He was The Coach Without His Team, only three games missed in 40 years coaching Syracuse basketball, until the NCAA infractions police sent him into exile for nine games and 32 agonizing days in the dead of a cold, cruel winter of his discontent.

So you bet that this 17th Sweet 16 appearance Friday night in Chicago against Gonzaga for Jim Boeheim, two seasons from retirement, is as sweet as any of them.

“It certainly brings tons of healing, I think for him even if he doesn’t realize it,” his wife, Juli, told The Post. “Certainly for me, I think certainly for our family. Every win when he went back, when he was allowed back, brought a tiny bit of healing.

“And I think this has brought an enormous amount of healing.”

It wasn’t so much that the Orange were 4-5 during his banishment either.

“It’s not like I was coaching for 10 years, this is 40 years,” Boeheim said. “So for 40 years, I missed three games. That’s when I had surgery [in 2001] for the prostate cancer. To miss nine games in the month of basketball was very difficult. Whether it’s deserved or not deserved doesn’t even matter. It’s just difficult to do.”

An NCAA investigation dating back to 2001 found violations that included extra benefits, academic misconduct, impermissible booster activity and failure to follow NCAA drug testing policy. The Hall of Famer was also stripped of 108 career wins.

We too often lose sight of how these games, this high-stakes occupation, this obsession with the madness of March, affects the families. Just because you are a Hall of Fame coach doesn’t mean you aren’t a Hall of Fame husband and father, too.

“It was heartbreaking more than anything,” Juli said. “It was crushing. My heart was broken for him, and during the games, I couldn’t even look at him.

“It was like he was under house arrest. He didn’t really know what to do with himself. Nothing like what retirement will be like at all. It was so different from anything he’ll ever experience again. And it was just hard to watch him not being able to be where he should have been, where his heart was. With his team, with his coaches, at the school, in his office, at the press conference with the new football coach [Dino Babers].”

She would watch the games in another room, while he was glued to the television, part fan, all coach.

“Just second-guessing everything, and getting mad at the officials like you do when you coach,” Boeheim said, chuckling. “It’s very very hard to do that.”

“I tried to keep him as busy as I could, and he had one thing on his calendar at least every day,” said Juli, his wife since 1997. “He had a lot of lunches with his friends. ”

He has won a national championship with Carmelo Anthony, has been to four Final Fours, and even now, at 71, it is the joy on the faces of his players that makes it all worthwhile.

“I never look at this as fun,” Boeheim said. “I look at this as a rewarding job. If you do it right, you get satisfaction out of it. But if I want to have fun, I go play golf, which … that isn’t always fun either.

“It’s a challenge every year, and you want to give your best to every team you coach. And this team really has battled through this. We have some obvious weaknesses, there’s no question about that, but they’ve battled through everything. … They’ve earned it, and it’s fun to see the joy on their face when they won these two games [against Dayton and Middle Tennessee State]. It was a good feeling to watch.”

For Juli, who will be heading to Chicago, Syracuse still playing, her husband still coaching his team two games from another Final Four, is justice.

“When he brings a player here, they all go in the same spot in his heart,” she said. “They’re all like his kids, and he loves them like a dad. The uniqueness of the team, the dynamic of the team, what we’re able to do with what we have, probably influences maybe the specialness of the team for him. This team is very special in what they’ve accomplished … what they’ve endured. Especially the ones that were part of this last year [when Syracuse self-imposed a postseason ban] and then this year with the nine-game suspension, something they had to be punished for as well.”
Hell is now in the rearview mirror.

“No matter what comes his way, he has one direction, and that’s forward,” Juli said.
Heaven again now.

“Love the healing! Breathe on!” Juli said.