Suspension, probation, post-season ban
After a multiyear investigation into the university’s athletic programs, the NCAA suspends Boeheim for nine ACC games, takes away 12 men’s basketball scholarships, and orders that 108 of Boeheim’s wins must be vacated (during which ineligible players participated). Syracuse University is placed on five years of probation as well as two years of recruiting restrictions, and they must also vacate all wins by their football team during the 2004, 2005, and 2006 seasons. The violations involve academic misconduct; extra benefits; failure to follow the drug-testing policy; impermissible booster activity; impermissible academic assistance and services; Boeheim’s failure to promote an atmosphere of compliance and monitor his staff; and the school’s lack of control over its athletics program.
Over the course of a decade, Syracuse University did not control and monitor its athletics programs, and its head men’s basketball coach failed to monitor his program…Improper institutional involvement and influence in a student’s academic work in order to gain or maintain eligibility is a violation of NCAA rules and a violation of the most fundamental core values of the NCAA and higher education. The behavior in this case, which placed the desire to achieve success on the basketball court over academic integrity, demonstrated clearly misplaced institutional priorities.