Twenty-four hours were all Doug Marrone gave his team. Twenty-four hours to lick its wounds. Twenty-four hours to look at film. And 24 hours to forget Pittsburgh.

Just 24 hours after facing Pittsburgh in the Carrier Dome Saturday, Marrone had already mentally removed his team from its most embarrassing loss of the season. The hours just after the 45-14 defeat were spent looking at game tape and learning from mistakes.

Then the team put the loss in the rearview mirror and completely moved forward to this weekend’s matchup at West Virginia.

‘We had 24 hours to go over Pitt and get that out of our system,’ senior safety Max Suter said. ‘And we’re focused on West Virginia now and are ready to move forward.’

Just days after watching Pitt come into the Dome and crash Homecoming weekend, the Orange now faces the difficult task of facing the league’s top team — on the road. It’s not an ideal situation for an SU team coming off its worst loss of the season. But Monday at his weekly press conference, Marrone put the Pitt loss in perspective.

The head coach made some brief comments about Pitt and then dove right into what SU plans to do differently this weekend.

‘What we need to do is go back and concentrate on little things, make sure our steps are right, our eyes are right, we know exactly what we are doing and we don’t make mistakes,’ Marrone said. ‘We have to keep the players and come back, and everyone has to put their noses to the grindstone, and let’s go back to work. And we have a game this week against probably the most experienced team, as far as starts, that we will face all year.’

All eyes will be on the Orange now to see how it responds. SU senior linebacker and captain Derrell Smith believe this opportunity can be used as a learning experience — especially for the young players.

Smith said the older players are talking to the younger players. He said that as far as the past, Syracuse is not focused on it because this isn’t the same team. And for the first time in a while, the players really believe they have a chance to bounce back.

And there’s also a message he said the older guys are sending.

‘Just to build that winning attitude,’ Smith said. ‘To tell everybody that everything will be OK, that we can bounce back from this situation and hopefully move on and work from here on.’

SU’s expecting hostile environment in Morgantown

West Virginia is notorious for its home crowd. The Mountaineers currently have the league’s highest average home game attendance in the Big East and hosted more than 60,000 earlier this year against Maryland.

So when Smith, Suter and their teammates arrive at Mountaineer Field prior to kickoff Saturday, they have an idea of what to expect.

‘It’s going to be a rude awakening for some of the young kids who have never been down there,’ Suter said. ‘But a lot of us love that atmosphere. … I love that, personally, and I know a lot of other guys feel the same way on this team.’

For Marrone, this will be his first trip down to WVU in some time. He took an official visit down there when he was being recruited out of high school and has always remembered the type of college football environment it presented.

‘I haven’t been down there in awhile,’ Marrone said. ‘It is an extremely difficult place to play. … They have great fans and support. It’s a tough environment to play in, and it’s challenging. That’s what is fun about college football.’

One of the guys Suter may be referring to is sophomore receiver Alec Lemon. He’s heard about the kinds of things that go on down there. He’s been told how hostile that crowd can be and knows that come Saturday, he’ll have to block out the crowd and focus.

For Lemon, one thing is clear: Be prepared for a unique experience.

‘I’ve heard stories from coaches and teammates,’ Lemon said. ‘(We) just have to go down there and expect the worst.’

aljohn@syr.edu

Published on October 19, 2010 at 12:00 pm