Questions from a Syracuse fan

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rawphenomenon said:
In response to your question, we probably don't have strong feelings like the Marquette fan you are referencing. We always complain about being a fruit/color/whatever it is that we are nowadays, but going from Orangemen to the non-gender specific Orange is a somewhat seamless transition. Our favorite cheer (Let's go Orange Men [Clap clap, clap clap clap]) was changed to defy the laws of Webster to make Orange into a disyllabic word (Let's go Orrrrr Ange [Clap clap, clap clap clap]). We always take delight when an opposing fan refers to us as the Orangemen though, often looking back to a buddy and saying, "See this guy gets it". That's not to say we don't complain, because we complain about most of everything. I never realized we did until I lived elsewhere and heard people say such foreign phrases as, "The other team just played better than us today".
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I'm an ignoramus. I had no clue the name was OFFICIALLY changed to the Orange from Orangemen. I just thought it was a shortened nickname rather than an official name change.
 

What are your guy's thoughts on the realignment for the Big Ten? Going way back I think Penn State was a great addition for you guys, although they have dropped off recently from their pinnacle in the 80s. Also that scandal is absolutely despicable and we were hearing rumors about the Big Ten possibly showing them the door, although that appears to have been nothing more than fan speculation.

I thought Nebraska was a great addition too, and fits the style/tradition of the Big Ten. Maryland is a good quality academic institution, very large student body, and decent (albeit broke) athletic department. They are a bit too eastern for my liking but other than that, they are a solid addition. Rutgers however just seems like a mistake in all regards. That move seemed to be a bit too reactionary by Delaney to the Notre Dame affiliation with the ACC. They just seem like another mouth to feed and dilute the brand. It's like parking a Daewoo in a garage with a Lamborghini, Ferrari, and a Bugatti. I would've rather seen the Big Ten pick up Missouri. The big fish would have been Texas and I could've seen that happening if Deloss Dodds would've agreed to equal revenue sharing.

When I lived in Iowa, a bunch of the people I met there were hoping that the Big Ten would add Syracuse. It seemed logical given the geographic footprint of the conference, but Syracuse didn't fit the profile of a Big Ten school.
  • Smaller student body (was around 9-10k at the time)
  • Not a big research institution
  • Private nonsectarian school
  • Student body full of people from the east coast

Basically, if you had to redo it all and had your pick of the litter, what would you have done? Stay at 11? Add Notre Dame to get to 12? Kick out Wisconsin?
 



rawphenomenon said:
What are your guy's thoughts on the realignment for the Big Ten? Going way back I think Penn State was a great addition for you guys, although they have dropped off recently from their pinnacle in the 80s. Also that scandal is absolutely despicable and we were hearing rumors about the Big Ten possibly showing them the door, although that appears to have been nothing more than fan speculation.

I thought Nebraska was a great addition too, and fits the style/tradition of the Big Ten. Maryland is a good quality academic institution, very large student body, and decent (albeit broke) athletic department. They are a bit too eastern for my liking but other than that, they are a solid addition. Rutgers however just seems like a mistake in all regards. That move seemed to be a bit too reactionary by Delaney to the Notre Dame affiliation with the ACC. They just seem like another mouth to feed and dilute the brand. It's like parking a Daewoo in a garage with a Lamborghini, Ferrari, and a Bugatti. I would've rather seen the Big Ten pick up Missouri. The big fish would have been Texas and I could've seen that happening if Deloss Dodds would've agreed to equal revenue sharing.

When I lived in Iowa, a bunch of the people I met there were hoping that the Big Ten would add Syracuse. It seemed logical given the geographic footprint of the conference, but Syracuse didn't fit the profile of a Big Ten school.
  • Smaller student body (was around 9-10k at the time)
  • Not a big research institution
  • Private nonsectarian school
  • Student body full of people from the east coast

Basically, if you had to redo it all and had your pick of the litter, what would you have done? Stay at 11? Add Notre Dame to get to 12? Kick out Wisconsin?
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I'm in the minority, but I like the additions of Maryland and Rutgers. Mostly because it's new/fresh and it fixes the conference alignment (we are going from Leaders/Legends division names to East/West). Also I like it because it keeps Notre Dame out of the conference (while would be a nice/common sense addition, I'm turned off by their lust for independence status for football) and keeps the conference ahead of the 'SuperConference' curve.

If I had to redo it all, ideally I would have stayed at 12, just changed the division alignments to be based on geographic location rather than keeping Michigan/OSU separate.

rawphenomenon said:
And by the way, what is the Skiumah I keep seeing?
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Ski-U-Mah is our chant. "Ski" (pronounced SKY) is a Native American (I think Souix) battle cry/cheer. "U-Mah" is shortened "University of Minnesota". Shortened that way so it rhymes with 'Rah!'.
 


This from Wikipedia does a good job of explaining things.
Ski-U-Mah (pronounced sky-you-ma) is a slogan used at the University of Minnesota since 1894.

U of M Rugby captain John Adams who coined the phrase in 1884, had heard Sioux boys yell "ski-yoo!" when they won canoe races on Lake Pepin. He took that as the Sioux word for victory, or exultation. A co-captain added the "mah" to make it rhyme with "rah" and created "Ski-U-Mah!"

Dakota–Lakota specialists state that the word "Ski-U" or "Ski-yoo" or "Ski-oo" are not Sioux victory cries or the Sioux word for winning and that what the boys heard that day "Ski-yoo" may have just been a nonverbal exclamation, the way we now yell "Whoo-hoo!" when we have reason to celebrate something.[1]

Other possibilities that they may have heard that day are:

"Schkee ooh poh!" or "Scheee ooh!" Scheeh/scheen-shay = Try Hard "Oh-hee-yah" = To win "Oh-hee-un-yum, oh-hee-oohn-yum," = We won

The above words may have sounded similar to a person unfamiliar with the language and or at a distance and misheard what was said.

In the mid-20th century, Ski-U-Mah (magazine) was a U of M humor magazine.

The wording is used as the name of a meeting room at the McNamara Alumni Center and of a campus tailgate lot/parking lot near the TCF Bank Stadium, and as the title of a yearbook-style publication published by the Minnesota Daily. It is also part of the lyrics of the "Minnesota Rouser", "Go Gopher Victory", "Minnesota Fight" and "Minnesota March".

Starting with the 2012/13 football season, Ski-U-Mah will be placed on the rear bumper of the team's helmets, as well as sewn onto the interior of the jersey near the neck area.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ski-U-Mah_(slogan)
 

I'm ok with the additions of Maryland and Rutgers, because their additions were about more than athletics and fan bases, but otherwise I would have rather stuck with 12, or even stuck with 10 if I could start over totally. I've gotten used to PSU though I guess, and so the addition of Nebraska was a very natural fit. Missouri would have been an ok addition, but I wanted Nebraska over Missouri, despite Missouri's recent performances. I still don't believe they would have been the better fit in our conference and I know the arguments behind Texas, but no! And absolutely not to Notre Dame, I was very pleased that ND never made it into the conf!

And as much as we Gopher fans all hate Wisconsin, I personally would never want them anywhere but in the Big Ten.


And if we expand anymore, its hard to imagine who else I'd want, but if it was definitely going to happen, I just hope they are a decent fit.
 

^ I agree. TX is poison and F the f-ing 'lil elves of ND and that dump called south bend. ND is is way over rated and do not belong anywhere near our conference. Besides, we already have two schools from that State.
 

since someone brought up Norwegian humor:

Ole, Lena and Sven went to the tavern. After a while, Ole was 3 sheets to the wind, and passed out on the bar. Sven and Lena started makin' eyes at each other, and they went out and climbed into the back seat of Ole's car.
Then, Ole came to, staggered out to the parking lot, looked into the back seat of his car, and saw Sven and Lena going at it. Ole went back into the bar, sat down and he laughed and laughed and laughed. The bartender said "Ole, what you laughing at? Sven is out in your car doin' it with your wife!" And Ole laughed again and said, "Oh that Sven - he's so drunk, he thinks he's me!"
 



From what I've picked up from talking to you guys and reading your forum is that your team is strikingly similar to mine. Let me know if I'm off with any of these:

  1. Your QB's accuracy is hit or miss but he can beat you with his feet if the opportunity presents itself
  2. Your rush game is your strength and when you stick to it, you generally win ball games
  3. Your receivers are serviceable but have difficulty getting separation
  4. Your offensive line does a pretty good job getting the push on running plays and generally wears down defenses later in games
  5. You can't do well if you get behind early because you don't have the ability to score quickly
  6. Other than your stud defensive tackle, who is quite the stud, the rest of your line is unremarkable and don't get penetration too often
  7. Your better cornerbacks are/were injured early in the season
  8. Your linebackers are a solid unit
  9. You have a history of getting skipped over for better bowls because you don't travel well
  10. You played for a long time in a domed stadium
  11. Your glory years were from 50 years ago
  12. A large amount of your fans were offended by our message board and have responded in turn
  13. You haven't seen us play much because we aren't on TV where you live
  14. The general consensus among your fans is that our conference is overrated
  15. You are sick of the SEC, convinced that they cheat and get away with it, and you want them to lose all their bowl games
  16. Your team really hit it's stride toward the end of the season

That is just what I've gleaned from reading various posts. Now the reason why I posted that is because each one of those statement's are 100% true for Syracuse. Our teams are strangely similar in so many regards. Here is what I've figured out to be the differences

  1. Your players don't commit penalties. Ours do by the boatload.
  2. Your team doesn't commit many turnovers. Once again, ours does (or at least they have earlier in the season).
  3. We do have one stud linebacker (Marquis Spruill). I didn't get the feeling that you did
  4. You have confidence in your coaches ability to run their gameplan and call the correct plays. We have doubts in ours.

And these are the things that I couldn't quite figure out.
  • How is your kicker? Do you have confidence in him? I remember you guys missing a bunch of kicks last year. Our starting kicker got injured for the year before the season even began. The backup had a run in with police (public drunkenness and then police confrontation where he pushed an officer and then took off up the street). We lost the Pitt game on account of our kicking woes. From within 35 yards or so, he is decent but from 35-45 it's a crap shoot. I don't think he's made one from longer.
  • How is your safety play? Ours bite on playaction like crazy. When we sold out to stop the BC rush, they eventually started burning us with huge playaction shots down the middle of the field.
  • How well do you guys do against mobile quarterbacks? We gave up close to 100 yards against BC's qb, who isn't mobile by any stretch. I remember NC State's running on us too. Taj Boyd as well.
  • Our punter is pretty good. He seems to do that running to the side while punting that a lot of guys have been doing lately.
  • How are your return men? On our kick returns, our guys ALWAYS run it out of the end zone and they NEVER get to the 25. Drives me crazy and makes no sense. Does your kickoff guy put it into the endzone? (ours doesn't). As far as the punt returns, we have one guy (Desir) that always calls fair catch. He fields most of our punts (90%) and will likely do it in the bowl. Although we have a little guy from Florida (Estime) that has returned a few and had huge gains on them
 

when you hear the students and others yell WHO HATES IOWA? WE HATE IOWA!

rawphenomenon said:
From what I've picked up from talking to you guys and reading your forum is that your team is strikingly similar to mine. Let me know if I'm off with any of these:
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Sorry for not sticking to the questions at hand but wanted to give you further perspective on our feelings towards Iowa fans. Iowa fans stormed the Metrodome field after beating the Gophers in 2002 and tore down the goal posts, all while proclaiming they were at Kinnick North. Class act, I know. In 2008 two Iowa fans met at the game and fornicated in the men's rest room. Another class act. The woman claimed she didn't even know the man's name. The woman's husband was not pleased. So if you hear the chant WHO HATES IOWA? WE HATE IOWA! you have a perspective of our love affair with the Hawkeyes.
 

rawphenomenon said:
From what I've picked up from talking to you guys and reading your forum is that your team is strikingly similar to mine. Let me know if I'm off with any of these:

  1. Your QB's accuracy is hit or miss but he can beat you with his feet if the opportunity presents itself
  2. Your rush game is your strength and when you stick to it, you generally win ball games
  3. Your receivers are serviceable but have difficulty getting separation
  4. Your offensive line does a pretty good job getting the push on running plays and generally wears down defenses later in games
  5. You can't do well if you get behind early because you don't have the ability to score quickly
  6. Other than your stud defensive tackle, who is quite the stud, the rest of your line is unremarkable and don't get penetration too often
  7. Your better cornerbacks are/were injured early in the season
  8. Your linebackers are a solid unit
  9. You have a history of getting skipped over for better bowls because you don't travel well
  10. You played for a long time in a domed stadium
  11. Your glory years were from 50 years ago
  12. A large amount of your fans were offended by our message board and have responded in turn
  13. You haven't seen us play much because we aren't on TV where you live
  14. The general consensus among your fans is that our conference is overrated
  15. You are sick of the SEC, convinced that they cheat and get away with it, and you want them to lose all their bowl games
  16. Your team really hit it's stride toward the end of the season

That is just what I've gleaned from reading various posts. Now the reason why I posted that is because each one of those statement's are 100% true for Syracuse. Our teams are strangely similar in so many regards. Here is what I've figured out to be the differences

  1. Your players don't commit penalties. Ours do by the boatload.
  2. Your team doesn't commit many turnovers. Once again, ours does (or at least they have earlier in the season).
  3. We do have one stud linebacker (Marquis Spruill). I didn't get the feeling that you did
  4. You have confidence in your coaches ability to run their gameplan and call the correct plays. We have doubts in ours.

And these are the things that I couldn't quite figure out.
  • How is your kicker? Do you have confidence in him? I remember you guys missing a bunch of kicks last year. Our starting kicker got injured for the year before the season even began. The backup had a run in with police (public drunkenness and then police confrontation where he pushed an officer and then took off up the street). We lost the Pitt game on account of our kicking woes. From within 35 yards or so, he is decent but from 35-45 it's a crap shoot. I don't think he's made one from longer.
  • How is your safety play? Ours bite on playaction like crazy. When we sold out to stop the BC rush, they eventually started burning us with huge playaction shots down the middle of the field.
  • How well do you guys do against mobile quarterbacks? We gave up close to 100 yards against BC's qb, who isn't mobile by any stretch. I remember NC State's running on us too. Taj Boyd as well.
  • Our punter is pretty good. He seems to do that running to the side while punting that a lot of guys have been doing lately.
  • How are your return men? On our kick returns, our guys ALWAYS run it out of the end zone and they NEVER get to the 25. Drives me crazy and makes no sense. Does your kickoff guy put it into the endzone? (ours doesn't). As far as the punt returns, we have one guy (Desir) that always calls fair catch. He fields most of our punts (90%) and will likely do it in the bowl. Although we have a little guy from Florida (Estime) that has returned a few and had huge gains on them
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Top 5 post of the year. Maybe higher...I don't track this.
 

Lot to address. The Gophs special teams have been damn good all year. Covering kicks and punts has been excellent. The punter is good. The kicker is solid, although he missed an easy one at MSU. Marcus Jones is the primary kick returner, he has run a couple back for scores. He returns punts too since Engel got hurt, but he can be a liability in figuring out when to catch a punt or let it go. Special teams is where I see the Gophers having their biggest advantage.

The defense, aside from Hageman is just solid. They aren't flashy, but they are good. Shane Vereen's little brother, Brock, moved from safety to corner and is the glue that holds everything together. The other starting corner is Murray. He is a soph. and still learning the position, but he will play on Sundays. The offense hit its stride in late October, but has regressed. The defense is still improving and has played better each week.
 



rawphenomenon said:
And these are the things that I couldn't quite figure out.
  • How is your kicker? Do you have confidence in him? I remember you guys missing a bunch of kicks last year. Our starting kicker got injured for the year before the season even began. The backup had a run in with police (public drunkenness and then police confrontation where he pushed an officer and then took off up the street). We lost the Pitt game on account of our kicking woes. From within 35 yards or so, he is decent but from 35-45 it's a crap shoot. I don't think he's made one from longer.
  • How is your safety play? Ours bite on playaction like crazy. When we sold out to stop the BC rush, they eventually started burning us with huge playaction shots down the middle of the field.
  • How well do you guys do against mobile quarterbacks? We gave up close to 100 yards against BC's qb, who isn't mobile by any stretch. I remember NC State's running on us too. Taj Boyd as well.
  • Our punter is pretty good. He seems to do that running to the side while punting that a lot of guys have been doing lately.
  • How are your return men? On our kick returns, our guys ALWAYS run it out of the end zone and they NEVER get to the 25. Drives me crazy and makes no sense. Does your kickoff guy put it into the endzone? (ours doesn't). As far as the punt returns, we have one guy (Desir) that always calls fair catch. He fields most of our punts (90%) and will likely do it in the bowl. Although we have a little guy from Florida (Estime) that has returned a few and had huge gains on them
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Our kicker has been pretty good from short to midrange, though he missed a crucial one late in the season (I think against MSU). I might be wrong, but I don't remember him drilling any really long ones this year, but from 45 and in, I'm not afraid to see us line up and kick it.

Our safeties have been solid, though as was discussed earlier, they don't seem to look back for the ball. Pretty disciplined so I am not worried about biting on play action.

We shut down Taylor Martinez, but it sounds like he was recovering a bit from an injury. Its been a while since the Michigan game, but I don't feel like Gardiner beat us with his legs (I could be wrong on this one though).

Our punter has done a great job of pinning guys back inside the ten this year.

Our return men have been pretty good, though we have one punt returner who had a bad habit of letting balls outside the ten land and roll to get downed inside our five.
 

-rawphenomenon - it's like you read my mind. You are perceptive and ask good questions. Your insights are appreciated.
 

Honestly our defense has got better as the season went on. They physically dominated the Badgers, held them way under their rushing average. Gave Michigan State all they could handle. The key to the offense is being able to run. i am not down on nelson as much as some others. he missed some big throws, but he was a key part of us winning 4 Big 10 games in a row.
 

rawphenomenon said:
From what I've picked up from talking to you guys and reading your forum is that your team is strikingly similar to mine. Let me know if I'm off with any of these:

[*]Other than your stud defensive tackle, who is quite the stud, the rest of your line is unremarkable and don't get penetration too often
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Disagree with this. DE Cockran was second team All-Big Ten, had ten tackles for loss and led the team with 7.5 sacks. May not be quite as elite as Hageman but is still someone that can do damage. Even more dangerous when teams divert extra attention to stopping Hageman.
 

So in summation:

Your run game is your strength. Our rush defense is our strength.
Our run game is our strength. Your rush defense is your strength.
Your QB doesn't win games with his arm. Neither does ours.
Your offensive line is solid. The left side or ours is solid.
You have a great punter. We have a great punter.
Your kicker is decent. Ours is 47ahdhI.jpg
Your safeties don't look for the ball. Ours look too much.
Your team can't come from behind. Neither can ours.
You don't commit penalties. We commit to making them.
You take care of the ball. We are careless with the ball.
You don't force a lot of turnovers. We force a bit.
You have great returners. Ours are 47ahdhI.jpg


It seems like we have another grueling 17-10 game in the making. The things I remember from last year's game are:
  1. You guys shortened the game by eating a lot of clock from the beginning, thus limiting our total possessions. It seems that Big Ten teams employ the same strategy in basketball.
  2. Your defensive line wasn't flashy but were extremely effective in wearing down our offense. Very physical unit
  3. You executed the field position game to perfection. I remember our teams exchanging punts quite a bit, and if memory serves, we were always on the long side of the field relative to you guys.

One thing I just realized that I find interesting is that of the first 14 bowls, only one features two BCS teams squaring off: ours. It should be a good game and fun to watch.
 

rawphenomenon said:
So in summation:

Your run game is your strength. Our rush defense is our strength.
Our run game is our strength. Your rush defense is your strength.
Your QB doesn't win games with his arm. Neither does ours.
Your offensive line is solid. The left side or ours is solid.
You have a great punter. We have a great punter.
Your kicker is decent. Ours is View attachment 2458
Your safeties don't look for the ball. Ours look too much.
Your team can't come from behind. Neither can ours.
You don't commit penalties. We commit to making them.
You take care of the ball. We are careless with the ball.
You don't force a lot of turnovers. We force a bit.
You have great returners. Ours are View attachment 2458


It seems like we have another grueling 17-10 game in the making. The things I remember from last year's game are:
  1. You guys shortened the game by eating a lot of clock from the beginning, thus limiting our total possessions. It seems that Big Ten teams employ the same strategy in basketball.
  2. Your defensive line wasn't flashy but were extremely effective in wearing down our offense. Very physical unit
  3. You executed the field position game to perfection. I remember our teams exchanging punts quite a bit, and if memory serves, we were always on the long side of the field relative to you guys.

One thing I just realized that I find interesting is that of the first 14 bowls, only one features two BCS teams squaring off: ours. It should be a good game and fun to watch.
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I always enjoy sensible conversation with opposing fans leading up to games; thank you for providing that! It's a breath of fresh air after sifting through some of the comments on syracusefan.com, though I'm sure you feel the same way about this board (I tend to think some of the people here are overconfident about this game, but that's an opinion).

The only things I would not agree with wholeheartedly about this post of yours is that our defense does not seem to have a real strength nor a real weakness - we're solid in all facets. I also would not say that we have great returners; I'd say we have average returners.

Kudos on the committing penalties pun and on the bowl stat!

Also, if this hasn't been said anywhere else, I think Gopher fans are extremely confident (as I think we should be - I just think at times we might be taking it a little too far, but hopefully not!) because yes, we had an amazing, unexpected 4 Big Ten game win streak against decent opponents but also because we very much passed the eye test and were in the game in the fourth quarter against both Wisconsin and MSU, though we didn't play tremendous games - we turned the ball over multiple times in both games. There just wasn't a whole lot other than receivers separating us from those teams, at least physically. And that was seen by fans and media alike. That being said, if we don't play to the same level that we've been at in the past 6 games, I think we could be in trouble against you guys.
 

I agree with AEmerson40. The only thing that I would add, is that I do think we can come from behind. We were down by 10 in the first quarter against Nebraska and ended up wining by 11.
 

RawPhenomenon, enjoy reading your posts. Are you part of the Cuse coaching staff?

The Gophers have struggled with hurry up offense. I have to think that is one of the things that is getting some work during the bowl practices. I think the coaches really wanted the players to be fluid in the basic offense first, but I hope that we will see some kind of no huddle/hurry if the situation calls for it.

I would rate the Gophers LB core as a strength. Two very solid seniors in Hill and Manuel (outside)and a very good junior in Wilson (middle).

Would you saw that the future is bright for the Orange? How has attendance been the past few years?
 

vagopher said:
I agree with AEmerson40. The only thing that I would add, is that I do think we can come from behind. We were down by 10 in the first quarter against Nebraska and ended up wining by 11.
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The Gophers trailed UNLV, Northwestern, Nebraska, and Indiana and came back to win each of those games.

Several things that are probably lost on most of the Cuse fans if they are looking at the box scores, particularly of the last two games for the Gophers;

> The brutal weather conditions in the Wisky game was obviously a MAJOR factor impacting the offensive futility, for both teams probably

> Wisky and MSU are ranked #6 and #1 in the nation, respectively, in both Total Defense and Rush Defense.

> Along with losing starting C Christenson midway through the season, the Gophers were also missing 3-yr starting OG Caleb Bak for the last two games. It sounds like there's a decent chance he'll be back for the bowl game, recovering from a concussion. Foster Bush filled in relatively well, but there's a major difference between a JR who has started MANY games and a RS SO essentially seeing his first action, against the best defenses in the Big Ten.

I slightly disagree with the notion that the Gophers can't pass, if they need to, in order to win. Indiana has a bad, bad defense but Nelson passing for 298 yards, on the ROAD, including engineering a come-from-behind drive to score the winning TD could hardly be described as complete passing ineptitude. Indiana's defense may be bad, but let's be honest, I doubt they were much worse than a few of those ACC defenses.

Nelson's Big Ten stats include an Iowa game he shouldn't have played in because he was still banged up, and playing the last two games without Engel and Bak in the lineup, in less than ideal conditions.

I'd be shocked if Nelson doesn't come up big in Houston, especially against that defense.
 

I've seen a few Syracuse fans try to make the argument that UMn is a totally one dimensional team.

Funny, against PSU the Gophers passed for similar yardage as they ran for. Against Indiana they passed for 70-80 yards more than they ran for and they ran for almost 250 yards. 17 completions out of 26 attempts isn't incredible, but its not horrible, either. In the W Ill game, our 2 QBs combined for 10 completions in 12 attempts which is as much of a reflection of how good the competition was, granted. Same can be said about the NW game, where we completed 9 of 14 pass attempts, not spectacular, but not bad either. We had similar passing yardage as rushing yardage in the Michigan game. What skews the stats is that we mostly stuck to running the ball after we got leads in our first 4 games vs inferior opponents. Another thing that Syracuse fans haven't figured out is that Cobb was not our featured running back for the first half of the season. So they look at his having just over 1000 yards and incorrectly assume that he's not all that special. He had just one 100 yard game out of the first 6 games, but he got five 100 yard games out his last 6 games. He only got the 3rd best rushing yards on the team in 3 of those first 6 games. Yet the team as a whole had 2 games with over 200 yards and 2 games with over 300 yards. Had he been the featured runner in those games, he might have over 1600 yards right now and be ranked among the Top 10 rushers in the nation?


And Syracuse didn't so much as stop Williams, as he got injured and didn't finish the game.


It will be interesting to see which players will be playing in the bowl game that weren't playing for both teams towards the end of the season?
 

PartoPitinosPosse said:
I've seen a few Syracuse fans try to make the argument that UMn is a totally one dimensional team.
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It's not just Syracuse fans, most of the analysts have commented similarly over the last month of the season.

When you have the 116th ranked passing offense vs the 34th ranked rushing offense it's hard to argue.
 

WorkingMyTailOff said:
The Gophers have struggled with hurry up offense. I have to think that is one of the things that is getting some work during the bowl practices. I think the coaches really wanted the players to be fluid in the basic offense first, but I hope that we will see some kind of no huddle/hurry if the situation calls for it.
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Syracuse (probably like most teams) does appear to be discombobulated when the other team runs the hurry-up. Clemson did it against us and it was nuts. It seems like our guys do a slow, tentative blitz when the other team does a hurry up. A screen pass to bunched wide receivers would work wonders against us.

WorkingMyTailOff said:
Would you saw that the future is bright for the Orange? How has attendance been the past few years?
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I don't know if our future is bright. I'd like to think so. I was optimistic with Doug Marrone. He was a once in a generation coach for a program. And then he left. But realistically, it's going to be very difficult. Being in a division with Florida State, Clemson, and Louisville will be very tough. Plus we have a tendency to schedule very difficult out of conference. Typically one reach game (USC, Penn State, Notre Dame). One good BCS team (Northwestern, Minnesota, Iowa). One smaller D-1 school (CMU, Tulane). And then one FCS. Not exactly a recipe for success. As far as attendance goes, CNYers (like anyplace I imagine) like a winner. The Dome was packed all through the 90s but rarely lately. It was packed this year for Clemson. It was packed in 2009 for the Minnesota game. Maybe a few years before that before the last time it was packed. It's really a catch-22. If we schedule tough opponents to start off a year, we often lose, and then fans say, "This team isn't any good" and they don't show up. If we schedule weak opponents, the fans say "I'm not going to these games against nobodys", and they don't show up.

Ogee Oglethorpe said:
Along with losing starting C Christenson midway through the season, the Gophers were also missing 3-yr starting OG Caleb Bak for the last two games. It sounds like there's a decent chance he'll be back for the bowl game, recovering from a concussion. Foster Bush filled in relatively well, but there's a major difference between a JR who has started MANY games and a RS SO essentially seeing his first action, against the best defenses in the Big Ten.
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You guys lost your center? That's one of the worst positions to lose a guy. The backup center is just a fumble waiting to happen. We've had the same center for 4 years. He was greatly disparaged by the fan base and turned out to be decent. But he got injured a few games back and went out for a play. The backup comes in and instant high snap fumble. Then I realized the importance of the guy at that position.

vagopher said:
I agree with AEmerson40. The only thing that I would add, is that I do think we can come from behind. We were down by 10 in the first quarter against Nebraska and ended up wining by 11.
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Good to know. I just based my statements on what I read here. Some people were saying that you guys were in trouble if you went down by a few

PartoPitinosPosse said:
And Syracuse didn't so much as stop Williams, as he got injured and didn't finish the game.
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100% false. Williams had 29 yards through 3 quarters (90% of which he got on one carry) before he was taken out. The Syracuse defense sells out to make big hits. There is a lot of missed tackles because of it. But because of this they injure a lot of players. Williams got injured for the game. Campanero, Wake Forest's best player got injured for the season. Sammy Watkins got injured for the game. NC State had a ton of guys injured.
 

rawphenomenon said:
You guys lost your center? That's one of the worst positions to lose a guy. The backup center is just a fumble waiting to happen. We've had the same center for 4 years. He was greatly disparaged by the fan base and turned out to be decent. But he got injured a few games back and went out for a play. The backup comes in and instant high snap fumble. Then I realized the importance of the guy at that position.
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The guy filling in for the center has filled in relatively well, especially for not playing the position before for the Gophers, as he was an OG previously. I don't know how he's done from the perspective of calling out the blocking schemes at the line but at the very least there has been really no snap issues, which is surprising.

Hopefully the starting LG, Bak, who missed the Wisky and MSU games with an apparent minor concussion, will be back for the bowl game. His backup, Bush, is promising but had virtually no B1G experience prior to. Being thrown in against the leagues two best defenses.

My opinion; the Gopher offense isn't necessarily run first, run second 100% by choice. With a relatively young offense, they choose to shorten the game, reduce risk for the young QBs, wear teams out, etc. I really think, in reasonable conditions and when it's not below 10-15 degrees wind chill, they can throw the ball with good success. For example, against an offense like Indiana, they knew they had to score plenty of points to win and they threw the ball for 325 yards.

To me, the game plan has been very specific for each opponent and I don't expect it to be different for the bowl game. They'll put themselves in position to be successful, no doubt.
 

Yes our starting center went out but his backup came in and the offense didn't miss a beat. The biggest thing that Syracuse needs to worry about is our passing game. We have young talent that was coming on at the end of the year. Fifteen practices and nearly a month to work out informally will make a huge difference. I expect to see passing more like it was during our four game winning streak than the last two games.
 

rawphenomenon said:
100% false. Williams had 29 yards through 3 quarters (90% of which he got on one carry) before he was taken out. The Syracuse defense sells out to make big hits. There is a lot of missed tackles because of it. But because of this they injure a lot of players. Williams got injured for the game. Campanero, Wake Forest's best player got injured for the season. Sammy Watkins got injured for the game. NC State had a ton of guys injured.
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100% false? Not 50% or 75% or even 95%?? lol


I've watched a lot of football, and I've seen RBs more often than not get their biggest yards of the game in the 4th quarter. Something about the defenses getting wore down. And as for the 90% being on one carry?! lol, you've watched enough football to know that sometimes, a RB plugs away 3-6 yards at a time until he goes over 100, but often times he struggles to get 1-3 yards per carry, even gets negative yards on some plays, and then breaks for a big run. It happens alot. I'm not saying that he would have surely gone over 100 yards had he not gotten injured, its a good chance the Orange would have kept them under 100, but we just don't know, now do we?
One additional note, can you explain more in detail what you mean when you say your opponents players get injured a lot?
 

rawphenomenon said:
Syracuse (probably like most teams) does appear to be discombobulated when the other team runs the hurry-up. Clemson did it against us and it was nuts. It seems like our guys do a slow, tentative blitz when the other team does a hurry up. A screen pass to bunched wide receivers would work wonders against us.


I don't know if our future is bright. I'd like to think so. I was optimistic with Doug Marrone. He was a once in a generation coach for a program. And then he left. But realistically, it's going to be very difficult. Being in a division with Florida State, Clemson, and Louisville will be very tough. Plus we have a tendency to schedule very difficult out of conference. Typically one reach game (USC, Penn State, Notre Dame). One good BCS team (Northwestern, Minnesota, Iowa). One smaller D-1 school (CMU, Tulane). And then one FCS. Not exactly a recipe for success. As far as attendance goes, CNYers (like anyplace I imagine) like a winner. The Dome was packed all through the 90s but rarely lately. It was packed this year for Clemson. It was packed in 2009 for the Minnesota game. Maybe a few years before that before the last time it was packed. It's really a catch-22. If we schedule tough opponents to start off a year, we often lose, and then fans say, "This team isn't any good" and they don't show up. If we schedule weak opponents, the fans say "I'm not going to these games against nobodys", and they don't show up.


You guys lost your center? That's one of the worst positions to lose a guy. The backup center is just a fumble waiting to happen. We've had the same center for 4 years. He was greatly disparaged by the fan base and turned out to be decent. But he got injured a few games back and went out for a play. The backup comes in and instant high snap fumble. Then I realized the importance of the guy at that position.


Good to know. I just based my statements on what I read here. Some people were saying that you guys were in trouble if you went down by a few


100% false. Williams had 29 yards through 3 quarters (90% of which he got on one carry) before he was taken out. The Syracuse defense sells out to make big hits. There is a lot of missed tackles because of it. But because of this they injure a lot of players. Williams got injured for the game. Campanero, Wake Forest's best player got injured for the season. Sammy Watkins got injured for the game. NC State had a ton of guys injured.
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Through 3 quarters? Because this ESPN recap says he got hurt on the first play of the 3rd quarter. While Syracuse obviously did a good job on him for half the game it's certainly possible he would've had a big 2nd half.

http://scores.espn.go.com/ncf/recap?gameId=333340183
 

PartoPitinosPosse said:
100% false? Not 50% or 75% or even 95%?? lol


I've watched a lot of football, and I've seen RBs more often than not get their biggest yards of the game in the 4th quarter. Something about the defenses getting wore down. And as for the 90% being on one carry?! lol, you've watched enough football to know that sometimes, a RB plugs away 3-6 yards at a time until he goes over 100, but often times he struggles to get 1-3 yards per carry, even gets negative yards on some plays, and then breaks for a big run. It happens alot. I'm not saying that he would have surely gone over 100 yards had he not gotten injured, its a good chance the Orange would have kept them under 100, but we just don't know, now do we?
One additional note, can you explain more in detail what you mean when you say your opponents players get injured a lot?
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You've just summarized Barry Sanders' career in 3 sentences. Well done sir!
 

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