Mike Hopkins spoke with his always-present emotion when explaining what it felt like to be a head coach.

The question wasn’t different from plenty of similar ones he’s heard and answered before. The game it followed — a cupcake win over Cornell on Dec. 19 — did little to match the drama of the moment that was taking place before an otherwise silent press room.

Hopkins has always said that being a head coach isn’t about him. It’s about the players. It’s about getting wins. All clichés, but all still very true. This explanation wasn’t trying to change that. Instead, it was Hopkins honestly painting a picture of how he deals with the ups and downs of his elevated role.

“You sit in that seat and you feel the momentum. You feel the crowd and you feel momentum and you feel those things,” Hopkins said. “… Being the head coach, from the top down, is a reflection of you. From your coaching staff, to the players. It’s just a bigger responsibility.”

Hopkins is right. Everything his players and assistants do reflects on him, and so far Hopkins is 4-4 with no signature win. The victories have come against Colgate, Cornell, Montana State and Texas Southern. The losses have been to Georgetown, St. John’s, No. 24 Pittsburgh and No. 12 Miami.

He took over as interim head coach with Syracuse ranked No. 14 in the country with just one loss, which came when Wisconsin dominated SU on the boards and beat the Orange in overtime. Now, the Orange is on the increasingly relevant NCAA Tournament bubble with one game left until Jim Boeheim returns from his NCAA-sanctioned nine-game suspension.

It’s not to say Hopkins or his decision-making is the reason for the rough stretch. It’s not to say he doesn’t have what it takes to lead. There’s nothing tangible to back that up. But with four chances to leave some sort of positive imprint, Syracuse is 0-4. And because of that and only that, Hopkins’ first tenure at the helm has been a failure.

“You just have to work harder,” Hopkins said after SU’s loss to Pittsburgh on Wednesday. “In the league that we’re in, we better go out and fight harder.”

Hopkins doesn’t typically speak in that type of “fight hard” jargon. When there’s a problem, he tells you what it is. When he thinks there’s a solution, he’s not shy to provide it. But the elixir to Syracuse’s underlying issues seems beyond the scope of what Hopkins can explain.

“The Georgetown game we came from behind.”

“The St. John’s game they just had an amazing shooting night and we didn’t.”

“The two tough road games (Pittsburgh and Miami) were wars … the road is hard to win.”

There are no excuses for Hopkins, but absent too are substantive explanations. Syracuse is a solid defensive team that struggles to rebound. Its live-ball turnovers have proven to be game-changers in conference play. Its tight, six-man rotation seemingly poses problems when the Orange goes up against three teams in a six-day span. The lack of a strong inside scoring presence allows its best guards to be hounded late in games to SU’s detriment.

There are inherent flaws that Syracuse will face this season regardless of who’s the head coach. The players have said there’s little difference between Boeheim and Hopkins. But it’s still Boeheim’s team. For 35 days, though, Hopkins shoulders the load for how Boeheim’s team does. He had his chance to, fair or not, make his mark. And he didn’t.

“He’s not coaching his team. He’s coaching my team. They’re used to my words and how I coach,” Boeheim told TK99 on his weekly radio show. “It makes it difficult for anyone to try and take over somebody else’s team. I don’t think it’s easier, or in some cases possible, to do.”

There is no conclusive way to say that Hopkins was put in an impossible predicament. Sometimes the situation looks as though the deck was stacked against him. He had two days’ notice to take over and prepare for games that he didn’t know would be his responsibility.

But that situation only provides context to the reality. Four wins against cupcake teams. Four losses in the games that matter. If you look at that, and only that, Mike Hopkins has failed in this stint as Syracuse’s head coach.

Published on January 4, 2016 at 11:04 pm