HOUSTON — The man who orchestrates behind the scenes has been part of Syracuse basketball for all but one of its six Final Four runs. The exception came in 1975, before he manned the head position he’s in now.

He spent his college career with the Orange and has been a staple at SU since. He can be seen floating around the Carmelo K. Anthony Basketball Center during any practice or roaming the court at NRG Stadium as Syracuse prepares for a matchup with No. 1 seed North Carolina (32-6, 14-4 Atlantic Coast).

On Saturday, he won’t be on No. 10 seed Syracuse’s (23-13, 9-9 Atlantic Coast) sideline. His name won’t be mentioned once in any broadcast, any tweet or any phrase before, during or after SU plays UNC. But if the Orange wins and moves one step closer to becoming the lowest-seeded team ever to win the NCAA Tournament, he’ll be up well into Sunday morning helping to scout the only team left between Syracuse and a national title.

Meet Todd Blumen, Syracuse basketball video coordinator.

“Todd was here about 10 years before I even realized he was still here,” Jim Boeheim said Friday. “I think he was undergraduate for about nine.”

Blumen enrolled at Syracuse in 1986 as an undergraduate student and spent four years as a student manager. From 1995-97, he served as a graduate assistant video coordinator while earning his master’s degree from SU before spending five years as a video production assistant. In 2002, he was promoted to Syracuse’s video coordinator and has held the role for the past 14 years, which includes a College Basketball Video Coordinator of the Year award in 2011.

He hasn’t been at Syracuse in every year since he first became part of Boeheim’s program, but Blumen has been associated with the same number of Final Four teams as the Hall of Famer. While you’re reading this, he’s probably cutting, watching or distributing film of Syracuse, its next opponent or its potential future opponents somewhere, relishing in the lack of spotlight under which he meticulously operates.

“He’s been our video coordinator for a long time,” Boeheim said. “It’s always good to have people who know the program, know what the drill is, know what I like.”

Blumen was a freshman during Syracuse’s 1987 Final Four run and had his family at SU’s 1996 appearance since the East Rutherford, New Jersey venue was near his New York City home. He became the head video coordinator a year before Syracuse won its first national championship and has been a mainstay since then, in the two Final Fours and 15 seasons that have followed.

In the past week, he’s gathered film on UNC, Oklahoma and Villanova, working with the assistant coaches handling each scouting report to provide the game tape they want. Gerry McNamara is handling the scouting report on the Sooners and they’re the team that will require the deepest diving into the film rolls.

To begin, Blumen gathered each of OU’s offensive sets it ran against a zone this season. Then he sifted through the film to find which of the Sooners’ opponents played similar to how the Orange does. He downloaded those tapes and ended up with 16 or 17 full Oklahoma games, he estimated, along with the offensive sets it ran against a zone that aren’t included in that group. By Saturday morning, he and McNamara will have helped compile nearly the entire scouting report on a team Syracuse may not even play.

“I got him everything that he wanted,” Blumen said. “He went through and said, ‘OK, do I need these two games also?’ So every game that he wants, I got. And then he goes through, he starts doing that while doing the scouting report … he clips some of the clips to match the scouting report and then we’ll just compile it all together so basically by tomorrow morning, we’ll have the other two scouting reports 99-percent done.”

Before the Final Four, Syracuse already had sufficient tape on Villanova from matchups in each of the last two seasons. For UNC, the video scouting report was at the ready from two games played earlier this year.

Oklahoma and Villanova play Saturday night before Syracuse faces UNC. Blumen will film that game from a television truck. If SU advances to the national championship, part of the staff will scout the OU-Villanova game into Sunday morning before a morning meeting where the analysis and cut-up film is presented to Boeheim.

The players wouldn’t see any film until Monday before the title game. A vast amount of the film preparation deals with scenarios that may not even play out, but the breakdown of North Carolina delves into intricate details as well.

“When it’s finally done, it’ll be about a seven-minute cut-up that we’re showing the team,” Blumen said. “But you’re talking about basically how they run the outside screen, how they run the inside screen and then what they do with trying to get the ball into the low post and that stuff.

“But for the most part, there’s only so much you can do versus a zone, so it’s more concentrating how they do it against our zone.”

Blumen had to receive special permission form the NCAA to spend his yearly Christmas Eve dinner at the Boeheim’s house, according to a Sports Illustrated article. On his birthday earlier this season, the entire team surrounded him in the Melo Center while he dug a knife into a personalized cake. On Friday, Kaleb Joseph came millimeters from kissing Blumen’s cheek in the locker room.

He’s ingrained in Syracuse basketball as deeply as his name would be buried on a list of names associated with the team. Millions of people will watch the Final Four on Saturday and everyone will see Boeheim. Nobody will see, or maybe even know Blumen, but he’s just going along for the ride.

“With everything that went on this year, the way that Coach was treated by the NCAA and everything … hoping to get in, we got in and then to get here is just really special,” Blumen said. “It’s a lot of fun, but its also a family.”

Published on April 1, 2016 at 8:39 pm

Contact Matt: mcschnei@syr.edu | @matt_schneidman