Pitarresi: Area teams in states is great stuff

We have four area teams in the New York State football regionals – New Hartford, Oneida, Westmoreland and Dolgeville.

 

That’s great stuff. I have my reservations about the state playoffs, but only because they truncate the regular season and make league championships all but meaningless. The big plus is that sectional and state playoffs make for exciting high school football, and help prepare players for the next level.

 

Post-season football is terrific to watch for a lot of reasons – top players, top coaches and great variety, meaning that teams from different areas often have widely varied philosophies and offensive and defensive systems. It’s really interesting to see how programs from outside our area approach the game, and it also brings home the idea that there are many ways to skin a cat.

 

I’ll be at deer camp this weekend and won’t be able to see any of our teams in action, so I’m hoping they all win so I get another look at all of them. Best of luck to the Spartans, Indians, Bulldogs and Blue Devils.

 

 

Pitarresi: Make a date for Colgate-Holy Cross

Put this on your calendar:

Holy Cross at Colgate, 1 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 22.

That game will decide the Patriot League football championship and determine whether Colgate’s Red Raiders take another trip to the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision playoffs.

Colgate is undefeated in the league. Should Holy Cross defeats Lafayette Saturday – not a given by any means – both teams will go into the game undefeated in the league with the title at stake. If Lafayette defeats Holy Cross, and Holy Cross defeats Colgate, and Lafayette defeats Lehigh in their ancient rivalry the same day, there will be a mess with three teams having one loss.

I’m not sure how they’ll resolve that deadlock if it occurs, but the Raiders can remove all doubt by defeating the Crusaders.

Andy Kerr Stadium, although in late November it can be a little, shall we say, cool. Dress warmly. It will be a great game.

Pitarresi: Remembering the vets

 

My father’s name was Murphy Pitarresi. My uncle’s name was Tom Schiro.

 

My father was an athlete, and was a well-known football player at Niagara University before and after World War II. He coached for many years, first at NU and then in the Niagara Falls school system. He gave my brothers and me, and sisters, for that matter, our love of sports.

 

Uncle Tom was not an athlete, but he loved hunting and fishing. An extremely patient man, he put up with my cousin and my brother and me on many fishing trips. It was largely because of him and my grandfather that we learned to love the outdoors.

 

I mention them today not because they gave us those gifts, but because they both were combat veterans of World War II. My father was in the Army Air Corps and served in England, France and Germany. My uncle earned all kinds of medals and was wounded at the Battle of the Bulge.

 

As is typical of vets, they rarely spoke of their war experiences, and if they did it almost always was at the urging of others. I think they saw too many things they didn’t want to remember, or maybe they remembered them too easily. These people and so many like them went through all sorts of hells that most of us can never really appreciate.

 

Both my father and my uncle have been gone for a decade or so. I’m never going to forget them, and I don’t want anyone to forget them and the hundreds of thousands of other Americans who have served in our armed forces, in combat and behind the lines, in all sorts of roles, and dozens of foreign lands.

 

So, on this Veterans Day, take a minute to remember

Pitarresi: UC's Casey McNultry pretty impressive

   

Utica College was down 25-6 to Norwich with 11 minutes to play today, and stormed back to win 28-25 behind a host of big plays – Cody Elliott’s 82-yard kickoff return, interceptions by Kevin Hennion and Peter Vano, a long drive engineered by Michael Clark, a sensational catch by Josh Mason.

 

What I might have liked the best, though, was that Casey McNulty, the Pioneers’ 5-7, 176-pound placekicker and kickoff man, was in on four tackles. How many kickoff guys have you seen make a tackle, aggressively on the opponents’ side of the field.

 

McNulty’s best stop came after Elliott’s return. He kicked off to Dan Wilde, a pretty good return guy, who took the ball at the 23. Wilde appeared to have some room, but a blue blur appeared out of nowhere and smashed him down at the 33.

 

I mean, that kid is a football player.

 

UC’s victory was great. Hamilton College’s 23-22 loss was depressing. The Continentals finished 2-6 for the third straight year. They’re getting better, but they have to learn how to win. Minus and turnover here and there, and they could have been 5-3, 6-2 or even 7-1. They had fourth quarter leads against Trinity and Middlebury and were tied with Williams, and those are the powers in their league. In all, they lost five games in the last two minutes by a total of 19 points. They’ve got to learn how to win.

 

And how about these scores:

 

Rutgers 35, Syracuse 17: If the Orange had won this game, Greg Robinson actually had a chance to keep his job. They didn’t, blowing a 14-0 lead and imploding on offense, and he isn’t going to keep his job.

 

Iowa 24, Penn State 23: There is no such thing as an unbeatable team, but I thought the Nittany Lions were rock solid. However, as soon as I heard a broadcaster say they would run the table after their victory over Ohio State, I knew they wouldn’t. It was a curse. Parity in college football is a fact, and you have to be ready to play every down.

 

Western Michigan 23, Illinois 17: Another win for the Mid American Conference over a Big Ten team. And the Illini are 5-5 and coach Ron Zook might have to be looking over his shoulder a bit

Pitarresi: UC a phenomenon

 

I headed over to the Utica College hockey game tonight expecting a smaller than usual crowd.

 

The Pioneers were playing a nonleague game against Johnson & Wales, and there was plenty of competition. New Hartford and Camden were playing for the Section III, Class A football title at the Carrier Dome, and Dolgeville was playing Watertown IHC for the Class D championship.

 

I figured a lot of people would make the easy drive to Syracuse to see those games, and that a lot more would watch the games on Time-Warner. It had to cut into the crowd at the Utica Memorial Auditorium.

 

It didn’t. UC drew a school-record 3,786 fans. Amazing. Even UC coach Gary Heenan, who has earnestly promoted his team and made it a big part of the community, was stunned.

 

“I don’t understand it,” he said, although he said it with a big smile on his face. “We had 3,000 for opening night.”

 

I think what has happened is this – after many years of failed professional teams in the Aud, people still want to see hockey in that building. UC is it, and fans don’t have to worry about whether the team will be here next week or next year. The players are like your brothers or kids or whatever, they are involved in the community, people like them, and they’re pretty good.

 

It’s pretty phenomenal.

Pitarresi: Robinson might not be done

Everyone has assumed since about the third week of the season that Greg Robinson is going to be fired as Syracuse University’s football coach. Or already has been.

 

I’m not so sure.

 

The fans hated Paul Pasqualoni so much – I’m still not entirely sure why, because he certainly did well for most of his career – that they didn’t get horribly upset when Robinson went 1-10 his first season. They were pretty quiet when he went 4-8 in 2006. But then they went nuts when the Orange were 2-10 last year, and they and the columnists and talk show hosts have been on the warpath ever since.

 

Right now, the team is 2-6 and on a bit of a high after Saturday’s 28-21 victory over Louisville. If SU manages to beat Rutgers Saturday – and Rutgers is one of the most schizophrenic teams in the very schizophrenic Big East – then somehow manages to win two out of three against Connecticut, Notre Dame and Cincinnati, I think there is a very good chance that Greg keeps his job.

 

That would be 5-7. That would be, on the face of it, progress. Also, Robinson has a contract for next year at an absolute minimum of $1.1 million. And, the team will have some weapons next season, possibly even the return of standout receiver Mike Williams, even with Curtis Brinkley graduating.

 

So, while so many people already have Robinson out the door, it isn’t yet a done deal. If SU loses to Rutgers, it will be.

Pitarresi: Scott, Eachus impressive kids

I went down to Colgate today to work on a story about star running backs Jordan Scott and Nate Eachus.

 

I was impressed with both of these kids. Scott, who has an injured ankle and might be out again this week, is the Raiders’ all-time leading rusher. Eachus is just a freshman, but the way he’s started – 621 yards in three games subbing for Scott – he might end up with that title some day.

 

Both guys came across as terrific young men with their feet on the ground, totaling unimpressed with themselves. They said all the right things about team play, and I think they were 100 percent sincere in what they said. Maybe that’s just the kind of kid Dick Biddle recruits. It certainly has worked well in his 13 years as head coach.