The seconds crept by. Syracuse led by two. Clemson’s Marcquise Reed navigated inside the SU zone but there was nowhere to run. The Carrier Dome was awash with noise. Reed had a game-high 21 points to keep Clemson within reach.

With the perimeter largely covered, he took it to the rack. Oshae Brissett swatted his shot. The ball trickled out of bounds, the clock trickling down with it. A “Let’s Go Orange” chant echoed in the building, and the 28,670 fans who had assembled on Saturday afternoon could finally exhale. Finally, they got the reprieve an SU team has offered every season since 1980-81: a win over a ranked team.

In front of the largest on-campus crowd this season Saturday, it was supposed to be another home loss. It was supposed to be a seventh loss to a ranked opponent this season. Another anemic first half in which SU scored just 22 points made it apparent the Orange had regressed to its typical offensive efficiency. What it wasn’t supposed to be was a 55-52 Syracuse (19-12, 8-10 Atlantic Coast) victory over No. 18 Clemson (22-8, 11-7) to finish out the regular season with a much-needed signature win to add to its teetering NCAA Tournament resume.

The upset would not have come if not for an 11-0 run that afforded the Orange the ability to go the final 8:45 without a field goal and still win. The run also helped the Orange avoid dropping its sixth home game this season. Syracuse finished the regular season having lost four of its last six, and SU will begin postseason play in the Barclays Center on Tuesday for the ACC Tournament. The Orange is 0-3 in ACC Tournament games since joining the conference, meaning Syracuse will need to flip the script and make a deep run to ensure it plays in the Big Dance.

“We just have to play and see what happens,” SU head coach Jim Boeheim said. “It’s up to the Committee. It’s a tough call … we’ve got some good quadrant one and two wins, and we have no bad losses, and we won on the road, in tough places, at Louisville and Miami. We’ll see what happens.”

Following Syracuse’s biggest victory of the year, Boeheim looked back on a season of twists and turns. He looked back to how Syracuse lost Taurean Thompson before the season. He looked back to the losses of guards Geno Thorpe, who left the program, and Howard Washington, who is out for the season due to injury. He reflected on Bourama Sidibe’s play, which has been mostly diminished due to ongoing tendinitis in his knee.

“This team’s been playing with six guys,” Boeheim said.

Before Boeheim pitched his case for Syracuse’s spot in the Tournament, before he reflected on what was originally supposed to be his final season at Syracuse, the Orange began its win over Clemson by regressing to the play that has proved costly of late. Twenty-seven seconds after tip-off, Boeheim got up off his seat, walked about 10 feet onto the court and gestured for a timeout. The Carrier Dome had gone silent following an SU turnover and Gabe DeVoe dunk.

Yet despite almost no contribution from sophomore guard Tyus Battle, Syracuse entered the break down only 25-22. Two of the best defenses in the country played even through most of the first half and into the second, when Battle got going to spurt an 11-0 Syracuse run that allowed the Orange to not score a single field goal over the final 8:45 and still win. He drilled two 3-pointers and hit a floater, giving him eight points in three minutes. His floater tied the game at 30, giving him his 999th and 1,000th career points. Battle’s outburst coincided with Brissett’s, part of the run that put Syracuse up six.

“We wanted to get the ball in his hands,” said Brissett, who had 17 points, six rebounds, three blocks and hit 8-of-9 free throws, many of them down the stretch. “We knew it was only a matter of time before he would go on that run. That’s what we want, get him in the flow of the offense. It made it easier for the rest of us.”

Alexandra Moreo | Senior Staff Photographer

Battle entered the season well aware his role was to be the alpha male of Syracuse, the identity of a team with only one returning starter: himself. It became clear that he would have to do more than score. For SU to win, he would have to command the ball. Make steals. Compensate for an offense plagued by lack of depth with so-called hustle plays, steals and rebounds. And he knew he would have to generate motion, any sort of energy, for an otherwise flat offense.

For most of the final minutes, the two teams jockeyed back and forth, with SU’s lead not exceeding seven and Clemson’s five. After Brissett made two free throws to push SU’s lead to two, junior center Paschal Chukwu made both of his free throws, sending the Dome into joviality. The Orange didn’t score from the field for nearly the final one-fourth of the game, but it didn’t matter, because SU’s run had already afforded it enough cushion.

“I will not think that they should have done something more,” Boeheim said of Syracuse. “If anything, I would say they could have done something less than what they did. We’ll get ready. We’ll go to New York and try to play as well as we can.”

Published on March 3, 2018 at 4:24 pm

Contact Matthew: [email protected] | @MatthewGut21