HOUSTON — Body paint makes it harder to forget.

Sitting in the lobby of the Courtyard Marriott on Sunday morning, a Syracuse student’s skin still had the orange tinge. He said he hadn’t tried too hard to scrub it off. He liked the reminder. Many students wandered the lobby of the hotel still wearing their green student-access wristbands. More than one person joked he hoped to wake up from this vividly detailed dream.

The bus ride home from NRG Stadium wasn’t silent. Beyoncé’s “Formation” played softly and people re-hashed the game in detail. Though there were certainly exceptions, the prevailing thought wasn’t anger. It wasn’t regret at driving 32 hours to spend 29 hours in Houston. It wasn’t even blaming the game on one player, coach or referee.

Just acceptance that North Carolina was simply the better team.

The witnesses of No. 10 seed Syracuse’s 83-66, magical-season-ending loss to the top-seeded Tar Heels filed from the stadium, lined up in the dark at the buses and talked about how cool it had all been.

It was hard to tell if some students were disappointed or just drained from a three-week-long run from a team that wasn’t supposed to make the NCAA Tournament.

Either way, it wasn’t the same group of students that stood behind Syracuse’s basket for the whole game, cheering the Orange and verbally abusing anyone who tried to stop the march to victory.

Standing in one of the six rows of black chairs, on top of the black carpet still littered with shreds of Oklahoma basketball programs that the OU students had tossed before their game began, the SU faithful whipped themselves in a yelling, throbbing, orange mass.

The 75,505-person stadium seemed cavernous from the floor, the farthest reaches of the stands shrouded in darkness, but the Syracuse fans were intent on filling it with the only chant they had: “Lets go Orange!”

Kenny “The Jet” Smith, a TBS college basketball analyst, laughed as fans swarmed their set and jumped in the background, trying to make it on TV. Security guards repeatedly screamed at students for jumping on the chairs, that they were being too rowdy. Vice President Joe Biden appeared in the student section for selfies about 10 minutes before tip.

Then, the students who had arrived in Texas a dozen hours prior and mostly ran on fewer than four hours of sleep, reached the apex of their delirious frenzy. They were there to cheer their team in the program’s biggest game since 2013, and perhaps its unlikeliest ever.

Down 17 points with 12 minutes to go, a bearded fan turned to his friend and said, “We’ve got ‘em right where we want ‘em!” His conviction was undeniable. He yelled louder and surrounding students nodded in a seriousness that, for any other team, may have bordered on delusion.

But this was Syracuse. A miracle team which has predicated its success on seemingly impossible second-half runs against teams that seemed to overwhelm it with pure talent.

And, the wildest part, he seemed vindicated. But only for a moment.

As Syracuse’s season shipwrecked in the NRG Center, the fans under the basket clung to any pieces of driftwood that floated past. A Trevor Cooney 3. His ensuing steal-and-slam. A Malachi Richardson layup that cut the lead to 10.

Otto’s Army vice president Johnny Oliver, who wears an orange spray-painted Batman mask to every game, started the “I believe that we will win!” chant after a Richardson 3-pointer cut the deficit to seven.

But UNC responded. Time dribbled away. Every Orange basket earned a louder, more desperate roar; each foul call, a shriller denial. Oliver lifted up his mask and put a hand to his forehead.

All the while, North Carolina dunks smashed Syracuse’s floating hopes to splinters.

And over the course of the next eight minutes, each student slowly realized that, this time, there’d be no more driftwood to stop the sinking.

Published on April 3, 2016 at 6:21 pm

Contact Sam: [email protected] | @Sam4TR