ATLANTA — All but the most basic fundamentals failed.

Syracuse (11-4, 2-0 Atlantic Coast) finished beating Georgia Tech (9-5, 0-2) 46-45 when Rakeem Christmas hit a pair of free throws with 12.4 seconds left, then fell on the 76th and final missed shot of the game. It ended a contest in which both teams were constantly falling and failing — at shooting, passing and simply holding onto the ball. What the Orange and the Yellow Jackets left on the floor of McCamish Pavilion in front of 7,831 was a historic low in the 1,283rd game of SU head coach Jim Boeheim’s career.

“Without a doubt the worst offensive game I’ve ever seen,” Boeheim said. “I can’t say anything else. I mean, literally … I just can’t even describe it.”

Kaleb Joseph missed a layup off the lower part of the rim just a minute into the game after spinning by his man. Less than 40 seconds later Michael Gbinije caught the ball at the 3-point arc in the right corner, and with about 10 feet of open floor in front of him, he drove to the hoop and had a layup blocked.

They were the first of many errors by the Orange in a game full of them.

“There wasn’t a thought process, really,” Gbinije said. “That was the problem.”

And on Wednesday night, Gbinije was one of the best players on the floor. The court was covered in fights over failed entry passes, scrambles for loose balls from ill-advised shots and out-of-control dribbles.

There were 17 stretches in the game in which a minute or more ran off the game clock without either team scoring. In the matchup’s final eight minutes, 10 points were scored.

Watching their first home game since classes resumed on Monday, members of the Georgia Tech student section threw themselves into cheers. The contingent of Orange fans that made up about half of the non-student crowd ran off chants off “Let’s Go Orange” that rang throughout the arena.

They rarely got to cheer for anything resembling a well-executed play. Forced spin-and-shove shots and rebounds were really all they had.

“You know,” SU guard Trevor Cooney said of realizing the game’s ugliness. “You can look up at the score and the score’s obviously going to tell you what kind of game you’re having.”

Other players talked about ignoring the game’s quality, playing through the game’s lack of precision knowing that a run could start for one team or another at any moment. It’s how most basketball games are decided. This was SU’s lowest point total in a win since 1962. It was a game that was void, waiting for points to come from somewhere, anywhere, and fill it.

They wouldn’t come on the break. Syracuse scored just nine points there. GT had six. The bench was out of the question too. The Orange got two total points from its subs. The Yellow Jackets got six from their five non-starters.

Nothing could save the contest that SU and Georgia Tech flailed into and around in.

Christmas preserved the final lead for Syracuse. Keeping it was all too simple. The Orange packed into its 2-3 zone.

All SU really had to do was shuffle in it and wait for another Yellow Jacket — it happened to be Chris Bolden — to chuck another shot toward, but not in, the hoop. His miss preceded the game’s final buzzer.

Said Boeheim: “We were just playing the percentages that they weren’t going to make a shot because they hadn’t made any.”

Published on January 7, 2015 at 9:17 pm

Contact Jacob: jmklinge@syr.edu | @Jacob_Klinger_