Ricky Shields left the Rutgers Athletic Center court with his face wrapped in his jersey. His Scarlet Knight teammates, one at a time, patted guard Quincy Douby on the back as he walked with his head down away from a night – and a jump shot – he’ll never forget.
Who could blame the Rutgers players for their sadness? Even with a 14-minute second-half stretch in which they played with little skill and less smarts, the Scarlet Knights likely won’t play a better game in 2005 than last night’s effort.
They won’t play a more disappointing one, either.
Up 20 points in the first half’s final minute, Rutgers lost 86-84 last night to fourth-ranked Syracuse.
The Orange (20-1, 7-0 Big East) grabbed the lead on a Terrence Roberts offensive rebound and three-point play with 7.2 seconds left. After Rutgers and Syracuse each called time with 3.8 seconds left, Douby’s 3-point try spun off the rim the second before time expired.
“When it left my hand, I thought it was going down,” said Douby, who takes 500 shots every day.
“Maybe now I need to shoot 1,000,” he added later.
The miss capped maybe this year’s craziest Big East game, one that saw Rutgers fall behind 6-0 before dominating Syracuse for the final 17 minutes of the first half. The Scarlet Knights (7-9, 1-5), who average 66 points per game, scored 54 in that stretch.
Shields had 15 of them, freshman Ollie Bailey scored 11 inside, and Washington Heights native Manny Quezada added seven in six minutes.
Down 54-36 at the half, the Orange seniors screamed at their teammates in the locker room. And coach Jim Boeheim, whose team played zone for the first time this year in Saturday’s win over West Virginia, installed a man-to-man press that accelerated the game’s pace and changed its score.
“We just stood up,” said Hakim Warrick, who joined teammate Gerry McNamara with a game-high 21 points, “and challenged everybody to turn the game around.”
It took Syracuse 48 seconds to force three turnovers and slice the 18-point deficit in half. Rutgers roped in the rallying Orange for a while, but after closing to 74-69, they scored 11 straight to take a six-point lead with 5:52 left.
But it wasn’t over. Shields’ three-pointer with 1:43 left ended an 8-1 Scarlet Knight surge and gave them an 82-81 cushion. He finished with a team-high 20 points.