Doug Marrone didn’t wait long to address what he considers matchup problems in Syracuse’s game against Louisville on Saturday.

Moving past SU’s win on the road over Cincinnati last weekend, the first thing Marrone said of Louisville in his weekly press conference Monday was that overall, the Cardinals don’t give him a comfortable feeling.

‘We’re playing a team in Louisville that I don’t feel very good about how we match up against,’ Marrone said. ‘They’re a good team with more starting experience than any team we’ve played until this point, overall, offense and defensively. We have a lot of work ahead of us.’

Marrone didn’t elaborate on the individual matchups he found worrisome. But looking at the numbers, it’s not difficult to see where potential problems lie. Syracuse’s up-and-down passing game against Louisville’s 13th-ranked pass defense in the nation. The Orange’s stout run defense against the Big East’s second-leading rusher. And SU’s overall lack of depth, which, with injuries, has bumped the team down to 55 non-specialist scholarship players, Marrone said.

It starts on offense, where the Orange has been back and forth in its passing-game performances in Big East play. Against middle-of-the-pack pass defenses nationally in Pittsburgh and South Florida, SU quarterback Ryan Nassib struggled. And against the currently sixth-ranked West Virginia pass defense, he had a game to forget despite SU’s victory — 5-for-15 for just 63 yards.

On Saturday, Nassib will line up against another top-15 pass defense in the Cardinals. But from early film study in the week, sophomore wide receiver Alec Lemon can see the flaws in the defense, just like any other team. Now it’s just a matter of the Orange taking advantage of those flaws.

‘We’re not going to approach the game any differently than we do any other game,’ Lemon said. ‘We’re going to throw the ball, run the ball. We’ve seen some weaknesses in them, and we’re going to exploit them and try to go after them.’

And exploiting those weaknesses starts in the trenches with an offensive line unit that played arguably its best game of the season at Cincinnati, giving Nassib enough time to fling first-down pass after first-down pass.

With 6.5 sacks on the season, Louisville defensive end Rodney Gnat is among the Top 25 in the nation in that category. He will line up against SU redshirt freshman Justin Pugh, who knows the key to offensive success starts with him.

‘They’re a blitzing team,’ Pugh said. ‘They bring a lot of pressure — probably the most pressure out of any of the teams we’re going to face. Sometimes we don’t always pick up the pressure. That got us in trouble last Saturday. So going into this week, our main focus is picking up pressure and picking up the blitzes.’

For the Syracuse defense, the matchup to worry about pits the nation’s No. 4 rusher in Bilal Powell against the Orange’s front seven.

SU might get a break in the matchup, as Powell could miss this weekend after leaving the Cardinals’ game against Pittsburgh in the third quarter with a knee injury. Louisville head coach Charlie Strong said Monday in the Big East coaches’ teleconference that Powell will be evaluated day-to-day this week, adding that swelling had developed in Powell’s knee.

But the Orange defense is taking that diagnosis with a grain of salt. Senior linebacker and captain Derrell Smith and the rest of his side are preparing for Powell to start in the backfield Saturday.

‘As a linebacker, we focus on a lot of the running game,’ Smith said. ‘We’re aware that they have a pretty good running back. And with a pretty good running back, most of the time you have a pretty good offensive line. So that’s definitely the main focus — just to stop the run.’

SU has excelled at its key matchups throughout the season. With USF’s B.J. Daniels. With West Virginia’s dynamic offensive weapons. And with Cincinnati’s porous defense.

With added variables Saturday against Louisville, Marrone hopes his team can come out on top again.

‘Experience, you watch them, they’re very consistent and getting better and better each week,’ Marrone said. ‘We don’t have a lot of experience, especially on the offensive side of the football, so you don’t always know what you’re going to get.’

Big East will look to expand to 10 football members

The Big East conference announced Tuesday that it will seek to expand its football membership to 10 teams, increasing from its current count of eight. All 16 members of the conference voted unanimously to expand the conference.

‘Today our board of directors affirmed a set of key strategic initiatives, including expansion, designed to enhance membership stability and maximize our value,’ Big East Commissioner John Marinatto said in a statement.

Marinatto said the conference will now begin to evaluate possible candidates for expansion. Villanova was previously linked as a school that could move up from the FCS into the Big East, as it is already a member of the conference in both men’s and women’s basketball and men’s lacrosse. The Big East told Villanova its intention to include the school in the football portion of its conference in September. Villanova is currently 6-2 on the season, ranked third in the FCS coaches’ poll.

Marinatto added that the conference will not expand on its future plans or discuss the expansion process.

Other speculated schools include Houston, TCU, Temple and Central Florida, as well as Eastern Carolina and Memphis.

At eight teams, the Big East is the smallest football conference with the privilege of automatic BCS-bowl game qualification. Marinatto did not say whether the addition of potentially new teams would alter any situations with other sports in the conference.

bplogiur@syr.edu

Published on November 2, 2010 at 12:00 pm