Colorado Trip Preview (3/12/26 and 3/16/26)

[Powellfan]

Mostly just wanted to move Jeremy's post to a new thread, since it was very succinct.

The Orange should beat Air Force pretty handily - the Falcons are saving the ball at just a 37% clip and have taken some pretty bad losses already this season. The travel piece should be something to monitor, but the Orange went out west last year against Utah and did okay.

Denver should be a different story - their goalie is on fire this season, with a save percentage of 67% so far. Obviously two years ago the Orange offense sputtered out against the Pioneer defense in the NCAAs. The good news this time around is that they don't have Alec Stathiks as their fogo and are right at 50% for the year. Given the difficulties in scoring, the Orange will have to have as many bites at the apple as possible, so Mullen will need to have a big game here. Cannot let Denver take the air out of the ball like they did last year. Both teams have a game to go before their meet up (Denver plays Ohio State on Thursday), so probably should wait for those play out before making too many grand pronouncements.

They had a nice opening win vs Lafayette at home but its been all downhill since.

They lost 10-2 to Denver, played OSU tough but lost 14-9, got obliterated 21-9 by Siena, lost to Marist and just lost this past Sat 21-6 to Duke.

I will say they gave Duke a lot of problems for about a qtr and a half. It was 2-1 Duke end of 1.

Obviously SU losing would shocking but their are a few concerns in this type of game.

First is you get a repeat of the Hopkins 1st qtr, outplay them but bad turnovers, clearing issues/offsides and missed opportunities on offense lead to a close or tied game after 1. Doesn't mean SU won't do what Duke did and just slowly pull away but it means starters gotta play more team presses a bit and it just becomes a slog.

The second concern is one we haven't seen a lot under Gait against lower level teams but would happen at times under Desko. Team gets out to a fast start say 3 or 4 nothing and then we start subbing wholesale and SUs bad habits (see the Harvard game last year reg season), start creeping in and next think you know its 7-5 late 2nd qtr and now your in a battle etc.

SU has an advantage pretty much everywhere and this is a game that hopefully SU puts away clearly by midway through the 2nd qtr or at least half. You wanna see a lot of those backups who haven't played much outside of the St. Joes game get some time.

Just hope our guys are sharp early. I watched some of AF game vs Duke. They struggled with turnovers (19) and couldn't match up off the dodge defensively.

Gait teams save for year 1 have handled the overmatched teams pretty handily so you'd expect to see something similar on Thursday.

 

[4evaOrange]

Looking forward to maybe seeing the ball shared more against AF if it does turn out to be an easy game and let some other get some reps. Would love to see bear with a hat trick. And love to see Hahn McIntee rawson get on the board.
Also maybe see olniek get some reps at the X.