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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 2407933, member: 289"] [U]The Schedule[/U] [B]Central Connecticut State[/B]: [I]This is the one game all year where we will be clear favorites. We need to win it and win it easily and even if we do that, it will be as meaningless as last year’s 33-7 opening win over Colgate. [/I]And it was. [B]Middle Tennessee State[/B]: [I]Syracuse might well be an underdog in this game anyway. The Blue Raiders, (will these blue teams make us blue?), might win Conference USA this year[/I]. They didn’t (6-6) but they did beat us. I wonder if it would have made a difference in our effots down the stretch if we needed just one more win, rather than 2, to get to a bowl? [B]Central Michigan[/B]: [I]If we are on either a high or a low after the MTS game, this could prove to be a difficult game to get back on track in. [/I]It was a difficult game- until we pulled away in the second half. [B]Louisiana State[/B]: [I]The schedule breaks neatly in two groups of teams: the “winnables”, 6 teams we should or at least have a decent chance of beating and what I call the “spiders”, the teams for we are likely to be a fly, caught in their web: teams we are highly unlikely to beat….. Once upon a time we were good enough to beat LSU. Maybe that time will come again. But not this year.[/I] But we put a scare into them, after a terrible start with a near pick six on the first play. We fell behind 3-21 and came back to within 26-35. That made us feel good until Troy beat the Tiger son the same field the next week. [B]North Carolina State[/B]: [I]We are 1-8 all-time vs. the Wolfpack. Here are the scores: 20-43, 22-28, 31-32, 17-38, 24-10, 17-24 and 29-42. It’s never mattered how good we are or how good they were, except in Scott Shafer’s first year when injuries and crippled their offense and we had a real good defense and beat them down there in Coach Dave Doeren’s first year. He’s still there and Shafer is gone. This year they will be very good. They are expecting the kind of breakthrough we hope to have someday. [/I]And they may have had the kind of breakthrough we’ll have: 8-4 overall and 6-2 in the conference. I don’t think we’ll have a season like 1987 when we went 11-0. We’ll just go from contention to non-contention. It was the LSU game all over again: an interception on the first possession, a 7-26 deficit and a 25-33 final. [B]Pittsburgh:[/B] [I]That 61-76 embarrassment last year was Pitt’s 12th victory in their last 14 games against SU. The history of the series is that both teams are rarely good at the same time and one usually dominates the other for an extended period. We beat Pitt 11 times in 16 years from 1957-1972. They beat us 11 times in a row after that. Then we beat them 16 times in 18 years with one tie. Then came the current streak. The reason for this is simple: both schools recruit in the same areas and go after the same players. When we win those battles, we win the games. When they win them, they win the games. I thought we were going to turn this series back in our favor when the Panthers had their semi-comical coaching carousel a few years ago but then Doug Marrone bolted and we were starting over ourselves. If Dino Babers is to be successful, he’s got to start beating Pitt, both for recruits and on the scoreboard.[/I] We beat Pitt, 27-24 but I didn’t get the sense that we had turned things around yet. [B]Clemson:[/B] [I]It’s hard to know what to make of this series. I know Clemson is the defending national champions and we aren’t but since SU joined the ACC, we’ve lost to them by 35 points at home; lost a defensive duel at their place, 6-16, (DeShaun Watson was injured), lost a shoot-out in our place 27-37, (with Zach Mahoney filling in for Dungey) and been steam rolled 0-54 in their place by a Tiger team that wasn’t even playing that well at the time, (their loss to Pittsburgh was the following week). I suspect the 10 point games are more deceiving than the blow-outs but they still suggest that we should do better than losing 35 or 54 points. What they suggest for this year is unknown. We are still early in Baber’s rebuilding program. Clemson is reloading. They rebuild with players we wish we had. This could be 2017’s version of last year’s Virginia Tech upset, but I doubt it. [/I]It wasn’t- it was better. And it was the thing we will remember about the 2017 the longest, especially if the Tigers repeat as national champion. [B]U of Miami[/B]: [I]The great programs have reasons why they are great. They have their ups and downs but they always come back because the reasons they were great before are still there. Oklahoma was mediocre in the 90’s but won the 2000 national championship and appeared in two other title games after that. Southern California fell from greatness in the 80’s and 90’s but became the dominant program of the 2000’s. Alabama had all kinds of problems in the 2000’s until Nick Saban was hired. They have become the dominant program of the current decade. The dominant program of the 1980’s was Miami. After some troubles with probation, they had a sequel in the early 2000’s. Then they faded again and everybody has been waiting for them to come back, especially the ACC who thought they were getting a superpower when they persuaded the Hurricanes to leave the Big East. Amazingly, the Hurricanes have never played in an ACC championship game. But they still exist in an area that produces busloads of top talent and Mark Richt, formerly the successful coach at Georgia and a Miami alum seems to be building the program toward another peak. [/I]They didn’t reach that peak this eyar but it is coming. At least they finally made it to a the ACC title game. Our game with them was the same as the first two road games: First possession pick, down 3-13, come back to 19-27. Rinse and repeat. [B]Florida State[/B]: [I]Nunes says: “Syracuse probably falls by three or four touchdowns, at least. Take solace in the fact that Florida State is probably the best team in the country… That talent, even more than the offense, is concentrated on the defensive side of the football, where Florida State returns a ton from last year’s strong group. Sack leader DeMarcus Walker departs, but just about everyone else is back. Same goes for the list of leading tacklers on the ‘Noles last season: beyond Walker there’s major returning talent in most spots. Tarvarus McFadden and Derwin James (both in the secondary) are All-America contenders.” SI reports “The last couple of years, they’ve recruited some leaner pass rushers. Those ends, 6-5 250 Josh Sweat and Brian Burns, 6-5 218, are a little bit quicker off the ball….their secondary and defensive line are as good as ever.” (Our ends are pretty lean. So are our means.) [/I]The Seminoles had, what was for them a nightmare season, losing their quarterback in their opener and going into a downward spiral from there. Their nadir was a 3-35 loss at Boston College – or perhaps rescheduling a game with Louisiana Monroe they weren’t going to play after it was a cancelled by a hurricane just so they could get a 6th win and become eligible for a minor bowl. Still, they were good enough to beat us after Guess What? Interception a pass on our first possession, rolling to a 21-7 lead and holding on to win 27-24, our third game with that’s core in four weeks. The missed (or blocked?) field goal at the end of that game was the turning point of a once-promising season. [B]Wake Forest[/B]: [I]The good news: 2 of the last three games are in the “winnable” column. The questions are: will it matter anymore by the time we get to there? Also: what kind of a team will he have at that point: a matured team playing with a high level of confidence or a discouraged, injured team just playing out the string – again? Also: just how winnable are these games? Both Wake Forest and Boston College had winning records and won bowl games last year while we went 4-8 – and lost to Wake by 19 points. [/I]This “winnable” game became unwinnable in the second half after we’d taken a 38-24 lead into halftime. The second half was a nightmarish 5-40 and the nightmare continued through the last two games. All told, we were our-score 29-138 in the last five halves of the season after outscoring our opponents 300-252 to that point. [B]Louisville[/B]: [I]This is the last of the “spider” teams. The Cardinals looked like they were going to score 100 points on us last year. Heck, Lamar Jackson looked like he was going to score 100 points by himself! We were shocked when they did that to us, (28-62), but the country was shocked when they did it to Florida State the next week, (63-20). That made Lamar Jackson the front-runner for the Heisman Trophy he eventually got… We play then in their place but we get them late this year. If the players have again tuned out the coach, that could be to our advantage in this one. SU fans are probably thinking that Clemson is the most likely big upset we could pull off this because it will in the Dome. But we might actually have a better chance at Louisville if they have a late fade as they did last year. [/I]Louisville flipped the script by getting off to a slow start but getting stronger at the end of the year. Naturally that’s when we played them after having played them when they were good early in the previous year. The game started out like all our road games: an interception on the first possession while the home team built up a big lead. But this time they kept building it up until they’d walloped us 10-56. The comebacks we had at LSU, NC State, Miami and FSU never materialized in this game. [B]Boston College[/B]: [I]When the Eagles get it done- if they get it done- they get it done on defense. Two years ago, they led the nation in total defense and were 4th in scoring defense – and went 3-9 because they were 125th in total offense and 120th in scoring offense. (Who said “defense” wins games?) . Last year they were almost as good on defense- 9th in yards, 44th in scoring and just as bad on offense- 127th in yards and 118th in points. Somehow they improved to 7-6. But they suffered some horrendous blow-outs: 0-49 to Virginia Tech, 10-56 to Clemson, 7-52 to Louisville and 7-45 to Florida State. They gave up an average of 13.7ppg to everyone else. We didn’t do much better against the last three teams but we did beat the Hokies. And we’ve also beaten the Eagles in both years, 20-17 and 29-20. [/I]Not this year. The Eagles came up with a good quarterback in Anthony Brown, (and a good back-up, Darius Wade, who played well against us) and a great new running back in A. J. Dillon. More than that, they were a confident team just coming into their own and we were a beat, up, exhausted, disheartened bunch. They went right through us 42-14. [I]I think it’s likely we lose to all 6 “spiders” and would thus have to go 6-0 against the “winnables” to make a bowl. I think we’ll fall short of that. Another 4-8 season is likely. 5-7 is possible. Anything above that is heavy lifting. But that’s why they play the games: to find out what actually happens. [/I]We went 1-5 against the “spiders” but only 3-3 against the “winnables” and did wind up at 4-8 again, our third straight 4-8 season, (following a 3-9 outing). In those years we were 15-17 in August, September and October and 1-15 in November. There will be no breakthrough until we solve our “November” problem. [/QUOTE]

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