Two years ago, then-No. 10 Duke arrived at the Carrier Dome for a Wednesday night meeting with an unranked Syracuse team. By the end of the night, Syracuse students had stormed Jim Boeheim Court, Dick Vitale had guaranteed SU would be going dancing in the NCAA Tournament and John Gillon had banked his name into Orange basketball history.

Ahead of the next meeting with No. 1 Duke (23-3, 11-2 Atlantic Coast) in the Dome on Saturday, The Daily Orange took a look back at one of the most memorable games in Syracuse (18-8, 9-4) regular season history.

The build up

John Gillon remembered the parties around campus. It was unseasonably warm that day, reaching 59 degrees in February. Students were pregaming for the second-highest attended college basketball game at a campus site that year, and Syracuse’s graduate transfer point guard wanted to join them.

“I was like, ‘Wow, I need to stay out here, this looks fun,’” Gillon recalled.

Gillon’s brother, Jordan, was in town for the game. A student at Texas Southern University in Houston, Jordan missed class to fly to Syracuse. It was the only game he attended that year — he had to see the Duke game, he said. It was the day before Jordan’s birthday.

Jordan, Gillon and Andrew White III went to Chipotle together that afternoon, and while Gillon recalls the atmosphere, Jordan remembers his brother’s demeanor.

“He was extremely calm. He wasn’t hyped about the game,” Jordan said. “… He lives for moments like that.”

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SU had already pulled off two top-10 upsets in the Carrier Dome that season against Florida State and Virginia. The Blue Devils were on a seven-game winning streak. Syracuse was on a three-game losing streak.

Students shifted from their pregame parties to line up outside the Dome hours before tip-off. By 3:30 p.m., a line of orange-clad fans stretched around Shaffer Art Building on the far end of the Quad. Those same students unleashed a thunderous “boo” as soon as Duke star Grayson Allen showed his face for the first time to warm up for Duke.

“This is the most that they’ve all come out, but we’ve been here the whole time, but now they wanna come out since Duke is coming to town,” Gillon said.

SU knew it faced “pretty much a must-win,” then-freshman guard Tyus Battle said this season. A bracketologist had said in the days leading up to the matchup that Syracuse was on the outside looking in, as the Orange had spent much of conference play trying to make up for five nonconference losses.

“My mindset going into games is ‘I wanna destroy whoever’s in front of me,’” Gillon said.

The game

Midway through the evening’s first half, Gillon found himself at the top of the key with future No. 3 NBA pick Jayson Tatum in front of him. As Gillon alluded to, the grad transfer — who’d been lightly recruited out of high school — made Tatum fall with a dribble move before swishing a 3.

“I know John was talking about that after the game,” Battle said of the move.

The key play to the whole game, Gillon said, came in the closing seconds of the first half. Dribbling left off a screen, Gillon saw Duke big man Amile Jefferson switched onto him “on an island.” SU’s point guard drove right, and slid under the rim to finish a reverse on the left side.

He’d struggled to get good shots earlier in the game, he said, but on that play, Gillon realized Duke’s bigs weren’t mobile or intimidating shot blockers. He’d solved the defense: Get switches and go to work.

“I remember specifically telling some people, ‘I figured it out,’” Gillon said.

In the second half, Gillon scored 16 points before the game’s final shot. Inside of a minute to go, Gillon pushed the floor in transition, went directly at Jefferson in the paint and finished with his right hand to tie the game at 75.

On the other end, Duke had a chance to go ahead with less than 10 seconds left. But Gillon got in sharpshooter Luke Kennard’s face and contested the shot.

“I remember I feel, like, I kinda hit his arm when he was shooting. I was like ‘Aw man, you can’t even look at Duke without them calling a foul,’’” Gillon said. “So I was like, ‘Aw man, they’re gonna call that.’ They didn’t call it.”

“… Then I knew I could get down the court in like three seconds.”

The shot

Gillon remembered a buzzer-beater he hit in fourth grade from the corner to win a ball game. His brother remembered an and-1 layup that won an AAU game during Gillon’s high school career. But those were nothing quite like what came next.

Kennard’s shot bounced to Tyler Lydon, who quickly fed it to Battle. The freshman knew that when Gillon “gets hot, he gets really hot,” so he lobbed the ball toward the veteran. In the moment, Gillon was confused as to why Battle tossed the ball so lightly to him. When Gillon looked up, there were only four seconds left.

Battle sprinted toward the corner and was open, which Gillon saw later on film. But there wasn’t time. There was close to a second left and three Duke defenders around him. He jumped higher than he almost ever did and took the shot.

“It came off good. I didn’t know it was gonna be long but I knew it had a chance of going in,” Gillon said. “… Normally, when I shoot shots, I know if it’s gonna go in right when I let it go. That one, it was a terrible shot, and I was like, I got the feeling of it going in like a normal shot I would shoot that’s open.”

From the sideline, SU assistant coach Gerry McNamara yelled for it to bank. The shot “looked off” to Jordan, sitting on the side opposite to SU’s bench. When it went in, Gillon’s brother didn’t even believe it for a second. Then, madness.

Students rushed the floor for the third time in two months, as did Jordan, who said he leapt past the broadcast table to reach the floor. Boeheim raised his arms before composing himself to go shake Mike Krzyzewski’s hand while SU’s players mobbed Gillon.

“It was a special moment in Syracuse basketball history when Gillon hit that shot,” ESPN color commentator Dick Vitale said.

“Every once in a while, one of those goes in,” Boeheim added.

The postgame

Less than a minute after the shot banked in, Gillon was interviewed courtside by ESPN’s sideline reporter. The broadcast shows Gillon reaching to high-five one of the people who’d stormed the court, and the reporter said, “I know you’ve got a lot of people you wanna high-five.” Gillon was reaching for Jordan, who’d made his way within feet of his brother but was blocked by security.

It was all “a blur” from there, Battle remembered. He and Gillon rehashed Battle’s lobbed pass once more in the locker room, Gillon recalled. Battle asked Gillon, “Did it work?” Gillon backed off.

Jordan waited for his brother in the underbelly of the Dome where all the families wait for the players to emerge. No one believed Jordan when he said he was Gillon’s brother. “Of course you’d say that,” he remembers hearing around him. But when Gillon came out and the brothers raised their right arms for their special handshake, they didn’t doubt Jordan any longer.

Gillon texted Rasheed Sulaimon, a former teammate of his who’d played at Duke before being dismissed. Earlier in the day, Gillon had told his friend he was going to “destroy” Duke for him. Afterward, Gillon just sent a simple message: “I told you.”

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Before the ESPN broadcast went back to the studio, Karl Ravech and Vitale had one final segment. In it, Vitale was sure Syracuse had done enough to make the NCAA Tournament.

“It is lock city my friends,” Vitale said on the broadcast. “They are dancing. There is no doubt about it. Syracuse will be dancing, baby.”

Gillon thought so, too, he said recently. It was almost more disappointing, he said, to have that win but then miss out. The Orange won one game in the National Invitation Tournament before losing, ending Gillon’s college career.

“That win you would think, at that moment, was gonna be magical for them,” Vitale said. “They didn’t finish as strong, and the committee I guess looked at that.”

The legacy

Gillon spent just one season at Syracuse, but three top-10 upsets are largely attributable to him. He put up 43 points at North Carolina State, including a buzzer beater to send the game to overtime. Horrendous games, like having “air ball” chanted at him at Georgia Tech, were followed up immediately with the buzzer beater against Duke.

That game-winner still gets brought up to Gillon “all the time.” He was stopped at the airport last week and someone mentioned it.

“I was like, I had 26 points that game, it wasn’t like that was my only shot,” said Gillon, laughing.

Battle thinks the fact that the game was at home, in front of more than 30,000 people, has something to do with the shot’s impact. Battle smiled wide when recalling how much excitement burst through the Dome in the minutes following that make. Jordan, for his part, still has that game’s ticket in his possession, with him at Texas Southern.

And Gillon, while he called the focus on that shot “excessive,” is glad it happened.

“Just to be in a school like Syracuse, to be a part of any sort of history, is definitely an honor,” Gillon said.

Published on February 21, 2019 at 12:28 am

Contact Billy: wmheyen@syr.edu | @Wheyen3