Syracuse football team gives fans reason to believe
By Bud Poliquin
September 20, 2009, 1:30AM
Well, do you believe now? Do you believe things have changed around here? Do you believe that this new sheriff in town, this Orange son named Doug Marrone, has breathed life into what had been a carcass lying on the side of the college football road?
There had been that promising effort on Opening Day against Minnesota, even if it had produced a loss. Then, there was that commendable show the following week on the road at Penn State, albeit one that resulted in another defeat. And then ... there was Saturday night. There was Saturday’s magnificent night in the Carrier Dome.
It might be a tad early, sure, to suggest that Syracuse has arrived at anything other than 1-2 in this, the maiden coaching season of Marrone, the old offensive lineman who left the NFL in December to resurrect his beloved program.
But, importantly, the Orange has won. And it has done so in the most exhilarating of fashions, upsetting the favored Northwestern Wildcats 37-34 on Ryan Lichtenstein’s 41-yard field goal at the final horn before 40,251 crazies, almost none of whom dared to prematurely leave the building as had become the sad custom in these parts.
Yes, folks, it’s true. Having lost 40 of its previous 50 games stretching back to Paul Pasqualoni’s final stand on the SU sideline at the Champs Sports Bowl, Syracuse has won. It beat the Wildcats in front of all those roarers. Beat them in a wild affair that looked like something out of the WAC. Beat them to thus give this town a reason to gaze at the rest of the autumn without quivering.
Beat them. Yeah, really.
“We talked to the players quite a bit about the mentality of going out there and making plays,” said Marrone, “and kind of getting this monkey off our back of, ‘Hey, here we go. Something (bad) might happen.’ To go out there and go down, and then come back ... it’s tremendous.”
The Orange did that, you know. It jumped out to a stunning 17-0 lead after some 14 minutes and then went dormant on defense falling behind by scores of 21-17, 28-27 and 34-27. And yet it kept playing, kept clawing, kept doing enough to stick around and stick around and stick around. Until Lichtenstein, the freshman and former walk-on, swung his right leg to set the joint on fire.
Now, given time, place and circumstance, you would err if you underestimated the grandeur of the evening. You would err greatly.
At the end of the first quarter, the SU men’s lacrosse team was honored for having won the 2009 NCAA title, and its championship banner (the school’s 10th) was unveiled. At halftime, Dick MacPherson, the dapper patriarch surrounded by a fleet of his former athletes, was saluted for having been elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. And, of course — and most importantly — there was the crafting of Marrone’s first triumph on the Orange bridge.
The latter didn’t come easily, of course. But then, who in the house would have expected that? And who really would have wanted it that way? Where would have been the theater? The memories? The stories to tell those neighbors who’d foolishly stayed home?
Turns out, there were many authors. Delone Carter ran long and hard all night, finishing with 84 yards on 18 carries. Mike Williams caught every pass tossed his way but one, completing his duties with 11 receptions for 209 yards and two scores. Arthur Jones pounded on that Northwestern wall throughout the evening. The offensive line, heretofore much maligned (and for a reason), made a stand against those beefy Wildcats. The defenders sacked the wondrous Mike Kafka, the Northwestern quarterback who completed, gulp, 35 of 42 passes for 390 yards, on five occasions.
And then, obviously, there was Greg Paulus, the kid out of Manlius who was fairly marvelous. There was Paulus, who completed 24 of his 35 tosses — some of them near magically ... like after bumping into a teammate in the backfield, righting himself and, while getting chased, finding an open receiver down field — for 346 yards and two touchdowns. There was Paulus being a star.
“I think the people who doubted Greg never met Greg,” Marrone said of the young man who was a Duke basketball player once upon a time. “It’s amazing to me. I think we take it for granted because he was such a tremendous high school player and a tremendous basketball player.
“Here’s a player who’s only been playing football for seven or eight weeks now ... and to go out in a Division I football game against a team that returned eight out of 11 starters and won nine games last year, and throw for over 300 yards is really tremendous.”
Greg’s take? Late Saturday night after he and his teammates had done the alma mater thing with the school band and then dove into the student section for hugs and hand slaps, he all but dug his toe into the ground and muttered, “Ah, shucks.”
“We won, so that’s how I judge myself,” he said. “I know that’s how quarterbacks are judged. I’ll go back to the film. I know I made a bunch of mistakes. I’ll correct that just like I’ve been correcting them each week and I’ll keep getting better, hopefully.
“It was fun. I know I tell you guys that every week. I’m having a blast. It’s good to be able to finish the deal and to close it out. Now, we’ve got to keep building, use this as momentum and not get complacent. We’ve got to get back, watch the film tomorrow. We’ll be running and lifting to get better. We’ve got to keep moving forward.”
The believers, and the line is growing, will follow.
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