NEW YORK –– There was a time last spring when it seemed like Dion Waiters might be done at Syracuse.
Orange head coach Jim Boeheim all but cut the talented guard loose when he told Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports that Waiters’s status for the upcoming season was “up in the air.”
“Sometimes change is good for everyone,” Boeheim said last April.
NEW YORK — Scoop Jardine knows that whenever anyone hears the word “Syracuse” these days, the first thing that jumps to mind is the Bernie Fine sexual molestation case — not the basketball team.
“We just want to focus on basketball,” Jardine told SNY.tv after the No. 5 Orange downed Virginia Tech, 69-58, to advance to Friday’s championship game against Stanford in the Preseason NIT at Madison Square Garden.
“A lot’s been taken from our team. Nobody has been talking about Syracuse being Top 5 in the country; it’s been all about what’s going on with the scandal. But for us, we just got to go out and continue to play basketball and continue to have fun, knowing this is our season and we can make the best of it.”
NEW YORK — Josh Owens says he feels a renewed commitment to basketball.
That makes sense considering Owens had to redshirt the 2009-10 season at Stanford because of an undisclosed medical condition.
“There was all types of possibilities,” the 6-foot-8, 235-pound Owens said of what could’ve happened as a result of his medical situation. “I wasn’t allowed to practice with the team. It definitely was one of the toughest experiences.”
Ohio State signee LaQuinton Ross did well on his recent SAT and could be cleared to play “within the next 2-3 weeks,” Wilson Arroyo, his former high school coach at Burlington (N.J.) Life Center, told SNY.tv.
“According to NCAA rules, we are working within the guidelines to get him reinstated within the next 2-3 weeks,” Arroyo said.
Arroyo said nothing was official yet, but that the 6-foot-8 Ross “got the results from his SAT test from November and did real well.”
“Just gave the good news to the staff,” Ross tweeted in reference to his SAT result.
Alif Muhammad, the fiery, controversial head of the Alif Muhammad NIA School in Newark, N.J., parted ways Tuesday with head basketball coach Rudy King, but insists the program will carry on and continue to attempt to to be a national prep power.
A year ago, NIA Prep was rated the No. 1 prep team in New Jersey and No. 6 nationally.
But Muhammad said he was especially upset that NIA had recently lost to Bridgton (Maine) Academy “by 40 points” and then lost to ASA, a junior college, last Saturday. He said he initially suspended King, and then accepted his resignation, even though King was 6-2 on the season.
“I wanted to make a temporary change with Rudy,” Muhammad told SNY.tv by phone.
“I can’t lose. I’m a national program. I’ve got to compete with South Kent. I gotta compete with St. Thomas More.”
Looking at Wagner’s schedule, you had to figure coach Dan Hurley would have been happy if his team went 2-3 through its first five games.
After all, four of Wagner’s first five were on the road — including tilts at Princeton, at UConn and at The Palestra for Penn.
Instead, the surprising Seahawks are now 4-1 after Tuesday’s 71-65 victory at Penn.
“It’s early in the year,” Hurley told SNY.tv. “We’re ahead of where I thought we would be in Year 2.
NEW YORK — Syracuse basketball coach Jim Boeheim says he has “no information” for investigators relating to the Bernie Fine sexual molestation case, and continues to defend his longtime friend and associate.
“I have no information that can help anybody,” Boeheim told a swarm of reporters Tuesday at the Marriott Marquis hotel in midtown Manhattan on the eve of the Dick’s Sporting Goods NIT Season Tip-Off.
Even amid harsh criticism from a sexual abuse recovery group for his stance on the Fine case, Boeheim continued to stand by his longtime assistant.
