Pitarresi: Falling Leaves was great, SU's Robinson was right ... and wrong.

Congratulations to race director Mike Brych and his people for a great Falling Leaves Road Race today.

 

The Falling Leaves is the Utica Roadrunners’ last big run of the year and it’s always a good one. It’s the area’s oldest continually run race, born in 1975.

 

There were 1,160 entries this year, the most in a quite a few years, and 1,012 finishers. Terrific.

 

The race draws top flight runners, not just from the Mohawk Valley, but from Syracuse, plus some Kenyan runners from metropolitan New York. It’s really a fine event, with numerous local businesses and organizations supporting it, and a major boost from Rich Karaz at The Sneaker Store, who arranged for the high-tech Mizuno T-shirts that each runner received this year.

 

On the Syracuse football team and it’s 34-24 loss to Pitt Saturday after blowing an 11-point lead:

 

Coach Greg Robinson is getting beat up by bloggers for punting on 4th-and-1 at the Pitt 38 in the second quarter. What would they be saying if he went for it and didn’t get it? Yes, Syracuse is a desperate team that needs to play loose, but punting is the right call in that situation. It doesn’t matter that they went for the long pass on third down, trying to catch the Panthers cheating up for a 3rd down run. Punting is the right call. My own second guess has to do with Curtis Brinkley not being on the field when SU had the ball after Pitt tied the game 24-24 early in the fourth quarter. Brinkley is SU’s horse – the Orange are a much better team when he is running well, and he was – and he had to be on the field at that time.

 

Robinson said Brinkley was fatigued. Brinkley said he wasn’t. My guess is that Robinson didn’t know Brinkley wasn’t in there and freshman Antwon Bailey was. Such things usually are left to the offensive coordinator – in this case, Mitch Browning – and I really think that was the case here. Still, Robinson is the ultimate authority, and he has to take the hit for that.

 

Anyway, desperate or not, the punt is the right call, especially after trying to draw the other team off. Not having Brinkley on the field at crunch time was not.