Maybe it was the ounces upon ounces of alcohol consumed during the game. Or, perhaps, the beginnings of an April snowstorm. Likely, it was simply winning a national title.

Thousands of Syracuse University students flocked from dorms, the Carrier Dome and bars to celebrate on Marshall Street. And celebrate they did. More than 100 police greeted the fans, barricaded crowds, put out fires and, generally, tried to subdue the mass.

The crowd, significantly larger than Saturday’s, filled Marshall Street, spilling onto the outlying South Crouse and University avenues. Students climbed trees, greased earlier in the day to protect against such actions, and turned them into kindling. They rocked them until they fell, added their shirts and sparked away, better lighting the vision for women, and men, flashing the crowd.

“Within five minutes, we saw a guy naked in a tree, a homeless guy, a guy in a chicken suit and a bonfire,” said Lindsay Skorupa, a sophomore English and textual studies major.

Several times, officers escorted fire officials to those blazes. At one point, officials put out a fire, in front of Jay’s Communications, that stretched about 8 feet into the air.

“The cops did a great job, they didn’t break up the fires as fast as they did last time and just let everyone have a good time,” said freshman architecture major Mark Wizeman.

Accompanying the larger crowd were more than 100 Syracuse police officers in riot gear, more than doubling the number present after SU’s win over Texas, Lt. John Brennan said. Many of those officers guarded business behind a line of wooden dollys, diverting pedestrians into the closed-off street. Other officers perched themselves atop M-Street businesses to look over the crowd.

“As long as students keep orderly and there is no criminal mischief, students can stay in the streets,” Brennan said.

For officers, criminal mischief was in the cards. Several students used a metal pipe to break apart a parking meter, others destroyed trees and set fires. Syracuse Police spokesman Sgt. Tom Connellan could not comment on the number but said arrests had been made.

“It is mostly going well,” he said. “But it will be a long night.”

The officers’ nights included being pelted with snow balls and having glass bottles thrown at them.

One of the people taken into police custody and charged with second degree harassment was SU graduate Justin Silverman. Silverman, publisher of the greek newspaper Hermes, was on Marshall Street taking photos behind the police dollys when an officer confronted him about his press credentials, he said. Silverman showed the officer a New York State Press Association pass and was allowed to stay. Minutes later, another officer confronted him and tried removing Silverman from the sidewalk. Silverman resisted, at which point the officer told him press access does not give him permission to do whatever he wants and handcuffed him in the street. Silverman will contest the misdemeanor in court.

While SIlverman waited for some time on the street, officers had others wait in a bright yellow school bus. There, they had ample opportunity to discuss the reasons for their arrests. And maybe a bit about the game.

Many on Marshall Street had just those discussions. They still could not believe SU won a national championship. The ghosts of Keith Smart’s last-second shot to defeat the Orangemen in the 1987 championship game seemed forgotten, replaced with the all-too vital image of Carmelo Anthony and his teammates.

Jason Roche, a 1994 graduate, no longer needs to harbor those faded images. And he came back to M-Street to help make that happen.

“I have been waiting for this for as long as I can remember,” he said.

As officers began dispersing the crowd at about 1 a.m., some wanted their pyrotechnics and partying to go on. And so the party, for some with lighters, traveled the short distance to Walnut Place. An unidentified person set fire to a couch across the street from the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity house. Students threw snow balls as firefighters put out the blaze.

But setting fires was just another sign of support for the team, said Tony Namdar, a sophomore management major.

“It was symbolic for the school cause the fire was orange,” he said.

Asst. Sports Editor Darryl Slater and Contributing Writer Sean Mills contributed to this report.

Published on April 7, 2003 at 12:00 pm