Justin Pugh felt he personally let his teammates down. Ryan Nassib said there was a direct correlation between his play and Syracuse’s. Doug Marrone claimed SU’s 23-6 loss to Connecticut was his fault.

They all put the blame on themselves in a loss that resulted from startling mistakes from the Orange on offense, defense and even special teams. But in a game where each unit slipped up at the most inopportune times, Antwon Bailey summed up how the entire team attributed the loss.

‘It was us,’ Bailey said.

Us, as in the Orange’s three units all making simple, costly errors. Marrone has preached the importance of the ‘little things’ this season, and that is exactly where SU failed in its loss to UConn. From fumbles at the doorstep of the Husky endzone, to costly defensive penalties to an immaculate interception, Syracuse didn’t do the ‘little things’ Saturday in the Carrier Dome.

It was a loss where, without the mounting errors of every unit, the game would have been much closer.

It all wouldn’t have piled on.

‘Dropped passes, missed blocks, missed hot reads,’ Pugh said, ‘just all of these things adding up.’

The pent-up frustration began with the first quirky mistake. It came because of a Nassib pass at the knee of SU tight end Nick Provo. With the Orange trailing 7-3 at the 2:30 mark of the second quarter, the errant pass deflected off Provo’s knee into the waiting hands of Reyes. Instead of continuing a half-ending drive to tie or take the lead, the deflection led to another Husky field goal. But more so, it led to the brewing frustration.

Case in point: At the end of the half, Pugh jawed with several UConn players after Nassib was sacked. The trash-talking occurred while Marrone sprinted onto the field. The coach did so to catch up with SU left tackle Michael Hay and ream him out for the missed block that led to the sack. After letting off the fumes, Marrone kneeled over with his hands on his knees, staring at the turf for 10 seconds, before jetting for the locker room.

Meanwhile, Pugh exchanged the words that, after the game, he said were all for naught.

‘It’s an emotional game, so I kind of got caught up in it,’ Pugh said. ‘I guess they can talk now, because we didn’t come out and do much.’

Marrone chalked up the performance not to emotion, but execution. He refused to call the loss the most frustrating game of the year. The fact that SU didn’t score a touchdown despite having three more first downs than UConn didn’t matter. The only reason for the frustration was because it was another loss. Everybody felt it.

‘I think there is a level of frustration in all of us,’ Marrone said. ‘What you do with that level of frustration, if it becomes overwhelming, then you can have some issues.’

In the second half, those issues reached new lows on select plays. The quirkiness continued as Reyes forced a Nassib fumble which was recovered by the Huskies at the SU four-yard line. With UConn up 10-6 at the 1:31 mark of the third quarter, the game was in the balance. It then rested on a crew that hadn’t failed all day: the defense. Doug Hogue and the unit then trotted onto the field to try to make a big stop again. From the sidelines, SU linebackers coach Dan Conley flexed his biceps in order to send in the signal for the goal line defense.

But it wasn’t about brawn on this day for Syracuse. Rather, a lack of brains at times. SU defensive tackle Jay Bromley was whistled for an offsides — one of nine SU penalties — that put the ball on the two. A play later, Jordan Todman was in the endzone.

From there, it unraveled further. The reliable punter who gave SU its biggest offensive play of the game (thanks to a 36-yard SU gain when UConn’s Nick Williams fumbled on a punt return) soon failed too. Rob Long shanked a 14-yard punt. The specialists were in on the little mistakes as well.

And the ‘we’, not the ‘I’, had to take the brunt of the blame.

Said Pugh: ‘That’s not how we should be playing football.’

aolivero@syr.edu

Published on November 20, 2010 at 12:00 pm