Will Jim Boeheim's Return Spark a Run for Syracuse to Make the NCAA Tournament?

Jim Boeheim's 40th season as the head coach at Syracuse just might be his most difficult yet.

For a team that knew it would eventually need to spend one-quarter of the 2015-16 season without its head coach, though, the Orange certainly hit the ground running.

After knocking off Connecticut and Texas A&M to win the Battle 4 Atlantis and open the year on a six-game winning streak, Syracuse entered the month of December ranked No. 14 in the AP Top 25 poll. Outside of maybe Xavier, there wasn't a more unexpectedly impressive team in the country than the Orange.

One blink of the eye later, they were gone.

Barely 12 hours after suffering its first loss of the season (to a floundering Wisconsin team about to lose a legendary coach of its own), Syracuse was dealt an even bigger blow with the news that Boeheim's nine-game suspension for "failing to monitor his program over the course of a decade"—originally scheduled to begin at the start of ACC play—was being moved up to the following day at midnight.

What ensued with Boeheim unable to have any contact with his coaching staff or players was...not ideal.

Nick Lisi/Associated Press

As John Kekis of the Associated Press (h/t USA Today) eloquently summed up, "Assistant coach Mike Hopkins posted a 4-5 mark as the interim, and although the message was the same, the voice barking out the instructions wasn't, and the Orange sputtered."

The hope was that Syracuse would be able to tread water until Boeheim returned, but instead, the Orange appeared to be dead in the water by the time he resumed his spot on the sideline against North Carolina on Jan. 9.

In Joe Lunardi's Jan. 4 bracket projection for ESPN.com, Syracuse didn't even appear as one of the first eight teams out of the field—and that was before the home loss to Clemson in the ninth and final game without Boeheim. 

Granted, early-January bracketology is far from perfectly prophetic, but it certainly felt like Syracuse's tournament pulse needed Dr. Frankenstein more than it needed the most famous nose-picker in the history of college basketball.

But as ESPN.com's Eamonn Brennan noted in his primer for Boeheim's return, "If Syracuse is noticeably better with Boeheim back, the past month's struggles might not matter at all. There's plenty of room for the Orange to turn this thing around."

If you've tried to project the tournament field lately, you know that "room to turn things around" is putting it lightly. This year's bubble is weaker than the coffee you get from accidentally reusing a decaf K-Cup.

Well, there's no denying that the Orange have looked significantly better with Boeheim back in the saddle.

They fell short of upsetting the Tar Heels, thus falling to 0-4 in the ACC as a result—their worst conference start ever, according to Mark Frank of the Associated Press (h/t CBSSports.com). But the Orange held a six-point lead with less than nine minutes remaining before Isaiah Hicks and Brice Johnson simply took over the game.

And in the two games since, Syracuse has beaten Boston College (at home) and Wake Forest (on the road) by a combined margin of 50 points.

So, what changed?

It's not like Syracuse started toying around with man-to-man defense or had to deal with any injuries while playing without the coach who has been on that sideline for more than twice as many years as some of his players have been on this earth.

Could the answer really be as simple as three-point luck?

Coach	Off. 3P%	Made per game	Def. 3P%	Made per game
Boeheim (10 games)	37.0	9.0	25.6	5.8
Hopkins (9 games)	32.3	8.1	32.6	7.8

Not only did Syracuse shoot 4.7 percent worse from beyond the arc with Hopkins at the helm, but opponents shot a full 7.0 percent better with Boeheim out.

Those aren't huge sample sizes, but they reveal pretty massive differences nonetheless.

Put a different way, the Orange have averaged 9.6 more points than their opponents from beyond the arc under Boeheim, but that number drops to just 1.0 under Hopkins—even though they attempted slightly more three-pointers per game with the interim coach.

The two-point and free-throw percentage splits are also quite indicative of better luck/effort on both ends of the court with Boeheim than with Hopkins, but the three-point figures are particularly incriminating given how many triples both teams are attempting in Syracuse games this season.

To be sure, opponents shooting a ton of threes against Syracuse is anything but a new development. In 11 of the past 12 years (including this one), at least 37.4 percent of opponents' field-goal attempts have come from three-point range, according to KenPom.com.

In every year since 2004-05, the Orange have ranked 276th or worse in that category.

If you've watched any Syracuse basketball in the past two decades, you pretty much already knew this to be the case. Teams always try to shoot over the top of that world-famous 2-3 zone.

Nick Lisi/Associated Press

What is news, though, is Syracuse's crippling dependency upon the unreliable shot.

While opponents routinely let it fly from downtown, Syracuse has always pounded the paint. The Orange had taken less than 33 percent of their shots from beyond the arc in each of the past eight years. That number was even below 30 percent in each of the last two seasons.

This year?

43.3 percent.

"We don't have another option," Boeheim told reporters after watching his short rotation of mostly perimeter players jack up 34 triples in the season opener against Lehigh. "That's the best option for us. That shot. We have to make those."

In the Battle 4 Atlantis, they made them. Thirty-four of them, in fact, as the Orange shot at least 44 percent in each of those three games. But then they came back home and immediately shot 29.2 percent in the loss to Wisconsin.

"The difference really in this game," Boeheim told reporters after the loss, "we played just as hard and probably just as well as we did in the tournament, but we shot .500 from the three and we didn't miss free throws [in the Bahamas]. Simple as that."

It only got worse from there as they shot 25.9 percent from three in the loss to Georgetown and 19.2 percent against St. John's.

So, is it Hopkins' fault that Malachi Richardson shot 0-of-16 in those games after hitting 8-of-17 in the Bahamas? Or that St. John's picked that game to set a season high (vs. D-I opponents) in made three-pointers and three-point percentage by shooting 12-of-24 (50 percent) from beyond the arc?

Jeremy Brevard-USA TODAY Sports

Better question: Is Boeheim's presence the reason that Trevor Cooney made six of his first seven shots in pacing Syracuse to a 19-point lead less than 10 minutes into Saturday's game against Wake Forest. What about the Demon Deacons shooting 2-of-20 from three-point range in that contest?

You may think it's dumb luck, but it would be foolish to disregard the incalculable impact of the return to normalcy. Boeheim isn't the one shooting the threes or attempting to contest them, but the Orange give just a little bit extra when they know it's his approval or disappointment they'll be receiving.

That isn't to say they don't respect Hopkins or that they didn't want to win for him. It's just different, and it was a change that came several weeks earlier than expected.

Now that all is right with the Syracuse world, though, the pieces are falling back into place.

Cooney failed to score more than 15 in any game under Hopkins, but he has put up at least 25 in two of the past three contests. Tyler Lydon is beginning to resemble the guy who exploded in the Bahamas. Tyler Roberson had just one double-double in Boeheim's absence, but he's averaging 13.0 points and 10.7 rebounds in the past three games.

If/when Michael Gbinije gets back to playing like he did for the first month of the season—19.8 points per game and 50.7 percent from three-point range through 10 games; 14.3 PPG and 21.3 percent from three over the past nine—the Orange will be in serious business.

For their sake, it would be great if that transformation could begin this week, as they play at Duke on Monday and at Virginia on Saturday.

Win either of those games, and Boeheim's boys will be right back in the picture for a bid to the NCAA tournament.

Given how things have gone since his return, the Orange just might mess around and win them both.

"When people walk out of this locker room and think about this [win over Wake Forest], just think about what we can do," Cooney said after the most recent victory, per Chris Carlson of Syracuse.com. "We can dominate a team defensively. We can get the shots that we want against a really good team on their home court. That's what I want the guys to think about moving forward."

That future looks a lot brighter than it did barely a week ago. If Syracuse can shoot and/or defend like it did in the win over the Demon Deacons, this team could still be a serious contender before Selection Sunday is upon us.

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.