With 12 people crammed into a small lounge on the third floor of Brewster Hall, TJ Pruden had to guard his chair.

‘Don’t you dare steal my seat!’ he shouted to one of his friends, who was trying to move around the crowded room.

Pruden, a freshman mechanical engineering major, spent all season making sure he had a good seat for Syracuse basketball games. He camped out for the Georgetown game and managed to snag front row seats and camera time. The clip from that game, featuring Pruden and others in the first row, has been shown on the selection show and Sports Center.

During half-time of Syracuse’s loss to Ohio State in the Elite Eight on Saturday, Pruden said he was optimistic about the team’s chances and thought Syracuse could make the Final Four.

‘I think we’re deep enough to win. I think they might run out of steam,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a really exciting second half.’

Over in the first floor lounge of Haven Hall, students were watching the game with bated breath, seated in four rows of couches. There was no sound except for the occasional cheer or moan in response to the action playing out on the screen.

Ten minutes into the second half, Ohio State had still not run out of steam.

Krysta Kirby was sitting in the front row of couches. The freshman biology major said she is used to nail-biting SU basketball games. She is from the Syracuse area and said she has been a fan for most of her life.

‘I just love the way they play,’ Kirby said. ‘They play so hard.’

Her friend, Nina Green, who camped out with Kirby for both the Georgetown and UConn games, said she just became an SU basketball fan this year, but has quickly come to love the camaraderie among its supporters.

‘We got to know some people in Otto’s Army,’ said Green, a communications design major. ‘It’s just so comforting knowing that other people really care about basketball.’

On the screen, Syracuse managed to come within four points of Ohio State, close enough to give Kirby hope the Orange could win.

‘I actually remember saying ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be so cool if my freshman year we went to the national championship again?” she said. ‘I think we can win. We just have to keep playing our game.’

But Syracuse didn’t keep playing its game. As the buzzer sounded to end the team’s season, Katie Zeppetelli and her friends sat in the eighth floor lounge of Sadler Hall in stunned silence.

‘I’m very disappointed,’ she said. ‘I really thought we were going to catch up at one point, and then the last minute I was like, ‘Uh oh, this is not going to go well.”

Zeppetelli, a freshman education major, said she never expected Syracuse to get this far.

‘This year, I wasn’t expecting to do this well. And then we started winning a lot, and we were undefeated,’ she said trailing off.

‘We were so close.’

jliannet@syr.edu 

Published on March 24, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Jessica: jliannet@syr.edu | @JessicaIannetta