TIME TO SAY GOODBYE

After Syracuse rallied to beat Rutgers in overtime last month with guard Gerry McNamara on the bench nursing a thigh injury, Coach Jim Boeheim delivered a message to his team.

“This is a great lesson for all the guys,” Boeheim said. “They can win without Gerry.”

The Orange haven’t had to do that since the 2002-03 season, when McNamara and Carmelo Anthony helped lead Syracuse to its only national championship. McNamara, who plays the game with unmatched intensity, has never missed a game at Syracuse -- his streak of 129 straight starts is tops in the nation.

But now the end of his college career is near. McNamara will play his last regular-season home game today against No. 4 Villanova, and he will be sent off in style. For the first time in its 26-year history, the Carrier Dome is sold out, which means the Orange’s NCAA record for largest on-campus crowd to see a college basketball game -- 33,199 set a year ago against Notre Dame -- will be eclipsed.

“The years have been great,” McNamara said. “I’m not quite ready to reflect on them yet. I think there’s going to be plenty of time for me to do that at the end of the season. Right now, I just want to soak it all in.”

So do his biggest fans, mom Joyce and dad Gerry, who have yet to miss one of his games.

“Everybody is getting really excited. I know it’s going to be crazy,” Joyce McNamara said. “I just can’t believe we’re at this point. It’s bittersweet.”

“We’re looking forward to it in one respect, but we’re not looking forward to the fact that it’s the end of his college career here,” the elder Gerry McNamara said. “We’ve loved every minute of it for four years. That part’s going to be hard.”

Why all the fuss over this 6-foot-2, 180-pound guard who looks like a throwback from a bygone era? Why will more than 3,000 fans from his hometown of Scranton, Pa., population 75,000, pack more than 60 buses, receive a police escort out of town, and make the two-hour ride north to watch No. 3 play one last time?

“He’s brought joy to this city,” said Billy Cook, whose Scranton-based company, Cookies Travelers, operates 22 of the buses that will be part of the motorcade. “We have people who never followed the sport in their lives, senior citizens, tuning in to watch him play.”

They’ve seen an awful lot. McNamara is only the sixth player in school history to score 2,000 points (he has 2,003), is Syracuse’s leading free-throw shooter (89 percent), ranks second in steals (251) and minutes played (4,570) and fifth in assists (604), and his 379 three-pointers place him seventh all-time in NCAA history.

Small wonder he’s on the watch list for the Wooden Award and Naismith Trophy and is one of 16 finalists for the Cousy Award. And no wonder Villanova Coach Jay Wright is concerned about today’s game.

“I don’t know what to expect,” Wright said. “I don’t think we’ve ever played anywhere against a player of this magnitude in terms of what he means to a program, in terms of what he means to college basketball. A player that’s as loved as Gerry McNamara playing his last home game? I don’t know if we’ll ever do this again.”

That McNamara is one of the most popular players in school history stems as much from his grit and leadership as his impressive statistics.

In the second round of the Orange’s championship run through the NCAA tournament three years ago, he was bloodied by a blow to the head over his right eye that sent him to the locker room in the second half. He returned with a bandage above his nose, hit three big three-pointers in the final eight minutes, and Syracuse beat Oklahoma State after trailing by 12.

In his sophomore season, McNamara was injured against Seton Hall at the start of Big East play but still averaged more than 37 minutes in the remaining 13 games of the regular season, scoring in double figures nine times. And in the NCAA tournament he averaged 26.7 points over three games, highlighted by nine three-pointers and a career-high 43 points in a first-round win over BYU.

At first, McNamara thought that injury was a groin pull, but an MRI after the season revealed a stress fracture in his pelvic bone. He was ordered to rest for three months.

This has not been the farewell season McNamara envisioned. The lone senior on the team and its biggest scoring threat, he has been constantly double- and triple-teamed by coaches who know that if they stop him they have a good chance at victory because of the Orange’s lack of a consistent low-post game.

In the last 11 games, McNamara has failed to reach double figures five times and his average has fallen to 16 points per game as the number of quality shots he’s taken has dwindled along with his shooting percentage (35.1 percent overall and 32 percent on three-pointers).

“Gerry is a marked man. He gets face-guarded, he gets hit. That guy has to go through so much,” assistant coach Mike Hopkins said. “Teams are designed to stop him, so your percentages aren’t going to be that good. Gerry doesn’t go to the foul line, so he gets his points off made baskets. If Gerry went to the foul line 10 times a game, what would he average?”

Still, McNamara has had his moments this season. In late November he scored nine points in the final 2:21 of regulation to lead Syracuse back from an 11-point deficit as the Orange scored an improbable overtime victory over the Manhattan Jaspers. In mid-December he had a season-high 38 in a win over Davidson and in January he scored 25 and 29 in consecutive road wins over Notre Dame and Cincinnati.

“He just has that chip-on-the-shoulder toughness, like a riverboat gambler. He’s going for it,” Manhattan Coach Bobby Gonzalez said. “He’s got huge, huge heart. You’re never out of trouble with him.”

Whenever he plays his last game for the Orange, who at 19-10 are on the NCAA tournament bubble, McNamara will leave a huge void -- on the floor where he might as well be another coach, in the locker room where he fires up his teammates, and among the home fans who react to his hustling approach to the game with deafening adulation.

“The storybook ending would be the Big East championship, national championship, player of the year,” said McNamara, whose 178 career three-pointers in Big East play tie him for the conference record with former Miami star Steve Edwards. “Realistically, it’s not possible, but we’ve accomplished a lot since I’ve been here.”

Wasn’t it only yesterday that McNamara hit six three-pointers in the first half against Kansas in the national championship game to help give his head coach that crowning achievement?

“I love Syracuse,” McNamara said. “Any time you have a city like this that comes together around a basketball program, it’s great. There couldn’t be a place in the country that I would have had a better four years at. I’m at a loss for words.”

His Hall of Fame coach isn’t.

“He’s been huge for us. I don’t think you can even quantify it,” Boeheim said. “He’s probably been as important as any player we’ve had. We’ve had a lot of great players, a lot of important players, but I’m not sure that you could say anybody was more important than Gerry.”