For Syracuse, it was a game to be forgotten.

The Orangemen played ‘playground basketball.’ That’s how interim SU head coach Bernie Fine termed it. The product SU put on the floor on Dec. 8, 2001, looked nothing like the team that won its first nine games to start the 2001-02 season.

Even the bench looked different. That’s because head coach Jim Boeheim missed his second consecutive game after undergoing prostate surgery. Assistant coach Fine was the head man. North Carolina State, at the time a middle-of-the-pack ACC team, defeated Syracuse 82-68 in the Carrier Dome, handing the Orangemen its first loss of the 2001-02 season.

‘I’m embarrassed, and I’ll take the blame for this,’ Fine said. ‘Because Coach Boeheim doesn’t teach them to play basketball like this, and that’s not a Syracuse team the way we played. We did not do a good job.’

The loss was Syracuse’s first to an unranked nonconference opponent since a loss to Ohio in 1998. The Wolfpack jumped out to a quick 16-5 lead to start the game, and even though Syracuse closed the gap to two, 35-33, at halftime, the Orangemen never got in a rhythm offensively or defensively.

Syracuse was outrebounded 34-30, turned the ball over 17 times and allowed N.C. State to shoot almost 54 percent from the field.

‘It’s a sad day at the office, that’s all I can really say,’ SU guard Kueth Duany said. ‘I just didn’t play well.’

Offensively, Syracuse reverted to a selfish form of basketball. Bad shots led to quick one-and-done possessions. At times, SU would hit a couple of quick shots to make the game close, but at other times, the Orangemen went cold and didn’t score for four minutes.

Preston Shumpert was Syracuse’s bright spot, scoring 29 points. But on the opposite end of the spectrum sat guard DeShaun Williams. In his second game returning from suspension, Williams shot just 6-of-16 and turned the ball over five times.

‘DeShaun thought he was in the playground instead of playing for Syracuse,’ Fine said. ‘He didn’t get us in our offense. He tried to go one-on-one too many times. He took some bad shots, and we went over this a few times.’

Little did Syracuse know at the time, but this loss was the first of what would be many as the Orangemen collapsed down the stretch of the 2001-02 season. After winning its first nine games and starting out 16-2, Syracuse lost eight of 12 games through the end of the regular season and Big East tournament.

A season that began so successfully ended in the National Invitation Tournament. And the first of those 10 losses that kept SU out of the NCAA Tournament was against N.C. State. The Orangemen had a nice comeback win the year before against the Wolfpack, erasing an 11-point deficit en route to a one-point victory.

But this time, N.C. State held on, partly due to poor play by Syracuse.

‘I don’t think they really, really, truly believed that we could come back,’ Shumpert said of his teammates. ‘That’s probably the main factor.’

— Compiled by asst. copy editor Mark Cooper, mcooperj@syr.edu

Published on December 2, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Mark: mcooperj@syr.edu | @mark_cooperjr