RE: Syracuse Game Thread
Going to dogs in hurry
Saturday, September 01, 2007
BUD POLIQUIN
POST-STANDARD COLUMNIST
Well, it started out all right.
The Orange emerged from its locker room, arm-in-arm in a pseudo-Revolutionary War marching formation, led by Joe Fields serving as a kind of plumed general. And that was nicely theatrical. Then, on the first drive of this 2007 campaign, the Syracuse University guys followed Andrew Robinson down the rug for a field goal and a quick 3-0 lead over the Washington Huskies. And that was pretty good, too.
And then? Um, then the steamy night unraveled. Steadily, miserably, embarrassingly.
Perhaps, and this will pain the faithful, predictably.
That SU eventually lost 42-12 to the Huskies, who'd landed among us with eight wins in the last three years, was dismal enough. That it lost so overwhelmingly, and amid such confusion, to an outfit believed to be embarking on a fifth consecutive non-winning season can be most charitably considered discouraging.
A corner was supposed to have been turned on Friday evening at the Carrier Dome. The Orange, in the third chapter of the football tome being authored by Greg Robinson, was going to show signs of separation from its '05 and '06 forebears who'd gone 1-10 and 4-8, respectively.
But, no. What the buoyant-turned-aggrieved crowd of 40,329 got, instead, was the sight of the local club getting mauled by a Pac-10 mediocrity.
And that inspires the question: If the so-so Huskies can have their way with this Syracuse outfit - and in the Dome, yet . . . on Opening Night . . . with that presumed inspiration-producing statue of Ernie Davis being unveiled at halftime - what are those Mountaineers and Cardinals and Scarlet Knights and Hawkeyes and Bulls (South Florida edition) going to do?
Heck, what havoc might those other Bulls, the ones from Buffalo, wreak?
It's only the first day of September, sure. But having seen the ugliness that was there to be seen beneath the bubble on the last day of August, it's not too early to fret. Thirty-point defeats, following bold talk of improvement by coaches and players, can do that to a town. And the football portion of ours has to be clearly shaken on this morning.
"It's a hard loss," admitted Robinson, who dropped to 5-19 on the Orange bridge and was as ashen-faced as a man of his perennial tan can be. "There's no doubt about it. Our expectations were higher than that. I think we can play better than that. But was is, is.
"I'm not going to sit here and tell you I was considering getting beat by a bunch. I knew that we could get beat. I think there are no guarantees, winning and losing. But I would have liked to have seen a better performance than what I saw."
What he saw would have been better viewed through cracked fingers. SU's offensive line yielded seven sacks of poor Andrew Robinson, the sophomore quarterback in his first-ever college start, and opened up slivers, not holes, through which the Orange gained eight - e-i-g-h-t - net yards of rushing. Meanwhile, the Syracuse defense yielded 380 yards on five successive Washington possessions (or an average of 76 yards per), a collapse that was as stunning as it was nearly inconceivable.
And it left more than a few of the chin-strapped locals reeling.
"I want to believe we have a good group of guys and we're going to keep going," said Fields, the senior safety. "But right now, it's tough. We've been working so long for this moment. To be on national TV . . . and this happens? We definitely didn't see this coming. This is going to eat me up."
Like he's breaded and lying next to some linguine.
One meal down (and badly) . . . 11 to go.
Bud Poliquin can be reached at 470-2213 or bpoliquin@syracuse.com.
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