The offseason previews continue with Syracuse’s Week 4 opponent, the Maine Black Bears.    Maine represents SU’s foray into FCS play that is now all the rage in college football.   What that means is that this is a game that is supposed to be a gimmee, a slam dunk,  a no brainer, the auto W. You get the picture.  However we’ve seen in the past couple years just how dangerous playing a quality FCS foe can be.  Just ask Michigan who two years ago couldn’t get out of  Appalachian St’s way in the Big House.  So much for the easy W.

Well Maine could be that sort of team this year for the Orange.   How do I know that Maine will be a tough foe?  They are on Twitter!  Ok seriously, I was able to learn some facts such as this:

NOTEBOOK: Maine returns 5 of its top 6 rushers from last season when it finished 3rd in the CAA and 23rd nationally in rushing (187.5 ypg)

Yikes, I hope we have the draw figured out this season!

FB Jared Turcotte (2nd Tm), QB Mike Brusko (Hon Men), LB Mark Masterson (Hon Men) named preseason All-Americans by Consensus Draft Services

Not only will we not be facing inexperience at QB, they have a pretty good one.

Black Bears ranked in three preseason polls…14th Sporting News; 15th Any Given Saturday; 17th Athlon’s.

And as you would figure at this point, this will be a solid club.  They finished last season ranked in the top 20.  So now that I have scared the bejesus out of you.  Or at least gave you cause to ponder, let’s continue our dive into the Black Bears.

What we know

Last year Maine finished with a record of 8-5.  Wins were to: Monmouth, Stony Brook, Delaware, Hofstra, Northeastern (more impressively than us last year), Iona, UMass, Rhode Island.  Losses: Iowa, Richmond, James Madison, New Hampshire, and Northern Iowa in the first round the FCS playoffs.

On offense the Black Bears return 8 starters, they will need to replace two lineman and their RB.  On Defense, there are 5 returning starters from their “Black Hole” Defense.  Most of the attrition is in the secondary and DL where they must replace two starters in each slot.

Spring Developments

Head Coach Jack Cosgrove is the epitome of what Doug Marrone wants to be – a long tenured coach at your alma mater.  Cosgrove is starting his 18th season at Maine.  His biggest concern will be the kicking game where Sophomore Jordan Waxman will handle both the punting and kicking duties.

As for the aforementioned running game, its lead by Sophmore All-American FB Turcotte, who gained 675 yards and 7 TDs last season.  QB Brusko was their 3rd leading rusher last year, but he only threw 8 TDs versus 7 INT.  Clearly they are a ground oriented team that would like to mininize throwing.  Probably playing in the extreme North may have something to do with that philospohy.

The chattering masses:

Couldn’t find much here.  Heck even Maine is lumped with two other states in the 50 state espn tour and to top it off they didn’t even talk about any schools in these states!   Just UConn and BC!   WTF is that all about?

Why we can win

Let’s see, reason you schedule an FCS opponent is for the W.  When you are an FBS team, even one that has struggled like the Orangemen have in recent years, you should be favored and this game will be no exception.

Why we can lose

Well this is an experienced, playoff team that returns the bulk of its offense and has AA players on both sides of the ball.  We are really thin at LB and DL and if we have any injuries by this point of the season it will get real interesting in a hurry here.  We didn’t exactly beat up on Northeastern last year so we know that this game isn’t going to be played in the 48-3 range.

The Pick

Obviously this will be a tougher type game than Northeastern was.  The Black Bears will be playing the last of three straight road games to start the season and that will be an advantage for us.  We will have faced much sterner competition to this point and that should pay off in a game like this.  My guess is that Maine’s running game will have to carry them if they are to hang in.  I see us crowding the line and letting Art Jones clog up the middle for guys like Smith and Hogue to go and make tackles.

Offensively we should have some continuity by now so hopefully we can see Mike Williams and Bailey/Carter/Collier have some success.  I’m taking the Orangemen a bit more comfortably than one would think based on the improved discipline of Coach DM.  I’m saying it should be about 27-13 in favor of the Cuse.

What do you say?

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 20th, 2009 at 9:38 am by LvilleOrange . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.