It was a question that seemed all too obvious, considering the somber state of a Syracuse locker room still saturated with disbelief following the Orange’s collapse to Pittsburgh.

How does the Orange come back from such a heartbreaking loss, one that may have dealt a fatal blow to its NCAA Tournament chances?

After all, it’s not every day a team blows an 11-point lead in the game’s final four minutes – much a contest with such obvious NCAA implications.

It’s not every day Jim Boeheim, a coach with 32 years and 1,043 games under his belt, calls a loss ‘the most disappointing’ he’s ever been involved in.

But that disappointment is what the Orange must reconcile with before tonight’s visit to Seton Hall (7 p.m., ESPN2).

‘We’re definitely both playing for a lot,’ SU point guard Jonny Flynn said. ‘Playing for positioning in the conference tournament. So this is a huge game.’

Yes, there is still something left to play for. There’s still the sliver of hope that two wins to close out the regular season and a Big East tournament run could help SU snatch an unlikely tournament berth.

More practically, as Flynn said, Syracuse is playing for seeding in the Big East tournament against a Pirates squad with which it shares 10th place in the conference standings.

No doubt three months ago, the SU players didn’t anticipate using seeding for the Big East tournament as their main motivation heading into this matchup. But that’s the fate the Orange faces after a futile month of February.

On Feb. 2, Syracuse was 6-4 in the conference after three straight wins. It has won once since then to go along with five losses – none of those defeats more painful than Saturday’s against Pitt.

‘We need a ‘W,” said forward Donte Greene, who broke out of a recent slump with 23 points on Saturday. ‘We just need a little refocus. We’re good at that. We can refocus and come into practice and work hard and just get ready for Seton Hall.’

Yet saying the team will refocus is easy. Only tonight’s performance will tell whether the Orange can actually put Saturday’s loss behind it.

‘We have no choice but to come back from this,’ Flynn said. ‘If we don’t come back from this, we can lose the last two games.’

That’s for certain. Syracuse is running into a Seton Hall team that has improved in head coach Bobby Gonzalez’s second year at the helm.

The Pirates enter the game with identical overall and Big East records as Syracuse. The Orange will also have to deal with a sellout crowd at the brand new Prudential Center – also the home to the NHL’s New Jersey Devils. In the arena’s first season, Seton Hall has tallied an 11-4 home record, including 4-3 in conference play.

The Pirates also are coming off a bit of heartbreak. In its 65-62 loss to St. John’s on Sunday, Seton Hall thought it had tied the game, when Jeremy Hazell hit a miraculous, 65-foot 3-pointer as time expired. Problem was Gonzalez had already called a timeout, negating the basket.

Which team reacts better to its respective defeat might determine the winner.

‘We’re going to have get over it and play a serious, hungry Seton Hall team just like us,’ Flynn said.

Certainly, there are aspects from Saturday’s game the Orange would like to bottle and transport with them to Newark, N.J. Syracuse shot nearly 60 percent from the field, and Boeheim said after the game his team hadn’t played that well in a long time.

Still, SU continued to make mistakes down the stretch, something that has plagued it all year.

‘They knew we had timeouts. Donte didn’t call it. … He had timeouts and plenty of time to make the call,’ Boeheim said. ‘At the end, we got the ball to Paul (Harris) and he gave them the ball. We just have to hold on to the ball, get fouled, and go to the foul line.’

Despite the recurrent mistakes and the 7-9 conference record, there is still hope for the Orange. This year, the bubble teams vying for NCAA Tournament berths are unusually weak. Most projections still rate Syracuse as one of a handful of teams just barely on the outside of the field of 65.

But none of that will matter unless the Orange makes a statement in the final few games of the season. And to do that, it will need to find a way to get over any hangover still lingering from Saturday.

‘(We) need to be ready to play on Wednesday and finish out the rest of the season and go from there,’ Harris said. ‘We just have to play every game out.’

jsclayto@syr.edu

Published on March 4, 2008 at 12:00 pm