NEW YORK – Jim Boeheim finally threw in the towel. The walk-ons were coming into the game with 1:19 remaining and Syracuse trailing by 11 in the championship game of the Big East tournament to top-seeded Louisville. Jonny Flynn, who played 181 of a possible 195 minutes in four days, was one of the players taken out.

Flynn didn’t move for a few moments. He stood at midcourt, his hand over his eyes, his head shaking, and started the slow walk back to the bench. There Flynn sat, huddled between assistant coaches Bernie Fine and Rob Murphy, his head in his hands, unable to even watch the closing seconds of a 76-66 loss Saturday night.

That’s how the No. 18 Orange’s surprising run here at Madison Square Garden ended: Its best player, the tournament MVP, sitting in the third seat from the scorer’s table as the two squads shook hands at center court. Flynn said he stayed in place down because he was disappointed his team couldn’t finish the job. But by that point, it looked like he was simply too exhausted to move anymore.

After playing seven overtime periods in the last two days, Syracuse finally ran out of gas in the second half Saturday in front of a pro-SU crowd of 19,375. The Orange (26-9) led by eight at halftime after playing in the first half what Boeheim called ‘as well as we played down here on both ends.’ Then the Cardinals (27-5), using its devastating full-court pressure defense, went on a backbreaking 21-5 run to start the second half from which SU could not recover.

Now Syracuse will wait until Sunday evening, when it will find out its seed and matchup in the NCAA Tournament.

There were no last-second heroics Saturday, no magical moment like the ones that propelled Syracuse all the way to the tournament finals. Just a bunch of winded players with their hands on their knees and jelly for legs, who simply could not muster another comeback – even if nobody would admit it.

‘I wasn’t even fatigued,’ Flynn said. ‘I was feeling actually pretty good out on the court today but just made too many mistakes.’

‘I think it was just, I don’t know, just being weak,’ SU forward Paul Harris said. ‘I wouldn’t really say I was that tired.’

Hard to believe, considering the ordeal the Orange has been through these past four nights. After a relatively easy effort against Seton Hall Wednesday, Syracuse played a six-overtime epic against Connecticut that started Thursday night and ended Friday morning. Twenty hours later, Syracuse beat West Virginia in another game that needed overtime to complete.

All that led up to Saturday against Louisville. Flynn said handling the Cardinals’ press was like ‘being chased by eight pit bulls, and you just got to keep running for your life.’As the second half went on, the mistakes started coming. Even though the players wouldn’t say they were tired, they all acknowledged the silly errors down the stretch that plagued them Saturday were not present during the last three games.

The shooting touch, which was such a key part of the Orange’s victories, disappeared. SU shot 0-of-8 from 3-point range in the second half. On one possession, Andy Rautins and Eric Devendorf, who led all scorers with 20 points, combined to miss five 3’s.

When Syracuse penetrated to the basket, it couldn’t finish. Flynn, Devendorf, center Arinze Onuaku and forward Rick Jackson all missed crucial layups as the Orange tried to come back. ‘They’re going to gamble, and you’re going to get some open shots, and you have to make them,’ Boeheim said.

Then there was Flynn, who finished with just 11 points on 5-of-11 shooting, including 0-of-2 from deep. He scored just two points in the first half and was not much of a factor. Flynn tried to make one of his patented runs in the second half but could never get anything going. Twice, Flynn made uncharacteristically lazy lob passes that were easily intercepted by Louisville and converted into effortless buckets.

In the locker room afterward, nobody would outright say fatigue was a factor, no matter how many times the question was asked. Rautins said doing so would just be making excuses for losing a game it could have won. Forward Kristof Ongenaet said even if Syracuse was tired, Louisville won Saturday simply because ‘it was the better team.’

Regardless of what they said, though, one thing was constant: No one seemed to have a better answer for why the second half slipped away.

‘It’s true, it happened,’ Ongenaet said. ‘We can’t take that away, but they were just going at it, and maybe we were slacking a little bit for whatever reason, but I have no explanation for what real reason. I don’t think us being tired was crucial for our loss today.’

jediamon@syr.edu

Published on March 14, 2009 at 12:00 pm