Jim Boeheim was not in a questioning mood Saturday.

The 32-year Syracuse head coach refused to take questions from the media following his team’s gut-wrenching loss to Pittsburgh. But with one sentence in his minute-and-a-half statement, Boeheim managed to give Saturday’s game all the perspective it needed.

‘It’s the most disappointing game I’ve ever been involved with,’ he said. ‘To play that well – we haven’t played that well in a long time.’

But any positives were surely overshadowed by Syracuse’s logic-defying collapse during the final four minutes Saturday.

The Orange threw away an 11-point lead – and perhaps its NCAA Tournament lifeline – in a gut-wrenching loss, 82-77, in front of a stunned 23,632 at the Carrier Dome whose only recourse was to boo the Orange off the floor.

The sucker punch came when Panthers forward Sam Young stole the ball from Paul Harris under the SU basket and lateraled to Keith Benjamin to give Pitt a one-point lead with 8.8 seconds left.

Scoop Jardine’s jumper on the other end was no good, and moments after a desperation foul with 1.5 seconds left, Boeheim was called for a technical for storming onto the court.

And as the boos began to rain down from the stands, Levance Fields calmly hit four free throws – the technical plus the one-and-one shots – to ice the game.

Within the span of three minutes, Syracuse (17-12, 7-9) went from being back in the thick of the NCAA Tournament discussion to suffering its fifth loss in six games.

‘It’s probably the most disappointing loss I’ve ever been in too, man,’ Syracuse guard Paul Harris said, in reference to Boeheim’s comments. ‘I can’t believe they just came back like that. We basically just gave them the game.’

‘When you lose a game like this, up 11 with three minutes to go, it hurts so bad that you can’t even explain it,’ point guard Jonny Flynn added.

Even Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon, whose Panthers (21-8, 9-7) all but sewed up a Tournament berth with the win, seemed almost guilty at stealing a victory from the Orange.

‘I feel for Syracuse because I know how much they’ve gone through this year … how much they’ve battled with seven guys,’ Dixon said. ‘They deserved to win a game and we deserved to win a game. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out fairly.’

The collapse overshadowed outstanding performances from Jonny Flynn and Donte Greene. Flynn added a game-high 28 while Greene, who hadn’t registered in double-figures in three of the previous five games, added an efficient 23 points, 18 of those coming in the second half.

Led by those two, the Orange managed to shoot 58.8 percent (30-for-51 from the field), more than 10 percent better than the Panthers. Yet the Orange kept the game close with persistent turnovers (12 in the first half) and a lack of defensive rebounding (Pitt had 12 offensive boards.

Still it looked like Syracuse’s high-tempo offense would be too much for Pittsburgh, which traditionally favors a slower, grind-it-out approach. SU built 11-point advantage in the second half, prompting Pittsburgh head coach Jamie Dixon to call a timeout with 3:47 left.

‘It looked like we were falling apart,’ Dixon said. ‘We were down 11. We bought them in and said we don’t quit. We may not win, but we’re not going to quit. There’s no quit in this team.’

Indeed, the Panthers played inspired in the game’s final minutes, but the Orange certainly helped by completely self-destructing.

The turnovers that had plagued Syracuse in the first half returned. SU committed three in crunch time, including a careless Greene inbounds pass to Pitt’s Ronald Roman for an easy layup to cut the SU lead to 75-71.

The offense Boeheim praised became stagnant, managing just two points on 1-for-5 shooting in the final four minutes.

And the Pitt offense came alive behind the shooting of Gilbert Brown, who came into the game having made 19.4 percent of his 3-pointers. Brown made two huge treys in the game’s final four minutes to give Pitt a chance.

The mounting tension inside the Dome reached its climax when Sam Young picked Harris’ pocket and Benjamin put the Panthers in front for good.

The smiles and the high fives that the Orange had displayed when the Panthers called timeout at the 3:47 mark had vanished. All that was left was a sense of frustration foreign even to Syracuse’s Hall of Fame coach.

‘The entire game we kept turning the ball over and at the end we just had to take care of the basketball, and we had three just unbelievable turnovers and that was the game,’ Boeheim said. ‘Nothing more to say about it.’

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Published on February 29, 2008 at 12:00 pm