The Whitman School started its first IMPACT Speaker Series of the semester with a slam dunk on Sept. 10 as retired Syracuse University Men’s Basketball Coach Jim Boeheim ’66 (A&S/MAX), G’73 (MAX), H’24, participated in a fireside chat with the University’s Vice Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives and Innovation and Executive Dean of the Whitman School J. Michael Haynie.

The Whitman Impact Speaker Series brings in high-profile business professionals to share their career experiences and advice with students and impart life lessons to help them shape successful futures. The speaker series began in January with April Arnzen, executive vice president and chief people officer of Micron Technology, and continued throughout the spring semester with other high-profile professionals, including celebrity baker Buddy Valastro.

An icon of college basketball, Boeheim shared many stories of his more than 60-year connection with Syracuse University dating back to 1962 when he was a walk-on for the basketball team. He never left, enjoying a remarkable 47-year career as the head basketball coach for the Orange. He led the team to 10 Big East Conference regular season championships, five Big East tournament championships, made 35 NCAA tournament appearances, including five Final Four appearances, three of which were in the national title game. And, in 2004, the Syracuse Men’s Basketball Team won the NCAA National Championship.

Boeheim was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2005. He also served as an assistant coach for the USA Basketball Men’s National Team at the Olympics in 2008, 2012 and 2016, with the likes of NBA superstars Carmelo Anthony and Kobe Bryant. The team took home the gold in 2008 , 2012 and 2016. In 2023, Boeheim retired as coach of the Orange and today serves as a special assistant to the athletic director at Syracuse University.

During the IMPACT event, Boeheim shared memorable stories and advice from his coaching career, equating themes of leadership and winning to success in business. Here are some of the highlights one of the most successful coaches in college basketball has to offer:

A lot more people will tell you that you can’t do something.

Boeheim recalls others telling him he wouldn’t amount to much as a walk-on, but, in fact, that experience showed him what he could accomplish if he went at it hard enough. “More people will tell you that you can’t do something,” he says, noting that he never listened to the negatives as a coach either. “(NFL football coach) Marv Levy once told me, ‘When you start listening to the fans, you’ll soon be sitting with them.’”

There’s always more to learn.

Despite his storied coaching career, Boeheim doesn’t think he’s learned everything. “Forty-five years into coaching, I saw a great drill at a high school practice that I’d never seen before. So, I brought it back to our team and used it,” he says. “You’re always learning, and you never know it all.

Everyone can work harder.

Boeheim polled the audience, asking if students thought they worked hard, and many hands were raised. “No one works as hard as they think they do—or can do. You work hard to your level, but you don’t work hard,” he says. “I never met a player who wasn’t working as hard as he should who responded to ‘Can you work a little harder?’ Almost every player wanted to play in the NBA. Players want you to push them, so I tried to push them to the limit to get there. My dad made me a competitor. He would get mad if he lost at anything. Competitiveness is so important, and it was engrained in me from the beginning, through my dad and my coaches. We didn’t go out there to have fun, we went out there to win. It’s important in anything you do to compete at that kind of level every day.

Without the feeling of failure, you never get the feeling of success.

Boeheim admits he hates to lose, and sometimes he took it hard. “The greatest thing about sports is you’re at the peak of the mountain, and then you lose, and you’re at the lowest possible level. But, then you get back up and keep going,” he says. “We came back many times. We won a national championship, but at times we still lost. It’s crushing to lose, but that’s sports, and that’s life. You win deals and you lose deals in business, and you get through it. But, I still hate losing.”

Do what you have to do to get it done.

“One thing that I’ve learned from successful people is that they don’t take no for an answer. They are committed to doing what it takes—which might mean starting at the bottom or making very little money at first. You find what it is, and you go after it,” Boeheim says. “You do what you have to do to get it done. In 47 years, I never went a day or an hour that I wasn’t thinking something about our team or what we had to do or who we had to recruit. That’s what you do to be successful.”

Sizzle Short Video of the Event.

The next IMPACT speaker is scheduled for November 6, 2024, with Neeraj Tolmare, CIO Coca-Cola at the Whitman School.