Stunning weekend continues
It has been a most stunning weekend for sure for the Syracuse Athletic department. First the Orange hoops team knocks off North Carolina. Then the football team tops it with a win over Rutgers 31-13 Saturday afternoon. You saw this coming right? It was that amazing. A week after witnessing first hand, one of the most difficult contests to endure as a fan, we get the pleasure of seeing off a victory over our media obsessed “rival” (I’ll get to that shortly).
Like last week, the defense was nearly immovable. Rutgers QB Tom Savage was knocked around for nine sacks and tosses two interceptions. Doug Hogue played like a man possessed with the powers of Art Jones and Derrell Smith combined. EJ Carter, Shamarko Thomas and Mike Holmes made big play after big play defensively. The Orange, for the third straight year, jumped out to two touchdown lead and this time Rutgers could not respond. So many good things to report on this one so let’s hand out some 44 stickers.
First off, a big “44″ goes to Offensive Coordinator Rob Spence. We got some nice wrinkles in the gameplan this week. First off the option play made some big plays early. Ryan Nassib made a few good pitches to Antwon Bailey and he ran with authority all day. The option kept the Knights honest and allowed the offense to possess the ball for nearly 2/3 of the game.
Speaking of Nassib, he saw more action early and got to show off his arm. He has shown better poise in the pocket and should have had a TD had he been able to hit Donte Davis better with his strike over the middle. Ryan has made steady progress each week and should be seeing more game plan in the finale against UConn.
The running game of DC3, Bailey and Averrin Collier each collected a TD. Collier’s burst sealed the deal for the Orange. He had a great stiff arm to carry his defender the remaining 5 yards into the endzone. Awesome to see that.
I even have some love for Greg Paulus. He was his usual efficient self and even managed to hit a Alec Lemon over the middle for a nice gain and his toss to Carl Cutler for great to see too. Nice way for him to close out his Dome careeer.
Where do I even begin with the “44″s on defense? The whole unit should get a bunch for the way they made Rutgers look. 9 sacks! Are you kidding me. DC Scott Shafer’s plan to blitz, blitz, and blitz some more proved too much for the Rutgers line. This should be an exciting unit next season as most of the team will be back and better than ever with a year of conditioning. Two straight weeks holding foes under 200 yards. Rutgers actually ran decent, they just couldn’t stay with it because of the early deficit. I loved the play of Doug Hogue and Anthony Perkins. Their motors were going all game long.
Now on to the importance of winning against this “rival”. I for one have never seen this team as someone we just HAVE to beat. I guess as an older fan this was just a team we steamrolled for years. After all we are 29-10-1 overall. It’s as lopsided a rivalry as we have in the Big East. If we get back to where we all think we should be, this is a team we should handle every year. Same thing for UConn. These teams are relevant mainly because we are losing and they have filled the void. I guess we could make a Statue of Liberty trophy or something to play for every year – since the media loves to spotlight this battle for NYC, but really I don’t care about these guys at all.
On the downside, the special teams are in crisis mode right now, blocked punts, blocked FGs and coverages that are a nightmare. They are the only shortfalls you see for the attrition on the field.
Overall, a real nice win and a great way for the seniors to finish off their Dome careers. It’s a shame that really this team was a few plays shy of winning against Minny and UofL and could really be playing for a bowl game this week at UConn. Still, there should be a ton of excitement in the program going forward.
