Keon Ambrose-Hylton's last-second putback gave the SMU men's basketball a vital 77-75 comeback victory against Syracuse on Tuesday night.

The Mustangs trailed by as many as 12 points in the second half. It was their biggest comeback win of the season and was the first time they won after trailing at halftime in ACC play

"Proud of our guys for coming back and playing as well as we did defensively and not turn the ball over in the second half," SMU head coach Andy Enfield said. "And then some big, big time plays, winning plays. … Just showed a lot of toughness on our last regular season home game here on Senior Night."

And it was fitting that Ambrose-Hylton was the one to tip in the game-winning basket. It was his team-high 95th career game at SMU and was honored pregame with his five fellow seniors before ending the night with the victory.

"Keon is a captain. He's a leader. He's high energy," Enfield said. "And the thing about Keon is he does it every day in practice, which a lot of people don't see. He comes off the bench. He started a couple games earlier when we had injuries, and so he is just a guy that we know that when we put him on a court, he's going to bring us great energy and help the team."

And, in a way, Ambrose-Hylton called his shot. At halftime, he told point guard Boopie Miller how his shots tend to take a slightly different bounce off the rim when he drives. So when the shot went up and hit the back rim, Ambrose-Hylton was right there to tip it into the basket.

"I knew. Once I got my hand on the ball, I knew for a fact it was going in," Ambrose-Hylton said. "You could see my reaction."

The tip-in capped off a five-minute stretch where the Mustangs did everything they needed to in order to make the comeback possible.

SMU trailed by a game-high 12 points with under 10 minutes to play. That deficit was eight points after a Syracuse basket with 5:12 to play.

The Orange wouldn't make another shot from the field the rest of the way as SMU held them to just three points, all on free throws.

"It's a very, very gratifying win. The reason we have 22 wins right now is because these guys have been doing this over and over," Enfield said. "... our players, they came together at halftime, and we just told them, 'No matter what the score is, you have to defend at a higher level than we did the first half' and they did that."

Syracuse only attempted four shots over the final five-plus minutes, went 3-for-6 from the free throw line and had a pair of turnovers.

"It was one of those games that we just had to keep fighting regardless of what we were down," Kario Oquendo said. "They came out and hit a lot of shots. They were playing hard, but I felt like at the end of the game we were really locked in and took it from them."

Meanwhile, over that same stretch, SMU went 5-for-7 from the floor, and 3-for-6 from the free throw line. While those free throw numbers aren't great, the Mustangs were 3-for-11 from the line the rest of the half and 48% for the game.

"When you go 13-of-27 from the foul line, I call this a very fortunate win, because we missed 14 free throws," Enfield said. "We had a chance to win on Saturday, and we went 0-for-5 with our best players missing easy shots against Stanford, and Cal we made a couple. This League's tough. … Proud of our guys for coming back and playing as well as we did defensively and not turn the ball over in the second half and then made some big, big-time plays, winning plays. 

It wasn't just one player, although Ambrose-Hylton had the basket that briefly gave SMU the lead with 46 seconds left and then the game-winner. It was a collective effort, including the return of Miller at point guard.

"Obviously, Keon's tip-in, but B.J. Edwards is really sick right now, didn't think he was going to play, that blocked shot he had," Enfield said. "Matt Cross' offensive rebound, Kario was terrific. Boopie hasn't played for over three weeks, and gosh, he was really good. Chuck Harris, five assists, no turnovers, gets his eye cut, don't know how many stitches he's going to have to have."

That's the kind of game a team can carry with them, especially at this point of the season.

"I feel like this game is going to help with that," Cross said. "We've come up on the wrong side of a lot of games that got physical, sloppy and when we got down 12, we didn't always come back from that. So finally getting one where we go down and come back is huge for us to be on the right side of one of those. Knowing we can do that, that's one of the last steps for us."

They will take that into Saturday's season finale as Enfield returns where his college coaching career began as an assistant. It will be the final home game for Florida State head coach Leonard Hamilton, who announced he would be stepping down after spending 23 years leading the Seminoles.

"I think everybody's confident to go in and play great on Saturday," Enfield said. "I think we're going to play great on Saturday, whether we win or not, who knows. We just have to compete, but I feel great. I think we'll have a lot of confidence, we'll take (Wednesday) off and Thursday they're going to show up with smiles on their face, knowing that we have 22 wins and a lot to play for."

That's all that matters this time of year, winning. It doesn't matter how or by how much, just getting the win as the Mustangs wrap up the regular season and head into tournament play.

"We've just got to win at this point," Oquendo said. "It might not always be pretty, you've just got to go out there and play as hard as you can and you've got to just win. We can't lose any more."