COLLEGE PARK, Md. — For just a moment, Baye Moussa Keita became Rodney Hood, Nick Faust became C.J. Fair and Mark Turgeon became Jim Boeheim.

Syracuse became Duke in its Monday night matchup at Maryland as the driving Faust collided with Keita on the left block with 10 seconds left and SU up one.

Keita absorbed the contact, slightly hunched over with his arms straight, and deflected the shot as SU took off upcourt without a whistle.

Turgeon stormed out onto the court and across the 3-point arc in disapproval and later reiterated his displeasure in his press conference. Syracuse escaped in a similar way that Duke did when it defeated the Orange on Saturday night.

In only 48 hours, the No. 4 Orange (26-2, 13-2 Atlantic Coast) went from being on the losing side of a questionable officiating decision to the winning one as it staved off Maryland (15-13, 7-8) 57-55 in front of a sellout crowd of 17,950 at the Comcast Center. Combined with the Orange’s squandering of a 12-point lead, the final minutes of the game provided the extreme duress that SU fans have grown to expect this season.

But unlike its past two games, the Orange pulled this one out. Fair swished a step-back 3-pointer and Trevor Cooney hit a turnaround jumper before Syracuse dodged Faust’s baseline take and a desperation, running 3-pointer by Seth Allen at the buzzer.

After the game, SU head coach Jim Boeheim balked when told of Turgeon’s disagreement with the no-call.

“First of all, let me just tell you this, they shot 27 free throws,” Boeheim said. “If anyone’s going to complain about the officiating, I’m going to complain. And I think I did enough of that Saturday. I don’t think I have to repeat that.

“… If they didn’t turn it over 18 times, they wouldn’t have had to worry about that. Complain about that call, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

Syracuse players disagreed on whether or not they thought there was a foul on the play.

Point guard Tyler Ennis said it could have gone either way, and that it did remind him of Fair’s charge call against the Blue Devils on Saturday.

After scoring a team-high 20 points — his most since playing Villanova on Dec. 28 — Ennis could only watch as Dez Wells passed the ball over him to Faust on the left wing.

And when games come down to plays like that on the road, he said, you don’t expect to get the call.

Forwards Jerami Grant and Fair were more certain, though. Both said the no-call was the right call.

“From my angle, that was a clear no-call,” Fair said. “Maybe somebody else thinks it looked like a foul, but there wasn’t any contact, I don’t think.”

Turgeon certainly thought it was a foul. He left his coaching box immediately and walked well onto the court as he tried to get a referee’s attention.

But the crew was already on its way back downcourt, where Cooney would make 1-of-2 free throws at the four-second mark.

And 10 minutes after Allen’s last-second heave clanged off the side of the rim, Turgeon shared his frustrations in the opening statement of his press conference.

“We were right there,” Turgeon said. “I thought Nick got fouled, and the replay showed that, but it’s been that type of year for us.

“They didn’t call it and (Syracuse) won the game.”

Now, Syracuse takes that momentum into its longest rest period in more than two weeks. The Orange returns to action with a trip to No. 12 Virginia, which sits atop the ACC standings, on Saturday.

And Fair said, that coming off back-to-back losses, the victory over Maryland is possibly the biggest of Syracuse’s season.

Said Fair: “We never felt that we were going to lose because they still had to score. They did a good job of attacking at that end, getting to the foul line and cutting the lead down. We were able to withstand that.”

Published on February 24, 2014 at 9:19 pm

Contact Stephen: sebail01@syr.edu | @Stephen_Bailey1