Jim Boeheim comments on his post game rant

By now, you have all likely seen Jim Boeheim's rant at Mike Waters and Donna Ditota, who cover Syracuse basketball for the Syracuse Post-Standard, after Monday night's game against West Virginia.

If you missed it, the video can be found here, but essentially, Boeheim snapped because this preview of last Saturday's game against Louisville mentioned that Boeheim had lost six straight (now seven straight) games to Rick Pitino.

Boeheim clarified those comments on The Score 1260, a sports radio show in Syracuse:

"I find it very unusual that in your hometown paper they're going to write about a specific coaching matchup. … It was about fairness and it was about, I don't believe you can pick a segment just like if you do 100 straight radio shows, you’re going to have a few bad ones in there. … I think it's bad if someone writes just about your bad ones and doesn’t balance it with other matchups or other things that are good."

[...]

"I asked [the reporter a question]. You guys ask me questions all the time, that's part of my job. When you get asked a question back, you react like you do, you don't like it. But you know why? Because the media probably has the thinnest skin of any group in the world. Not in the country, in the world."

Matt Jones over at CBSSports loved Boeheim's rants (For those that don't know, Jones took pleasure in ripping apart any media criticism of the Kentucky Wildcats while he was running Kentucky Sports Radio.), saying "even though their profession is built on the notion of questioning those in power, if the microscope is ever turned back upon them, the media inevitably recoil."

Boeheim read something he didn't like, he challenged it, and he moved on.

On the other hand, Waters and Ditota do have a job to do, and what they said -- at least in this blogger's opinion -- wasn't out of line. Making note of the fact that a Louisville has beaten Syracuse in six straight games to back up a point that the Orange do not match up well with the Cardinals is valid. Pitino and Boeheim don't change the systems that they run. Louisville still presses and shoots a lot of threes, Syracuse still plays that 2-3 zone. Syracuse had been struggling against pressure defense and defending the three.

Maybe the only thing we should take out of this is that as long as you aren't the target of his tirade, Boeheim isn't boring to cover.