Forty-eight hours before the 1995 NBA Draft, John Wallace, discouraged by what scouts termed a poor outside shot, removed his name from the draft list and decided to return for his senior year, one which would culminate with Wallace hitting the most famous outside shot in Syracuse men’s basketball history.

“He was very much on the brink of leaving his name in,” Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said of his star power forward at the time.

Boeheim, though, couldn’t have had a clue how very much on the brink his Orangemen were of missing out on a stretch of SU basketball that’s celebrated with replays and reruns even today.

Even with SU’s current run to the Final Four, John Wallace’s leaning 3-pointer against Georgia in the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16 on March 22, 1996, remains the pinnacle in the last decade of Syracuse basketball. It’s the signature moment, a signature that this year’s team has yet to replicate, a moment that morphs into tall tale with every passing season.

(DROP CAP)“When John decided to stay,” then-senior J.B. Reafsnyder said, “he came back to us and said he expected great things from everyone.”

Trouble was, Syracuse lacked a great team. Like this year’s Orangemen, the 1996 team lost three starters — even with Wallace’s return. It wasn’t ranked in the Top 25. In fact, several preseason publications pegged the Orangemen as the sixth-best team in the Big East.

Yet while Syracuse pushed through the Big East regular season with a 12-6 record and the de rigueur 20-win season for Boeheim, something special was transforming the team.

In successive midseason road games, West Virginia, Connecticut and Georgetown thumped the Orangemen into three consecutive losses. Disgusted, Boeheim ditched the lighter practices his team had become accustomed to and turned afternoons (and sometimes mornings) at Manley Field House into an abattoir.

“We had a portion during the year with some intense practices, practices that were really hell,” then-senior guard Elimu Nelson said. “During some of those practices, it basically turned into us versus (Boeheim). He’d get on a player and arguments would happen, fights would happen. He was challenging us, and we were challenging him. And nobody backed off.

“Everything was really tense, and it forced us to come together as a team. That’s when we really jelled.”

Suddenly, Lazarus Sims, who’d debated leaving the team when his father died before the season, developed into a reliable point guard who rarely turned the ball over. Center Otis Hill became a double-digit scoring threat and a perfect offensive complement to Wallace. Shooting guard Jason Cipolla shook off the rust from a redshirt season and finally showed the promise that had brought him from a small Tallahassee community college.

“We weren’t highly regarded,” said then-assistant coach Wayne Morgan, who now holds a similar position at Iowa State. “But the guys on that team really loved one another. They grew to care about one another. They would look at one another and you’d know: there was no way any one guy would let the others down.”

The NCAA Tournament is a one-and-done lottery of broken hearts and broken hopes, but during a dreamy four-game run to the Final Four that year, Syracuse somehow managed to avoid everything but elation.

To enter the Sweet 16, the No. 4-seeded Orangemen zipped through games against Montana State and Drexel. No problem.

The next game was a problem. Against Georgia, SU trailed by nine points with three minutes remaining. Syracuse was still smarting from a 20-3 Bulldog run. Wallace had played almost the entire half with four fouls, tempting the dosage of bad luck seemingly prescribed to the Orangemen ever since the 1987 championship loss to Indiana.

Then, weird things started happening. Lazarus Sims nailed back-to-back 3-pointers.

“And Lazarus wasn’t a shooter,” Morgan remembered. “He couldn’t make a 3-pointer for his life, and yet he made two of them in a one-minute span.”

The deficit was at two when Syracuse inbounded the ball from across the court with 3.5 seconds remaining in regulation. Wallace waited for a teammate to cut open and shrugged his shoulders when all nearby options appeared covered. He lobbed a rainbow pass to Cipolla, who snared the ball at the baseline and sank a 12-foot jump shot while falling toward the Syracuse bench.

“I remember when Wallace inbounded the ball to Cipolla, I had a strange sense of confidence that Cipolla would hit that shot,” then-play-by-play broadcaster Doug Logan said. “There was no doubt in my mind that he’d hit that shot — it was uncanny. I can still feel the sense of euphoria that followed.”

Amid the bedlam inside Denver’s McNichols Arena, Wallace brought his teammates together in a huddle and screamed, “We haven’t done anything yet!”

Wallace finished his best collegiate performance — 30 points and 15 rebounds — with his best collegiate shot. Syracuse and Georgia one-upped each other in overtime, and the Bulldogs grabbed an 81-80 lead with 7.1 seconds left when Pertha Robinson hit a 3-pointer.

Boeheim decided against a timeout, allowing for a quick inbound to Wallace. The 6-foot-8 power forward swerved past a Bulldog defender, turned past midcourt and let off a low-angled 20-foot jump shot.

“When he let the shot off,” Nelson said, “he was still well behind the 3-point line. You can’t understand the amount of nuts it took to take that shot.”

The shot swished through the hoop with 2.8 seconds left, allowing Georgia one last attempt. But Robinson’s last-second heave misfired. Sims, numb with disbelief, collapsed onto his back and remained there for 20 seconds. Wallace, the man with no outside shot, could only say this: “I’ve taken that shot a thousand times over the summer. That’s a shot you have to make.”

(DROP CAP) “I had been on that team for three years before 1996,” Nelson said, “but 1996 was different. That was the year our team came together as people.”

For all that followed the Georgia game, no other contest would be as memorable — even the NCAA championship on April 1, 1996.

After Georgia, the Orangemen — suddenly ticketed as the team of destiny — worked past a Kansas team that featured Paul Pierce, Raef LaFrentz and Jacque Vaughn. SU defeated No. 5 Mississippi State in the semifinals, played at the Meadowlands. Then, they collided with powerhouse Kentucky in the national championship game and lost, 76-67. In the locker room, players cried for the next five hours.

“At the time, it was devastating,” Reafsnyder said. “But looking back, it was a dream come true. We went to the Final Four — that’s a goal for anyone who plays basketball — and how many others can ever accomplish that dream?

“I look back on it as a wonderful part of my life. Even today, I wish I could go back and relive it again and again and again.”

Published on March 31, 2003 at 12:00 pm