ATLANTA — Jim Boeheim took four steps onto the McCamish Pavilion floor, the Syracuse head coach’s face the reddest and most strained it had been on a night full of frustration for him.

His center, Paschal Chukwu, had pulled down an offensive rebound with Syracuse trailing by three with about a minute to play and tried to flick it back out to the perimeter. Georgia Tech wing Josh Okogie snatched the ball and thundered down a dunk on the other end that seemed to finally pull the Yellow Jackets away from an Orange team that had dragged them back from the edge of separation all night.

Syracuse seemingly could make nothing, could never get a stop when it really needed one and yet still, after all that, it stood within a possession of erasing all its mistakes. Then, the offense squandered that chance, too.

“Our offense is terrible,” Boeheim said. “It’s been terrible. There are 15 teams in this league and were 14th. We’re lucky one team (Pittsburgh) is worse than us.”

Okogie’s dunk and a turnover by point guard Frank Howard put Syracuse in an impossible hole that Syracuse (15-7, 4-5 Atlantic Coast) never climbed out of in a 55-51 loss to Georgia Tech (11-11, 4-5) on Wednesday night. It was a hole created by an ineffective offense that tied a season-low by shooting 30 percent (15-for-50) and got 10 points from outside its only three scorers in sophomore guard Tyus Battle (19), freshman forward Oshae Brissett (11) and Howard (11).

This was a game Syracuse wanted badly because, after racking up three upsets of top-15 ranked teams on its home floor last season, the team still didn’t make the NCAA Tournament, in large part because it only won twice on the road in the ACC. Now, without such signature wins so far, the Orange also only has one road win in conference play and that was against Pittsburgh, the conference’s worst team by a wide margin.

Boeheim appeared for his postgame press conference without a tie, the first time that’s happened this season. He appeared sullen and spoke softly, as if drained from the yelling and pacing he’d done on the sidelines all night, where he’d looked as tense as he has all season.

Seemingly each timeout, a different Syracuse player found himself on the receiving end of a tongue-lashing from his red-faced coach. After air-balling a 15-foot jumper off an inbounds pass, it was Brissett. After allowing a wide-open corner 3 off another inbound with about a minute-and-a-half to play in the first half, it was Dolezaj. On multiple occasions, it was Chukwu, who got one for the turnover and another for losing the ball because he brought the ball down on a rebound.

“It was a bad offensive game,” he said. “When you don’t make shots … ” He trailed off, then continued. “We don’t run set plays to get shots because we can’t make ’em. So, we need something.”

Georgia Tech knew Syracuse wouldn’t run set plays, and Yellow Jackets head coach Josh Pastner told his team before the game the Orange loved one-on-ones and isolation plays.

“Whenever anyone drove, he was seeing bodies,” said GT wing Josh Okogie, who scored a game-high 20.

The offense generally ran like this: One player held the ball, sometimes another player set a ball-screen and the other three moved little. Even when the ball-handler used the pick, the Orange only passed to the rolling player once or twice. The team struggled from the floor — hitting four of its first 19 shots and not improving much as the half wore on — and the Georgia Tech students, in a white-out, let Syracuse know.

The GT student section drank in the Orange’s impotence from the field because, last season, Syracuse guard John Gillon air-balled a 3-pointer in the first half at McCamish and the students chanted “Airball!” at him throughout the game. Afterward, an offended Syracuse basketball fan called Pastner to complain about the perceived poor sportsmanship. Then, Pastner put him on blast in the media and said, “This is not intramurals.” So, on Wednesday night, GT Athletics handed out 750 shirts that had: “Air ball!” printed four times on the front.

Howard, Battle and Brissett each missed everything at least once throughout the night. Every time each player touched the ball afterward, the GT students let them know about their previous mistake. Battle said he heard the jeers but paid no attention because Syracuse’s defense kept it in the game and he was too busy trying to jumpstart an offense that broke down play after play.

“We get caught ball-watching a little bit,” Howard said. “Every one of us. When someone has the ball, we kind of get out the way and expect something to happen. That’s something we all got to fix.”

Backup point guard Howard Washington identified a lack of ball and player movement earlier in the season as the main culprit for the Orange’s stagnant offense. The freshman pointed out he thought Syracuse got caught up in running sets and not enough playing basketball. Washington, though, will miss the rest of the season with a right leg injury, Boeheim said Wednesday.

Frustration at the stagnant offense, at the missed opportunities at the end of tight games, at a team that seemingly had so much promise coming off a 13-2 nonconference schedule and now has a murky at best outlook at the postseason boiled over in Atlanta.

Down five with 3:20 to go, freshman forward Marek Dolezaj had a foul at midcourt that Howard thought was a clean hustle play.

“Come on, man!” he screamed. But when he turned to unleash those words, a referee stood directly behind him. Syracuse got hit with its first technical of the season, Howard with the first of his career.

“I wasn’t trying to overpower him or anything,” Howard said. “I thought Marek made a great hustle play, a play they made throughout the game, and he happened to be right there.”

Boeheim filleted Howard too during the following timeout, but none of it mattered. Not even the 3 Battle hit to bring the Orange back within one possession. Not even when, for its last gasp, the Orange received a gift as GT missed the front end of a one-and-one and Battle got a good look from beyond the arc.

He airballed the 3.

The Georgia Tech fans’ chants rung out as their right arms chopped toward the court.

“Air-ball!”

“Air-ball!”

“Air-ball!”

After the game, Battle assumed all the blame for the offense’s struggles as he has all year. He said, again, he needed to be smarter. He said, again, this team will make offensive adjustments after looking at the film. He said, again, the offense might be fixed if he and Howard made more shots.

When Battle departed the locker room for the team bus and into the night with Syracuse’s season outlook at its darkest this year, all he heard were echoes.

Published on January 31, 2018 at 10:15 pm

Contact Sam: sjfortie@syr.edu | @Sam4TR