 "Photo: Daily Orange file photo")
Decades of history rested on his shoulders. Georgetown's Eric "Sleepy" Floyd was two free throws away from immortalizing himself as a villain in Central New York.
Thirty years ago. Five seconds left. Tied game. Syracuse's final game at Manley Field House. And the Orangemen were in the midst of a 57-game home winning streak. Yes, the freshman Floyd had a chance to spoil the party, a chance to rear-end a storybook finish.
"I might have looked cool, but I know I was shaking inside," said Floyd, a future NBA All-Star.
SU players vultured around Floyd, spraying him with trash talk to damage his psyche. Teammates offered encouragement. The 9,521 fans raged. Internally, Floyd repeated "Easy as ice cream, easy as ice cream" to himself - a self-meditation technique.
It worked. Floyd nailed the free throws. Georgetown won, 52-50. And what happened next forever fueled the Syracuse-Georgetown rivalry. Hoyas head coach John Thompson took the scorer's table microphone and declared, "Manley Field House is officially closed!"
The reaction was pin-drop speechlessness. Shock took on a life-form. No way could Syracuse lose this game. It didn't fit the script. In 18 years, SU lost just 30 times at Manley. This made no sense.
"The fans were shocked they had actually lost because they didn't think they would lose," Floyd said. "And the players didn't think they would lose. It was the last game at Manley Field House, and they were going to go out in style."
Tonight's game between No. 5 Syracuse and No. 12 Georgetown marks the 30-year reunion of Manley's closing. The building was a perfect platform for this rivalry to develop. Thompson's words still pierce through the memories of the Syracuse faithful, leading to three decades of one of collegiate sports' fiercest rivalries.
These days, Manley Field House is mostly dormant, housing practices for various sports. It's no longer the orange-throwing, fan-barking, temper-flaring war zone of old. But in annual Syracuse-Georgetown games, the legacy of Manley lives on.
Leo Rautins, the father of SU guard Andy Rautins, was a redshirt that season for the Orangemen. The wounds from that game, under those circumstances, will never heal.
"It ticks you off. From that point on, all games with Georgetown became battles," Rautins said. "That just pissed every Syracuse fan off forever."
An "intimidating" place
Once the echo from Thompson's words dissipated and the tremor of shock faded, legendary SU center Roosevelt Bouie signed autographs at Manley for the final time.
His parents shuffled down from the bleachers. There was a short pause, and Bouie's mom spoke up.
"She said, 'Y'all suck! But I still love you,'" Bouie recalls with a chuckle. "We had the game put away. We were up by a good margin, and we let it slip away."
The Orangemen led 30-16 at halftime and still held a four-point edge with 2:10 left. But down the stretch Syracuse missed 5-of-8 free throws. Bouie, the team's leading scorer, was held to three points in the second half. Floyd drained his pressure shots. The streak died at 57.
But Bouie sees the big picture. A bitter rivalry was born that day. Former players talk about Manley like veterans piecing together old battle scenes. Long before the age of political correctness, games at Manley took on lives of their own. Rules were bent. Opponents, harassed.
Cramped inside a noise box, 10,000 fans transferred Manley into a house of horrors. No wonder SU won 86 percent of the time in the building.
"Going into Manley Field House was a huge, huge challenge," Floyd said. "It's very small and very intimidating. Basically, you had to look at it like you were starting out 10 points down in the game."
It all started with rock-concert volume booming inside the arena before games. Bouie still remembers a pounding sensation in his chest when fans stomped their feet on the wooden bleachers. Communicating with teammates was impossible before tipoff. Before the jump ball, Bouie often cupped his hands and screamed last-minute tips into the ears of Louis Orr and Eddie Moss. No luck.
"They'd look at me like, 'What?! I can't understand what you're saying.'"
Once the game began, an R-rated atmosphere ensued.
"Players back then were a little more creative when they were talking shit," Rautins said. "You did your homework. You knew about guys. When you said something, it stung."
One band of interrogators that certainly did their homework was the "Canine Club." The group loitered underneath the opposing team's basket and barked at players. From mothers to girlfriends, everything was fair game.
All the Canine Club needed was eye contact.
"The first one in the starting five that actually looked up into the stands was toast," Bouie said. "(If it was me) I would have ran into the stands and it would be on. The only thing I kept thinking was, 'Thank God I went to Syracuse.' It's one thing to have fans that say, 'Yay, boo, ha, ha.' But it's another thing when they're telling you intimate things about your family members."
Then again, maybe that's nothing new. So many college basketball games are packed with rowdy undergrads. Thing is, Manley fans went further. They dug deeper to affect the game. This home-court advantage was unique.
When a team went on a run, head coach Jim Boeheim never needed to burn a damage-control timeout. From afar, Bouie remembers a liter of soda being lofted onto the court. Officials needed a couple minutes to clean it up, and Boeheim's players could regroup near the bench.
When an official made a questionable call, a frozen orange was catapulted onto the court - usually about 10 feet away from the ref.
"Never risking hitting him," Bouie said, "but just enough to get his attention."
Bouie remembers one or the other happening every game. Nobody cared to stop it. The orange and soda routine was accepted. What happens in Manley, stays in Manley.
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