PHILADELPHIA –– While making stops at three Philadelphia-area high schools, Dion Waiters, already a Syracuse commit, dreamt of this exact moment. After Syracuse defeated Villanova 69-64 at the Wells Fargo Center on Monday, the opportunity to wave goodbye to his city and his city’s team stared Waiters in the face.

‘I was saying bye to Villanova,’ Waiters said of his gesture to the Wells Fargo Center crowd. ‘It was nice coming home. I always reminisce about us winning at Villanova and me waving to the crowd.

‘So I had to get that out of the way.’

And on the heels of his team’s hard-fought victory, that vision came to fruition.

But his wave would not have been possible if not for Waiters’ cold-blooded free throws 14.1 seconds earlier. With those two points, the freshman sealed the victory for Syracuse in a homecoming where he, his older cousin Scoop Jardine and Rick Jackson won the game for Syracuse.

And although Jackson and Jardine were the stars of the night, combining for 38 points, Waiters was the unlikely closer, finishing with seven points. Following three games where the cocksure rookie failed to score a single point, Waiters drained two free throws to distance Syracuse’s one-point lead to three.

As Waiters stepped to the line with the jeers of the Philly crowd reaching a fever pitch, the freshman’s fortunes were anything but expected. In the last minute, Waiters endured shaky play and brutal opposition.

Less than three seconds after subbing in for C.J. Fair with 48 seconds left, Waiters ran straight into a Wildcat full-court trap, forcing an SU timeout. He then missed the front end of a one-and-one, despite being called his team’s best free-throw shooter by Jardine and head coach Jim Boeheim.

‘I knew he was ready for that,’ Jardine said. ‘I knew he wanted that situation. I was surprised he missed the first one.’

Then came the blunt brutality of Villanova wing James Bell. With SU up one, Jardine broke the Wildcat press by finding Waiters wide open streaking down the court. The freshman locked in on the rim, focused on nothing but a dunk.

Bell flew to Waiters in a last-ditch effort to keep the Wildcats’ comeback alive. He crashed into Waiters at the rim.

‘I knew he was going to try to foul me hard,’ Waiters said. ‘I tried to get my footing right so I wouldn’t miss. He was coming full force. I wasn’t trying to get my legs taken from me, and I just tried to get a bucket.’

What was originally called an intentional foul — though later reduced to a normal personal foul — left Waiters on the ground for several seconds with a bruised hip. He clutched his wrist of his shooting hand after he stood up.

Boeheim and referee Michael Stephens had words after the call, during which Waiters found a seat on the bench.

It was called a ‘hard foul,’ Boeheim said.

Boeheim purposefully called a timeout with the intention of grilling Stephens on the call. While the referee and coach spoke, Waiters recovered from Bell’s foul.

Sitting on the bench to catch his breath — and perhaps recover from the lick he took — Waiters recited to himself the most basic of basketball self-help lines.

‘I just got myself together and said, ‘Come on, kid. These are the shots you want to take in the big-time games,” Waiters said.

And in front of what he estimated were 40 members of his friends and family, he stepped to the line. In front of those 40, including Jardine’s former head coach at Neumann-Goretti (Pa.) High School, Carl Arrigale, Waiters undertook the same free-throw routine he carried out in Neumann’s gym as an eighth grader.

One dribble, spin, shoot. Swoosh. Twice.

The freshman hit his shots and waved goodbye to the crowd at the Wells Fargo Center, his team leaving with a win.

Said Waiters: ‘I took my time, bent my knees, flicked my wrist.’

aolivero@syr.edu

Published on February 21, 2011 at 12:00 pm