Derrell Smith couldn’t explain why Louisville packed more than its entire first-half offense into two second-half drives. Behind the podium, the senior Syracuse linebacker Smith could only rifle off a look of complete bewilderment.

‘I have no idea,’ Smith said. ‘We’re going to watch the film, see what we did wrong, fix it and go on.’

For a team that amassed 106 total offensive yards by halftime, Louisville bunched all of that and more into those two second-half drives that led the Cardinals (5-4, 2-2 Big East) to a 28-20 victory Saturday in front of 40,735 inside the Carrier Dome. There would be no celebration of bowl eligibility for SU (6-3, 3-2 Big East) on this day, no celebration of a winning season. Instead, it was a celebration for Louisville. A celebration of the program’s first road Big East win since Oct. 13, 2007, at Cincinnati.

There was the first drive, the 10-play, 60-yard push that came in the opening minutes of the second half. Running back Jeremy Wright, who filled in admirably for the injured Bilal Powell, ended the drive with his second touchdown of the day. That gave the Cardinals a 21-17 lead from which it would never look back.

And there was the second drive, the methodical 12-play, 90-yard march that spanned the end of the third and beginning of the fourth quarters. The drive ended in a 21-yard touchdown pass from Louisville quarterback Justin Burke to wide receiver Josh Chichester, after a beautiful play-action fake left Chichester open and ready to run into the end zone.

Two drives, 150 yards. SU was down 28-20 and couldn’t recover.

‘They took chances,’ SU defensive coordinator Scott Shafer said of Louisville’s offense. ‘They came in with a little bit of a different offense. They made some great adjustments.’

And so, instead of a celebration that was six years in the making, a normally stout defense watched as the Dome fell silent and Chichester ran to meet his teammates on the Louisville sideline. The SU defense, one that had punished its last two opponents on the road at West Virginia and Cincinnati, had been torn apart by a makeshift offense without its two most important players — Powell and quarterback Adam Froman.

Louisville adjusted by working in two tight end and overload sets in its offense. The Cardinals ran plays Shafer and the SU defense hadn’t seen on film during the week. And they made key conversions, including going 2-for-2 on fourth down. On fourth-and-4, during the second touchdown drive of the second half, Burke’s conversion to Andrell Smith set up the 21-yard touchdown a play later.

‘On fourth down, it was a heck of a play by that kid,’ SU head coach Doug Marrone said. ‘They threw the ball behind him, and the kid made a good play. That is what it is about. They executed, and we didn’t when we needed to.’

Syracuse’s only second-half score was a Ross Krautman field goal after it had taken a 17-14 lead into the half. SU took that lead in the first half because of its bread-and-butter run game.

SU’s game-tying 12-play, 70-yard drive in the second quarter was facilitated by running backs Delone Carter and Antwon Bailey. Bailey rushed for 19 yards on the drive. Carter rushed for 31, culminating in an eight-yard power run in to the end zone to knot the game at 14-14.

‘The matchup was our offense vs. their defense,’ Marrone said. ‘Going into the week, we knew they were going to bring a lot of pressure. We’re a young offense, and it was important to see how we would handle it.’

And the SU offense couldn’t play its part. Despite the two second-half drives, the Syracuse defense twice made the third-down stops it needed to give the SU offense a chance. Each time, it went three-and-out. The third time, the Orange couldn’t hold the Cardinals. And on a gusty fourth-and-1 call from its own 40-yard line with 3:18 left, Burke rumbled behind center to pick up the first down and effectively end the game.

Louisville stole what could have been a bowl-clinching win for the Orange. Even if its two premier offensive weapons didn’t play a single down.

‘Too little, too late,’ Shafer said. ‘We never made a play where we could shift the momentum and get the ball back to our offense with a short field, and that’s what we have to do.’

bplogiur@syr.edu

Published on November 5, 2010 at 12:00 pm