PITTSBURGH – Three days and 362 miles later, the cruel irony of Fab Melo’s words is on full display.

It’s 2:38 p.m. Wednesday. His teammates jog up and down the court at the Consol Energy Center as top-seeded Syracuse prepares for its first game in the NCAA Tournament against No 16 UNC Asheville. Tipoff is a little more than 24 hours away.

Melo is not present. His 7-foot frame, ever-present goofy smile and Dikembe Mutombo-like finger wag aren’t scheduled to make an appearance.

Due to an eligibility issue, Melo will not play in the NCAA Tournament. The No. 1 seed is without its No. 1 big man, who has likely played his last game in an Orange uniform.

Three days earlier, from the Carmelo K. Anthony Basketball Center in Syracuse, Melo unknowingly uttered the newest mantra for this year’s battle-tested SU team.

‘We have played every style of game,’ Melo said Sunday night. ‘Games that we were behind and games that we blew them out. I think those kinds of games will help us in the tournament.’

Playing every style includes playing without Melo, which SU did three times when the sophomore center was ineligible in January due to an academic matter.

Now, Syracuse will have to play that type of game again as it attempts to pull itself together and make a run in the NCAA Tournament after yet another off-the-court issue.

But this issue, pun fully intended, is a killer. Melo’s absence will doom SU after 31 wins, a Big East title and a run that head coach Jim Boeheim called ‘the best accomplishment, regular-season accomplishment, that I’ve ever been a part of in 36 years.’ Without him, this is an Elite Eight team at best.

And with this mistake, Melo cemented his place in Syracuse history as the guy who seemingly cost SU a chance for its second national title.

‘I feel bad for him,’ Boeheim said. ‘I feel bad for the rest of the players on the team because you don’t want to lose a teammate in this situation at this time. Yeah, it’s a very difficult thing to go through.’

Put simply, Melo let his team down when it mattered most. Though Boeheim and the players denied that, that was the case, it’s clear this situation is wildly different from the last time the Orange lost a starting center before tournament play.

When Arinze Onuaku went down with a knee injury in 2010, his teammates cried in the locker room. His career-ending event was a misstep, a freak occurrence that pulled on the heartstrings.

When Melo went down, no one shed a tear. The sentiment is different. It’s perhaps a ‘here-we-go-again’ reaction.

After all, this is the second session of basketball sans Melo. Round one resulted in a 2-1 stretch that featured SU’s only loss of the regular season. Round two will knock Syracuse out of the postseason.

‘With Fab, they’ve already had the experience of missing him,’ former Orange forward Leo Rautins said. ‘It’s not even an emotional question, it’s just a question of how do you compensate for him not being there. I don’t know if they can.’

Multiple media outlets have reported that Melo will now almost certainly declare for the NBA Draft. Should that be true, his Syracuse career was rocky at best and tumultuous at worst.

Melo came to SU as the fourth-ranked center in his recruiting class, according to Scout.com. He held scholarship offers from Syracuse, Connecticut, Florida, Florida State, Miami, Louisville and Texas.

He also came to Central New York at 270 pounds – grossly overweight – and unable to play more than a few minutes at a time. The result was a 2.3 points per game average as a freshman and the label of a ‘bust.’

An arrest in May for criminal mischief that resulted from damage done to the turn signal in a female’s car added to the disappointment.

Then came the transformation – nearly 40 pounds melted away over the course of a summer. Melo more than tripled his scoring and rebounding averages, and he morphed into a shot-blocking force that took home the Big East’s Defensive Player of the Year award as a sophomore.

For a time, Melo was the reason Syracuse entered the national championship picture.

‘He’s a kid that’s come, in my opinion, just an unbelievable way in a relatively short period of time,’ Boeheim said.

All that way just to torpedo his redemption story and sink SU’s title hopes along with it.

Most telling, perhaps, was Southern Mississippi head coach Larry Eustachy’s reaction to the situation. His Golden Eagles are the No. 9 seed in the East Region and could face Syracuse in the third round of this year’s tournament.

When asked how the loss of Melo changes Syracuse and the region as a whole, Eustachy said he didn’t know who he was.

‘As idiotic as this is going to sound, and I don’t mean this in any way shape or form, but I don’t know who he is. I really don’t.’

That’s the reality of what Melo’s legacy has become. A phenomenal sophomore season coupled with a dominating NCAA Tournament performance would have cemented him as one of the all-time great SU big men. If he followed that up with a trip to the NBA or a standout junior season, Eustachy certainly would have known Melo’s name for basketball reasons.

Instead, Eustachy became aware of Melo because of his ineligibility. Because he thwarted the Orange’s title hopes.

‘It’s an odd time for that to happen,’ Loyola (Md.) head coach Jimmy Patsos said. ‘I think that’s not good for a team.’

Left to pick up the pieces were Scoop Jardine and Kris Joseph, fielding a slew of questions about their absent teammate at the podium Wednesday.

Jardine, at times seemingly irritated with the persistent inquiries, defended the Orange by saying the team didn’t earn a No. 1 seed by accident. That hard work for the duration of the season gave Syracuse this opportunity in the NCAA Tournament.

Hard work and effort. It’s with that mindset that Orange fans can remember Melo – as the guy who didn’t put in the necessary effort off the court to have success on it. As the asterisk next to SU’s early exit.

Said West Virginia forward Kevin Jones: ‘I think it is a crushing blow to them.’

Michael Cohen is a staff writer for The Daily Orange, where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at mjcohe02@syr.edu, or on Twitter at @Michael_Cohen13.

Published on March 14, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Michael: mjcohe02@syr.edu | @Michael_Cohen13