Fifteen thousand fans stared with mouths agape, unable to process the 60-foot heave that seconds earlier had handed Syracuse its first loss of the season.

But Jonny Flynn couldn’t stare any more. As the referee peered into the replay monitor to verify the shot, the Orange point guard turned his back. He knew his team’s fate.

‘I just walked off the court,’ Flynn said. ‘They were reviewing it, but I knew it was a good shot.’

The ref looked up, raised both his arms, and it was official. Cedric Jackson’s 60-foot shot had left his hand and swished through the net before time expired, handing Cleveland State (7-4) a 72-69 upset over No. 11 Syracuse (9-1) in front of a stunned 15,416 at the Carrier Dome.

Syracuse center Arinze Onuaku had tied the game by banking home a put-back layup with two seconds left, capping a five-point Syracuse comeback in 27 seconds. CSU forward J’Nathan Bullock immediately grabbed the ball on the baseline and threw it in to Jackson, who took a few steps to his left and planted his foot a few feet outside his own team’s three point line. Syracuse forward Paul Harris took a step back, so as not to foul the upcoming shot.

Jackson cocked the ball at his waist, let it fly, and immediately skirted to his left – a nervous force of habit he does after every big shot. But this one was looking straight.

‘I was praying like, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, it’s about to go in. Please go in,” Jackson said. ‘It went in, and I was just in total shock.’

After coming out slow to start the game, Syracuse had rallied to tie the game heading into the half and seemed poised for its fifth come-from-behind win of the season. But the Vikings wouldn’t go away, led by Bullock’s 18 second-half points. As time ticked down, CSU made five of its last six shots to stave off the Syracuse onslaught and set the stage for Jackson’s game-winner.

‘You cannot put yourself in that position,’ SU head coach Jim Boeheim said in his postgame press conference, before pausing and repeating the phrase twice more. ‘That’s the bottom line.’

Aside from the improbable shot at the end, the rest of the game seemed familiar for the Orange. Syracuse fell victim to many of this season’s familiar bad habits: It lost the rebounding battle, 34-33, and gave up 15 offensive rebounds that led to 15 second-chance points. The Orange turned the ball over 16 times, negating the fact that Syracuse shot 54 percent from the field while CSU shot only 44 percent.

And Syracuse’s 30 first-half points – its second-lowest first-half output of the year – left many searching for answers as to how to combat the sluggishness the plagues the Orange in the early minutes.

‘We’ve got to play better. Period. Bottom line,’ Boeheim said. ‘I don’t think we can beat a team in our league they way we’re playing right now. I don’t believe we can.’

After the game, a somber Syracuse locker room reflected on a situation nobody could have predicted. Everyone had seen shots like that on TV. It’s just not something that they expected to happen to them.

‘It was like somebody was carrying it to the rim,’ Harris said. ‘It just went right in.’

‘It hurts,’ Onuaku said. ‘We battled so hard to get back, then you look up and you see that shot go in.’

The Orange took solace in the fact that the next layoff is short: Syracuse plays again Wednesday against Canisius

‘I’d rather have somebody just beat us by 10 points or something like that than lose on a shot where you work through so much emotion, so much energy fighting back, and thinking you have a second life,’ Flynn said. ‘But to just have it took away on a shot like that, it hurts.’

kbaustin@syr.edu

Published on December 19, 2008 at 12:00 pm