sutomcat
2024 Iggy Award (ACC Tournament Record)
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2011
- Messages
- 27,612
- Like
- 123,225
The tailgate was well done. Great funky menu. Lots of terrific food. Lots of good people to talk to, many of whom I had not seen since last season. Great job by the Fine Mess crew to make it happen, and it should be pointed out it was a cold, rainy, pretty miserable morning. I think there were about 10 canopies. Maybe more. Shout out to everyone I saw and talked to and hi to everyone I did not have a chance to catch up with.
I went into the game thinking UConn had a legit good offense but their defense was very suspect after suffering major losses from last season. I believe they only returned 2 starters. I expected that they would score at least 20 points on us and that we would need 30 points ourselves to win. I predicted a final score of 38-27.
Well, I was wrong on this. The game was a defensive struggle and very low scoring until late. Anyone who just sees the final score will get a completely different sense of what happened than people who actually saw the game.
Props to UConn. This game was their Super Bowl. They did a great job prepping for it and they pulled out all the stops they had to get the victory. Trick plays, tons of different defenses, lots of stuff designed to use our speed on defense against us. And a lot of it worked really well for a long time. A disturbing long time.
But before i get into the weeds on details on the game, let’s talk about other stuff.
i didn’t get a chance to see the Sala Pavilion, or whatever that place is officially called. The only change I really noticed to the dome was that they took out maybe 8 seats from the middle of section 301/302 in front of the visitors coaching box to put up a platform for the SU staff to put some cameras. This happened late in the summer and the people who had those seats were displaced with little warning or notice, which really stinks. I wasn’t affected but some friends who have been sitting close to me for decades were. They were re-located to the other side of the aisle from the section they have sat in for decades, in front of the SU coaching box. It is going to be much harder to interact with these guys now. We didn’t do any high fives or anything for the first time in recent memory. All to get more cameras and film for the staff. I hope it as worth it.
10 tubas. The Instagram account for the SU sousaphone section has featured 12 all preseason and I expected to see 12 but 2 went missing. I hope they are okay. Other than that, the SUMB was in fine form. They did a nice halftime tribute to the Beatles, based on the anniversary of their big famous concert at Shea Stadium. And they wore some wonderful new uniforms they made them look as hip and fashionable as the Beatles back in the day. Well done.
There is a new thing the game day experience folks are doing with drum solos where they ask people to pretend they are playing the drums. I don’t remember anything else changing. They still haven’t made a live decimeter part of the little video they play to encourage the crowd to make noise and they still don’t play it at a point where it would be appropriate to make noise. And they continue to try and make their infamous ‘Let’s Go Orange” chant work. No one does it. Everyone hates it. It has never been popular and it just makes the cheerleaders and everyone involved with the game day experience look like idiots. Please move on to something that might work.
On the positive side, I like the young man who interacts with the crowd during timeouts. He has some personality and you can understand what he says. It is does not cause people with epilepsy to have seizures.
On the negative side, they have a corner scoreboard dedicated to showing game stats for both teams. First downs, passing yards, rushing yards, total yards, time of possession that kind of standard team stat info. Which is okay. But there is no indicator as to what team each line of stats is associated with. And it is always up (as far as I could tell). Without knowing the teams, the info is useless. I didn’t see any indication of out of town scores from any scoreboard at any time. I didn’t see any indication of individual stats for players from either team at any time. So we have lost a lot of good info and replaced it with garbage. Someone needs to get this fixed.
UConn brought a small contingent of fans to the game. They had part of one of the tiny corner sections in the lower level where their fans sat. I would estimate they brought 50-75 fans. Speaking of fans, it was a late arriving and very decent crowd. When I say late arriving, I am looking at you, SU student section. The upper deck in the east end zone was almost completely empty when the game began but was completely full by the end of the first quarter. And then almost completely empty by the start of the 3rd quarter. Students we have to do better.
Back to the game now. I thought UConn had a great game plan, and again, Syracuse had a bad one. We again got off to a bad start on defense, and struggled there most of the first half. Our offense was just pathetic in the first half. Bad play calls, bad execution, you name it. If it was bad, we did it. I think our WRs struggled to get open again, much like against UT. Our OL did a little better with pass blocking but again we struggled with blitzes. Did not do a good job blocking for the run game. For some reason, we ran the ball more with Nixon than Willis, which should never happen. Didn’t get much push from the OL and the only guy who seemed able to get open consistently was Villari, who was terrific today. He made big play after big play and was our MVP on offense IMHO.
Though UConn had a lot of nice calls on offense that got them good gains. Did some end runs some misdirection passing plays, hurt us with some power running and of course, they saw the way we defended the screen against UT and had similar success with this play. Disappointing we did little to address this issue until the second half of the game.
They also did a pass to a receiver who threw it for a TD to get a TD that really established their lead. So nice job by them here. We rarely were able to stop them quickly and while we usually did eventually stop them, it took a while.
We were able to move the ball at times but it seemed whenever we got to the red zone, we would struggle and a couple times we ended up with 4th and short and were not able to convert (not opting to take an almost sure 3 points twice). Thought Angeli was okay early but he had problems finding players to pass to on many passing plays, and ended up taking a few sacks because he held on to the ball so long waiting to find someone to throw it to. I think again the problem was most only that our WRs had some problems getting open but I think some of it was Steve had some issues finding a second or third option. I think he saw the blitz a number of times but was not able to hit his dump off target in the event of the blitz. I think this was largely because Willis did not get in the right position to get the ball on these plays. Though Angeli made a couple rushed awful throws as well on these plays. And while McCord was great at seeing a blitzer and getttng the ball away last season, sometimes Steve just missed the blitzer and got smashed..
We gotta do a better job handling blitzes in the future.
Thought Stonehouse did a good job punting again. And he made a bunch of great holds on awful snaps on field goal attempts. Fran Brown Jr was just horrible snapping on these plays and I think needs to be replaced. The one missed FG we had was also a bad snap and I think it played a big role in the miss. This experiment cannot be allowed to continue.
Though the punt coverage teams did well. UConn tried to return a KO and the coverage team handled that well too. But our special teams units looked confused a lot. We had to burn at least one TO because we couldn’t get the players out in time (looked like Villari was late getting out there). And we were at least in danger of doing this a couple more times.
There was also a problem getting a play in early that I think resulted in a wasted timeout. After that, I think Nixon did a better job getting plays in on time than he did against UT.
During the first half, it seemed like every play UConn ran, we would have people in position to make the tackle and allow the player to continue for additional yardage. Happened time and time again. Very frustrating to be in position to make a play and not make it. We gotta tackle better. That said, this improved in the second half. Tackling was noticeably better and the defense largely set down the UConn offense the entire second half (until that last drive). That was encouraging.
Thought our MVP on defense was Jobity, who had a number of big plays in the second half that played a big role in ending UConn drives. Good to see him healthy again. Thought Peal and Chestnut played well and thought Samuel stepped up him game markedly in his second college start. Also Antoine made some big plays and I think should be pretty much a full time starter at LB. Bryant is coming on now too. And Reese was able to apply some played needed pressure late in the game which was great to see.
Oh did a good job kicking off. Kerr didn’t do much returning punts but he didn’t have much of an opportunity to break one. James ran right onto someone on his one KO return.
In the second half, and also late in the first half, I thought Angeli got hit hard a couple times and lost it. He made some bad decisions, forcing the ball into coverage, and he made a disturbing number of bad throws, many on key 3rd and relatively short situations. Missed so many passes high. Got lucky he didn’t get 3 or 4 picks. I was frankly surprised Fran stuck with him so long.
But to his credit, Steve found himself late. When the offense had to score, he was able to lead them to scores. He made some really nice throws and cleaned up his act. It was a pretty amazing turnaround than seemed unlikely, even to the most diehard SU fans in the dome. I hope this gives him some confidence and restores his mojo.
So props to Steve and the rest of the offense for stepping up at the end of the game. And also props to the SU defense to getting a series of quick stops late in the game to put the offense in a position to make it a game and give the team a chance to win. Gill made a couple great plays and that catch by Justus Ross-Simmons was really.nice (as was the throw). SU receivers made a bunch of nice catches on the sidelines. Someone has been working hard on sideline catches and it shows.
The biggest hit of the game was a vicious shot at the UCnn punt returner just as he caught the ball by Gill. Impressive that he was able to hold on to the ball on that play. KMG also made a stellar tackle on specials, also I believe on the punt return coverage team.
Just as with the UT game, things looked bad for a long time but the team never stopped fighting and and those efforts eventually led to a dramatic comeback and win. Yes, this team is capable of sleep walking for extended periods but no one can question their heart. They never gave up and that ended up getting them a win today.
It should be noted we played a ton of players today, especially on defense and I suspect dodging that played a role in our being clearly more fresh in the second half. We had vastly more depth than UConn had and it paid off today.
What else? Miller ended up starting for Mack, who had a boot on and did not play. Betrand also played some LT.
Perry replaced Grant in the secondary and I think he played pretty well. Grant did not have pads on. I hope the plan is to rest him next week against Colgate and then hope he will be 100% the rest of the season. I believe Kam Pringle also replaced Spoon briefly when a UConn player popped his helmet off.
It was ugly but we had to get a win here and somehow we got it. Glad we have an easy game against Colgate now for a final dress rehearsal before things get real again.
I went into the game thinking UConn had a legit good offense but their defense was very suspect after suffering major losses from last season. I believe they only returned 2 starters. I expected that they would score at least 20 points on us and that we would need 30 points ourselves to win. I predicted a final score of 38-27.
Well, I was wrong on this. The game was a defensive struggle and very low scoring until late. Anyone who just sees the final score will get a completely different sense of what happened than people who actually saw the game.
Props to UConn. This game was their Super Bowl. They did a great job prepping for it and they pulled out all the stops they had to get the victory. Trick plays, tons of different defenses, lots of stuff designed to use our speed on defense against us. And a lot of it worked really well for a long time. A disturbing long time.
But before i get into the weeds on details on the game, let’s talk about other stuff.
i didn’t get a chance to see the Sala Pavilion, or whatever that place is officially called. The only change I really noticed to the dome was that they took out maybe 8 seats from the middle of section 301/302 in front of the visitors coaching box to put up a platform for the SU staff to put some cameras. This happened late in the summer and the people who had those seats were displaced with little warning or notice, which really stinks. I wasn’t affected but some friends who have been sitting close to me for decades were. They were re-located to the other side of the aisle from the section they have sat in for decades, in front of the SU coaching box. It is going to be much harder to interact with these guys now. We didn’t do any high fives or anything for the first time in recent memory. All to get more cameras and film for the staff. I hope it as worth it.
10 tubas. The Instagram account for the SU sousaphone section has featured 12 all preseason and I expected to see 12 but 2 went missing. I hope they are okay. Other than that, the SUMB was in fine form. They did a nice halftime tribute to the Beatles, based on the anniversary of their big famous concert at Shea Stadium. And they wore some wonderful new uniforms they made them look as hip and fashionable as the Beatles back in the day. Well done.
There is a new thing the game day experience folks are doing with drum solos where they ask people to pretend they are playing the drums. I don’t remember anything else changing. They still haven’t made a live decimeter part of the little video they play to encourage the crowd to make noise and they still don’t play it at a point where it would be appropriate to make noise. And they continue to try and make their infamous ‘Let’s Go Orange” chant work. No one does it. Everyone hates it. It has never been popular and it just makes the cheerleaders and everyone involved with the game day experience look like idiots. Please move on to something that might work.
On the positive side, I like the young man who interacts with the crowd during timeouts. He has some personality and you can understand what he says. It is does not cause people with epilepsy to have seizures.
On the negative side, they have a corner scoreboard dedicated to showing game stats for both teams. First downs, passing yards, rushing yards, total yards, time of possession that kind of standard team stat info. Which is okay. But there is no indicator as to what team each line of stats is associated with. And it is always up (as far as I could tell). Without knowing the teams, the info is useless. I didn’t see any indication of out of town scores from any scoreboard at any time. I didn’t see any indication of individual stats for players from either team at any time. So we have lost a lot of good info and replaced it with garbage. Someone needs to get this fixed.
UConn brought a small contingent of fans to the game. They had part of one of the tiny corner sections in the lower level where their fans sat. I would estimate they brought 50-75 fans. Speaking of fans, it was a late arriving and very decent crowd. When I say late arriving, I am looking at you, SU student section. The upper deck in the east end zone was almost completely empty when the game began but was completely full by the end of the first quarter. And then almost completely empty by the start of the 3rd quarter. Students we have to do better.
Back to the game now. I thought UConn had a great game plan, and again, Syracuse had a bad one. We again got off to a bad start on defense, and struggled there most of the first half. Our offense was just pathetic in the first half. Bad play calls, bad execution, you name it. If it was bad, we did it. I think our WRs struggled to get open again, much like against UT. Our OL did a little better with pass blocking but again we struggled with blitzes. Did not do a good job blocking for the run game. For some reason, we ran the ball more with Nixon than Willis, which should never happen. Didn’t get much push from the OL and the only guy who seemed able to get open consistently was Villari, who was terrific today. He made big play after big play and was our MVP on offense IMHO.
Though UConn had a lot of nice calls on offense that got them good gains. Did some end runs some misdirection passing plays, hurt us with some power running and of course, they saw the way we defended the screen against UT and had similar success with this play. Disappointing we did little to address this issue until the second half of the game.
They also did a pass to a receiver who threw it for a TD to get a TD that really established their lead. So nice job by them here. We rarely were able to stop them quickly and while we usually did eventually stop them, it took a while.
We were able to move the ball at times but it seemed whenever we got to the red zone, we would struggle and a couple times we ended up with 4th and short and were not able to convert (not opting to take an almost sure 3 points twice). Thought Angeli was okay early but he had problems finding players to pass to on many passing plays, and ended up taking a few sacks because he held on to the ball so long waiting to find someone to throw it to. I think again the problem was most only that our WRs had some problems getting open but I think some of it was Steve had some issues finding a second or third option. I think he saw the blitz a number of times but was not able to hit his dump off target in the event of the blitz. I think this was largely because Willis did not get in the right position to get the ball on these plays. Though Angeli made a couple rushed awful throws as well on these plays. And while McCord was great at seeing a blitzer and getttng the ball away last season, sometimes Steve just missed the blitzer and got smashed..
We gotta do a better job handling blitzes in the future.
Thought Stonehouse did a good job punting again. And he made a bunch of great holds on awful snaps on field goal attempts. Fran Brown Jr was just horrible snapping on these plays and I think needs to be replaced. The one missed FG we had was also a bad snap and I think it played a big role in the miss. This experiment cannot be allowed to continue.
Though the punt coverage teams did well. UConn tried to return a KO and the coverage team handled that well too. But our special teams units looked confused a lot. We had to burn at least one TO because we couldn’t get the players out in time (looked like Villari was late getting out there). And we were at least in danger of doing this a couple more times.
There was also a problem getting a play in early that I think resulted in a wasted timeout. After that, I think Nixon did a better job getting plays in on time than he did against UT.
During the first half, it seemed like every play UConn ran, we would have people in position to make the tackle and allow the player to continue for additional yardage. Happened time and time again. Very frustrating to be in position to make a play and not make it. We gotta tackle better. That said, this improved in the second half. Tackling was noticeably better and the defense largely set down the UConn offense the entire second half (until that last drive). That was encouraging.
Thought our MVP on defense was Jobity, who had a number of big plays in the second half that played a big role in ending UConn drives. Good to see him healthy again. Thought Peal and Chestnut played well and thought Samuel stepped up him game markedly in his second college start. Also Antoine made some big plays and I think should be pretty much a full time starter at LB. Bryant is coming on now too. And Reese was able to apply some played needed pressure late in the game which was great to see.
Oh did a good job kicking off. Kerr didn’t do much returning punts but he didn’t have much of an opportunity to break one. James ran right onto someone on his one KO return.
In the second half, and also late in the first half, I thought Angeli got hit hard a couple times and lost it. He made some bad decisions, forcing the ball into coverage, and he made a disturbing number of bad throws, many on key 3rd and relatively short situations. Missed so many passes high. Got lucky he didn’t get 3 or 4 picks. I was frankly surprised Fran stuck with him so long.
But to his credit, Steve found himself late. When the offense had to score, he was able to lead them to scores. He made some really nice throws and cleaned up his act. It was a pretty amazing turnaround than seemed unlikely, even to the most diehard SU fans in the dome. I hope this gives him some confidence and restores his mojo.
So props to Steve and the rest of the offense for stepping up at the end of the game. And also props to the SU defense to getting a series of quick stops late in the game to put the offense in a position to make it a game and give the team a chance to win. Gill made a couple great plays and that catch by Justus Ross-Simmons was really.nice (as was the throw). SU receivers made a bunch of nice catches on the sidelines. Someone has been working hard on sideline catches and it shows.
The biggest hit of the game was a vicious shot at the UCnn punt returner just as he caught the ball by Gill. Impressive that he was able to hold on to the ball on that play. KMG also made a stellar tackle on specials, also I believe on the punt return coverage team.
Just as with the UT game, things looked bad for a long time but the team never stopped fighting and and those efforts eventually led to a dramatic comeback and win. Yes, this team is capable of sleep walking for extended periods but no one can question their heart. They never gave up and that ended up getting them a win today.
It should be noted we played a ton of players today, especially on defense and I suspect dodging that played a role in our being clearly more fresh in the second half. We had vastly more depth than UConn had and it paid off today.
What else? Miller ended up starting for Mack, who had a boot on and did not play. Betrand also played some LT.
Perry replaced Grant in the secondary and I think he played pretty well. Grant did not have pads on. I hope the plan is to rest him next week against Colgate and then hope he will be 100% the rest of the season. I believe Kam Pringle also replaced Spoon briefly when a UConn player popped his helmet off.
It was ugly but we had to get a win here and somehow we got it. Glad we have an easy game against Colgate now for a final dress rehearsal before things get real again.
