Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="Powellfan, post: 4980495, member: 4819"] The Syracuse Orange face a midweek test against the winless Utah Utes. The biggest thing to watch for is how quickly the Orange have moved past their Saturday night disappointment against Maryland. Do they come out sluggish, especially with a noon start time in the middle of the week? Or do they come out ready to prove something? Utah is 0-2 with losses against top 20 teams in Ohio State and Denver. They were leading OSU 6-2 in the second quarter, but since then it's been all down hill for Utah, as they were outscored 9-2 the rest of the way and then were defeated 16-8 by Denver two weeks later. They have talent on this team, but two of the first things I look at when analyzing a team are face-offs and goalie play. Neither have been good for Utah. They have faced two of the game's better FOGOs in Tommy Burke and Alec Stathkis, but they are winning just 36% at the face-off X. After Mason Kohn's performance against Maryland this past weekend, it's fair to think that he's at the level of Burke and Stathkis. On paper at least, it's fair to think that Syracuse will have a lot of extra possessions. The goalie position for Utah might be more of a concern for them. Colin Lenskold has played every minute for them this year and has just a 37.2% save percentage. That is not going to get it done. An X factor might be if Utah plays a new goalie that SU won't have any tape on, but it's a tall task to ask a new goalie to come into the Dome and play well. For SU, there are certain members of the offense who seem to be in a funk. It might be something of a first world problem when the offense on the whole is playing pretty well, but if Joey Spallina isn't going to be the focal point of the offense in "bigger" games this year, SU will need the supporting cast to step up. That means players like Christian Mule, Finn Thomson, Jackson Birtwistle and Sammy English need to start producing multi point games. This seems like the perfect opportunity for those players to get some momentum. At this point, I think it's better for Spallina to have a more modest game, and some of these other players to get more usage. On offense, Utah has some very good players, Ryan Stines had 49 points last year, Tyler Bradbury had 56, Jordan Hyde 57. They've gotten off to a slow start this year (combined 12 points), though I imagine that has a lot to do with possessions. If SU turns the ball over a bunch, or Kohn doesn't win the majority of face-offs, Utah could absolutely put points on the board. This should be a good test for the SU defense. None of the Utah attackmen are overly big guys (none over 5'11) so match-ups should be interesting. I am guessing Riley Figuerias gets Bradbury with Billy Dwan on Hyde. The line of -7 seems a bit high for this game, but I hope SU can put a lot of goals on the board to show that there is no hangover from Saturday night. This is the perfect recipe for a "Letdown Lookahead" game with Army on deck, but the Orange should know better than to look beyond any opponent. I am going with a score line of 18-8 with the caveat that noon on a Wednesday is a really weird time. SU is going from a Saturday night primetime event against a top 5 opponent with seven thousand fans, to a midweek game against a winless team with maybe two thousand fans. How will that affect the players and their motivation? Hopefully it won't, but I can't remember SU playing a game during work hours before, so it's just really hard to predict. [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?