A 3-month old baby girl, Rosemary, wearing a gray bear onesie sat in Rakeem Christmas’ arms at 9:45 p.m. on Monday night.

“She woke up just to see Rak,” said her father, Ryan Glunz, a former high school assistant coach of Christmas’.

Glunz, his wife and his daughter were just three of the 25,338 that witnessed the last game of Christmas’ Carrier Dome career and among the many with whom he chatted afterward. In the same arena where Syracuse fans have grown accustomed to watching Christmas corral rebounds into his hands and hook shots through the net, neither happened much on Monday.

And without a dominant performance from the senior forward, Syracuse (18-12, 9-8 Atlantic Coast) was no match for No. 2 Virginia (28-1, 16-1), falling 59-47 in a game that it once had a defensive chokehold on, on the boards — where Christmas was supposed to be. As much as ever this season, SU depended on Christmas. More than ever this year, he was silenced.

“My feeling is that I’m not sure exactly how this team won 18 games. Really, I’m not sure,” SU head coach Jim Boeheim said. “I think Rak’s done an unbelievable, incredible job, but I just — when you can’t shoot it and you don’t defend well at the guard spot and you’re small, there’s not a lot of positives there.”

Christmas gets double-teamed most every game. On the floor, on the boards, opponents come to the Carrier Dome or welcome Syracuse to their buildings and effectively dare the rest of the team to beat them. Christmas bursts through his two defenders, snags rebounds over their heads and kicks enough open looks to Trevor Cooney, Michael Gbinije, and lately, B.J. Johnson, that the Orange can win.

But the Cavaliers hedged hard over the top of SU’s screens and SU’s shooters played UVA with no more shooting success.

And when any two of Anthony Gill, Darion Atkins and Mike Tobey threw their bodies into Christmas, shielding him from one of the game’s 57 missed shots, there was no one to help the lone Orange big man. He had four rebounds, Syracuse had 20 as a team and the Cavaliers had 42.

“(Gbinije) got looks tonight. B.J. got some, Trevor got some,” Boeheim said. “We would have to make seven or eight 3s, but beyond that when you’re not making those then you’ve got to rebound. And we didn’t. We just didn’t rebound. And that’s — there’s no excuse for that.”

Christmas could only jog back downcourt to try and chase a game the Orange once led 13-2. His turnaround jumper gave Syracuse that lead with 7:11 left in the first half, but as soon as Virginia started shooting decently, SU began to fall behind.

The Orange shot a subpar 38.3 percent from the field. It meant that for one of the first times this season, Christmas left the game not with foul trouble, but with the game out of reach.

Much of the senior night crowd — watching the Orange lose that game for just the third time in 10 years — stayed until a whistle with one minute remaining. Christmas paused on his way to the bench and Boeheim stood in front of the big man, rubbing his right hand on the forward’s left hip amid a standing ovation before Christmas took the bench.

Only then did the Dome empty out. With Christmas out of the game and SU falling to its first sub-20-win season since 1996-97, there wasn’t much else to look at.

“It’s like having a son who goes and graduates and then he gets married and you have all these moments and you see him have such a great career,” assistant coach Mike Hopkins said. “… I wish his last game came out better.”

At about 10:15 p.m., Christmas was done posing for pictures, signing autographs, literally playing with babies while Gbinije posed for a picture himself — next to a woman wearing a Christmas “No. 25” shirt.

Christmas led a group of about 15 family members and friends down the stadium control tunnel at the Sadler Hall corner of the Carrier Dome. A pair of stadium control workers stopped to thank him for his play.

He opened the air-locked doors for the people behind him, holding it until they all walked out. When the DPS officer guarding the door looked out and up at the 6-foot-9 man, Christmas nodded, then walked off into the 7-degree night.

Published on March 2, 2015 at 9:11 pm

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