RALEIGH, N.C. — Syracuse lightly jogged out of the locker room toward the end of halftime before realizing it didn’t have a ball to warm up with.

The players stood in two jagged lines, awkwardly laughing and watching the PNC Arena video board to pass the time, before injured center DaJuan Coleman grabbed two basketballs from near the North Carolina State bench and the Orange jumped into layup lines.

And because the ball hasn’t been in this team’s court for some time — a self-imposed postseason ban in February and an NCAA announcement at noon on Friday rendering the game obsolete — the halftime warmup was the last of a mired season.

In 20 minutes of game time, the 2014-15 Orange (18-13, 9-9 Atlantic Coast) walked off the court for the last time following a 71-57 loss to N.C. State (19-12, 10-8) at PNC Arena on Saturday. The game, which SU was ahead in before a 27-2 run through halftime did it in, was pushed behind the curtain as the expected topics arose in the postgame locker room — where the overreaching mood was a fitting disappointed.

“It’s tough, it’s not easy to go out and play with the news and everything,” SU forward Michael Gbinije said. “But I don’t think that’s the excuse of why we lost. They just flat out played better than us today.”

The “news” was the NCAA’s public ruling on a years-long investigation into SU’s basketball and football programs, which was released 24 hours before the Orange and Wolkpack tipped off. The report confirms that no players on this year’s team are involved in the NCAA violations the program committed, but SU head coach Jim Boeheim and Director of Athletics Daryl Gross were woven throughout the findings.

But even though the sanctions don’t concern this Syracuse team, they did affect its season.

While the rest of the country will play into conference tournaments and 68 teams into the NCAA Tournament in the coming weeks, the Orange’s season ended without a thud as its walk-ons chased around N.C. State’s. And while most players had little knowledge of the NCAA report — some having not read it and others saying they haven’t paid much attention to it at all — they finished the season in its pervasive shadow.

Trevor Cooney, who will graduate in May before returning to team as a graduate student next season, said he plans to read the full NCAA report but didn’t think it factored into SU’s play on Saturday. The shooting guard said he saw the news reported on ESPN yesterday, which was the first time he heard of it, and immediately focused on the last game of the season instead.

“It’s a shame because you come to a place and all you want to do is play basketball and get an education, and that’s all we want to do,” Cooney said. “But you have other stuff on top of it but that’s not what we’re worried about. Just playing basketball and getting an education.”

The early end to this season brings about a detox of sorts for the SU players. Talks of the NCAA hearing followed the team from ACC Media Day on Oct. 29 right up to the end of the season, which was both a physical and emotional marathon that funneled into a fixed end date.

That’s why Syracuse will take a breather in the coming weeks as the program’s past and future are weighed by the masses. Sophomore B.J. Johnson said he is looking forward to getting on Spring Break. Senior Rakeem Christmas, who posted 15 points and 12 rebounds in his last college game Saturday, said he plans to spend time with his family before preparing for the next step of his career.

Cooney expects to take a week off before delving into game film and preparing for next season.

The shadow of past transgressions will continue to shade the program in the coming months and years, but this batch of innocent players, if only temporarily, has escaped.

“I don’t think we thought about it all on the court but it’s hard not to think about it off it,” Johnson said after the game. “Now we get to just step back a little with the season finished up.”

Published on March 7, 2015 at 4:24 pm

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