CLEVELAND — Nothing made the pain in Brandon Triche’s bruised tailbone go away. At one point, he stood up on the bench while play continued and tried to stretch. At another, during a timeout, Syracuse trainer Brad Pike worked with him on the floor of the Quicken Loans Arena court.

But nothing worked. Triche’s harsh grimace remained throughout the second half. And as a result, Triche never had an opportunity to see if he could have made a difference Sunday in the Orange’s 66-62 loss to Marquette in the third round of the NCAA Tournament.

‘It sucks to watch your team when you believe that you can help,’ Triche said in the SU locker room after the game. ‘You never want to watch your team — the guys you’ve been with for six months now — lose.’

His body tightened up after landing hard on his backside and bruising his tailbone earlier in the second half during a collision with the Golden Eagles’ Junior Cadougan underneath the basket. The discomfort intensified, and he wasn’t sure what, if anything, he’d be able to do out on the court.

And to add insult to injury, a referee called an offensive foul on Triche. The call made Triche, grimacing on the ground, throw up his arms in disbelief.

‘The charge being called on me almost hurt more than the actual fall at the time,’ Triche said.

So Syracuse’s starting two-guard found himself in an unfamiliar spot — helplessly watching the most critical stretch of SU’s season.

Triche suggested he stayed on the bench partially because of the play of freshman teammate Dion Waiters, who put together his best performance of his freshman season in extended minutes. With Triche on the bench, Waiters took over his scoring role.

Waiters meticulously took his man off the dribble and got into the lane seemingly any time he wanted it. There wasn’t much Marquette’s small defenders could do to stop him from scoring a team-high 18 points — 15 in the second half alone.

On one possession, Waiters called for the ball. Once he got it, he drove past his man and challenged Chris Otule, who was stationed underneath the basket. He pulled up enough to avoid an offensive foul and laid the ball in off the glass to put SU up 48-47.

‘He hit some tough shots for us,’ SU point guard Scoop Jardine said of Waiters. ‘Every shot he made today, we needed it. We needed every single basket.’

But before leaving the game with the injury, Triche was SU’s most effective scorer. Triche came out aggressive and found his shot early against the Golden Eagles. He scored eight points during the first five minutes of the game and helped the Orange build an early lead.

But with Waiters playing so well late and Triche still visibly in pain on the bench, SU head coach Jim Boeheim opted to go with Waiters down the stretch.

‘Brandon took such a hard fall, you know, he wanted to try to go back,’ Boeheim said. ‘But I just … I didn’t think he could do it. I just didn’t think he was able to go. And we would have liked to have had him at the end.’

So Triche was never called to go back in the game, and in the end, it was Waiters, not Triche, who made the key mistake. His errant inbounds pass to Jardine with 51.8 seconds remaining caused a backcourt violation, Syracuse’s 18th turnover of the game.

Moments later, after Darius Johnson-Odom drilled the eventual game-winning 3-pointer, the Orange’s season was over. And all Triche could do was hang his head. He stayed back after most of SU’s players got up to retreat to the locker room. He sat alone, head hung, and pondered what could have been.

‘I felt really bad,’ Triche said. ‘But if Coach wanted me back in there, I would have tried it. I’m not sure how long I could’ve been out there, but I definitely would have tried to do whatever I could.’

aljohn@syr.edu

bplogiur@syr.edu

Published on March 21, 2011 at 12:00 pm