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[QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1976330, member: 289"]
-          It seemed we were on our way to another dismal loss but instead it became an exciting, record-setting….loss. We wound 4-8, same as last year, our third losing year in a row after we’d have three winning records and bowl wins in the previous four years.

-          Even with the 61 points, Dino Babers’ “Orange is the new Fast” offense didn’t score as much as last year’s Scott Shafer “meathead” offense, 308 points to 327. And his “the other team is even faster” gave up more points, 463-372. Dino “I hate to punt” Babers punted 80 times to Scott “I love to punt” Shafer’s 67 times.

-          76 points. That’s the most a Syracuse team has ever given up in 127 years of playing football. I had been under the impression that our defense had improved during the season but in fact, every quality offensive team scored as will against us all season long. We became so inured to bad defense that we were accepting of giving up 35 or 45 points in a game that we focused on the bright spots in it. But, in fact, this was our worst defensive team ever.

-          The key to this game are the averages: We passed for 440 yards and Pitt passed for 251. But we got 440 yards on 43 completions, an average of 10.2 yards per catch, (if you prefer, we had 61 attempts and got 7.2 yards per attempt). Pitt had 9 completions in 19 attempts. They averaged 27.9 yards per catch and 13.2 per attempt.

-          We ran for an impressive 228 yards – 45 attempts, a solid 5.1 yards per carry. Pitt ran for an awesome 393 yards on 40 carries – 9.8 yards per carry.

-          That gave us an impressive 668 yards- more than Pittsburgh got (644). But we did it in 106 plays from scrimmage, 6.3 yards per play. They got their 644 yards on only 59 plays, 10.9 yards per play. That’s the difference between victory and defeat.

-          Talking about injuries and recruiting can only take you so far.  I think they are going to have to re-think this scheme, too.
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