Don’t blame it on fatigue. Exhaustion wasn’t the reason Minnesota kept the chains moving at the end of the fourth quarter. Not after all the wind sprints at dawn in the offseason.

‘We weren’t tired at all,’ linebacker Ryan Gillum said. ‘With all the training we’ve done, we were fine.’

Execution was another story. After stifling Minnesota most of the day, the Syracuse defense couldn’t get off the field when it mattered most. Leading, 20-17, the Orange surrendered a 14-play, 79-yard drive in the waning moments of the fourth quarter. Minnesota kicked a field goal. The game went to overtime. The rest is history.

Along the 14-play escapade, Syracuse had several opportunities to slam the door on a Minnesota comeback. Instead, the Gophers matriculated downfield with cold-blooded precision. What began at their own 12-yard line with 4:45 left, ended with a 26-yard Eric Ellestad field goal with less than a minute to go.

On Minnesota’s previous two drives, Syracuse rose to the occasion. Minnesota drove 50 yards each time and stalled. On the first, SU’s Brandon Sharpe sacked Gopher quarterback Adam Weber and forced a fumble that was recovered by Derrell Smith. On the second, Ellestad’s field goal attempt was partially deflected and fell well short.

The drive-killing, momentum-swinging plays stopped there for the Orange.

‘We couldn’t make a play,’ Marrone said. ‘We just couldn’t make a play. That’s all I kept saying on the sideline.’

Marrone suspected this back-and-forth thriller would boil down to third downs. At halftime, he told his team exactly that.

Syracuse’s offense continued to fizzle on third down (1-of-12 for the game), and Minnesota wasn’t much better (5-of-17). But two of those five Minnesota attempts came with the game on the line.

On two do-or-die 3rd-and-4 plays in that numbing 14-play marathon, Weber zipped the ball to wide receiver Brandon Green for a first down. Both hookups – one at Minnesota’s own 18-yard line and the other at its 34 – were slant passes in which Green sliced inside of SU’s Nico Scott for a quick catch.

Each time, the booming Carrier Dome crowd rose to its feet. And each time, Weber silenced them, keeping Minnesota’s head above water. Weber remembers being a kid, watching Minnesota wither away in games like these. Succeeding in the furnace of this raucous, domed environment was a pleasant change.

‘Growing up watching games like that, many times the Gophers struggled to win games like that,’ Weber said. ‘It’s fun now, going into my fourth year being a part of the program, seeing that change, seeing that confidence. We found a way to win.’

The decisive drive was a black eye on an overall solid game for the Syracuse defense. A unit that finished 101st in the country last season bottled up Minnesota’s firepower early on. Eric Decker, the Gophers’ dynamite 6-foot-2 receiver, was held to only one reception in the first half. New faces like Gillum (six tackles, two for loss) and Sharpe clearly added some punch to the SU defense.

‘Defensively, I thought we hung in there very well,’ Marrone said. ‘Decker had one catch in the first half, we had the time of possession, and we had some turnovers.’

And then, the Gophers made adjustments. In the second half, Decker heated up. The senior wideout single-handedly extended drives, finishing with nine receptions for 183 yards.

Minnesota, at times, schemed their star receiver into man coverage – a near impossible proposition for Syracuse. Other times, Decker made circus catches, plucking the ball over the head of an SU defender on one play. During that decisive, backbreaking 14-play drive, Decker caught three passes for 37 yards.

In a game loaded with strange bounces, official reviews, high snaps and a Duke point guard playing quarterback, the outcome ultimately came down to one drive.

‘Going through that last drive, I didn’t feel any pressure,’ Weber said. ‘We knew that if we keep moving the ball, if we do our jobs, we would be able to put ourselves in that position.’

thdunne@syr.edu

Published on September 7, 2009 at 12:00 pm