Item: After the Syracuse football team joined Boston College as the only two ACC teams not to miss a scheduled football game this past season due to pandemic-related issues, the basketball Orange will miss a total of three consecutive conference games through this coming weekend, due to New York state-mandated quarantining and testing protocols. SU hopes to resume play Jan. 6 hosting Florida State.
This is a continuation of a look back at several Syracuse games that were delayed in a particular season due to weather or extraordinary circumstances. Part I, which ran on Tuesday, covers from 1980 to 2000, with 2000-present below:
2000: A tragic dormitory fire on the Seton Hall campus in West Orange, N.J. on Jan. 22 that killed three people and injured some 60 others, caused the cancellation of No. 4 ranked Syracuse’s game against the Pirates in the Dome.
Rescheduled for just over two weeks later, the Hall, coached by Tommy Amaker, shocked SU 69-67 to end an opening-season 19-game winning streak.
SHU’s Darius Lane hit a dagger-shot three-pointer with 0:39 left for the two-point margin, then the Orange’s last chances came on a missed Preston Shumpert trey, and inside shots by Etan Thomas and Ryan Blackwell that missed the mark, sending a large crowd home unhappy.
2012: Guess who won the last Carrier Classic? Hint: It’s a trick question.
Not only did Syracuse beat Virginia Tech in a non-Big East regular season game in 2000 to win the final two-day Dome event known as the Carrier Classic, but Syracuse also won the two-day delayed final Carrier Classic on the water in the “Battle on the Midway” game played on a Naval Carrier in San Diego.
Culminating a two-season experiment of games played on battleships, SU and San Diego State were to play on a Friday night, but rain and windy conditions caused a postponement to Sunday.
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Despite sunny skies, the wind did not let up. Syracuse only attempted four three-point shots, and got the lucky break of shooting at the basket with the wind in the second half of the 62-49 victory.
2016: A previous travel-related “first” occurred for Jim Boeheim when the Virginia game was snowed-out on Jan. 24, due to the Charlottesville airport being closed amidst another Mid-Atlantic blizzard.
Instead, Syracuse chartered down to Va. the next morning for the rescheduled tip-off later in the day, becoming the first time the team flew to a game on the same day they were playing. To add to the hectic logistics, SU lost 73-65 to the No. 13 Cavaliers.
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