What’s Shakin’

Orange Quickly Souring

As long as we’ve had sports, we’ve had losing streaks. And as long as we’ve had losing streaks, there has been the question of who’s to blame: the coach or the players. Following the Syracuse University football team’s third consecutive loss on Friday, Nov. 11—a demoralizing 37-17 defeat to the University of South Florida at the Carrier Dome—Orange coach Doug Marrone made it abundantly clear what he thinks.

“At the end of the day, it starts with me,” Marrone said at the start of his postgame news conference. “I have to do a much, much better job coaching this team, put them in a position to make plays, have the ability to win a game, whether it is at the end of the game or early on, and to keep playing well.”

And just in case it didn’t sink in, Marrone repeated a variation of that theme about a dozen times during his sevenminute news conference. “It starts with me. I have to do a better job,” he said when asked about the losing streak. “I am not getting this team to play at a high enough level for us to be consistent and win football games. Again, from A to Z, I have to do a better job.”

But while Marrone fell on the sword about as hard as a coach can fall, his players would have none of it. It wasn’t Marrone, after all, who dropped passes, committed stupid penalties, or made Bulls quarterback B.J. Daniels look like Michael Vick in his Virginia Tech prime.

“You can never, ever put the blame on the coach,” senior offensive tackle Michael Hay said. “He called the right plays and put us in the right position; we’ve just got to make the plays.”

Senior quarterback Ryan Nassib said it goes even deeper than that. The players, he said, need to become more accountable for their mistakes in practices and games.

“I think a lot of it has to do with leadership on this team. We really have to have some guys step up,” Nassib noted. “Not accepting any little failure. Not waiting on a route in practice, dropping a pass in practice or missing a tackle in practice. All those little things we can’t have anymore. It has to be unacceptable.”

Whether it was Marrone, the players or a combination of both against the Bulls, the Orange fell to 5-5 overall and into last place in the Big East Conference with a 1-4 record. To become eligible for a bowl game, SU needs to defeat either Cincinnati Nov. 26 at the Dome, or Pittsburgh Dec. 3 at Pitt. The Orange is off this week, which will give the coaches and players plenty of time to think about all of the missed opportunities against South Florida:

• Despite a mistake-filled first half, SU trailed only 10-7 after Nassib’s 10-yard touchdown strike to Alec Lemon with three minutes, 52 seconds left in the half. But punter Shane Raupers, who handled the kickoff duties because kicker Ross Krautman was nursing a sore groin, kicked the ball out of bounds. An inexplicable personal foul penalty on SU’s Jeremiah Kobena tacked on another 15 yards, and the Bulls started the drive on the Orange 45-yard line.

A 42-yard pass from Daniels to Andre Davis set up Daniels’ 3-yard touchdown run to make it 17-7. It took SU 26:08 to score its first points, and the Bulls 25 seconds to answer.

“We can’t be undisciplined. We’re not good enough to overcome that kind of stuff,” Hay said. “We have to be a fundamentally sound team. We can’t be giving away free 15 yards {on the personal foul penalty}. It’s just frustrating to see a team with so much potential just waste it away.”

• After trading field goals late in the first half, the Orange trailed 20-10. The Bulls, who were 0-4 in the Big East entering the game, had a chance to blow the game open in the third quarter, but they managed only a total of three points after twice marching deep into SU territory.

On the first drive, the Bulls (5-4) had to settle for a field goal after committing three consecutive penalties. On the second drive, South Florida wide receiver Victor Marc reached the goal line at the end of a 34-yard pass play but fumbled the ball out of the end zone, giving SU the ball and a new life. The Orange’s response to those two gifts? One three-and-out, and another series that ended with a punt after only one first down.

• Through it all, SU trailed by less than two touchdowns, 23-10, entering the fourth quarter. Twice the Orange drove deep into South Florida territory. Twice a receiver dropped what would have been a sure touchdown pass (first tight end David Stevens, and then Lemon). And twice the drive ended with an incomplete pass on fourth down.

Lemon, who otherwise had a stellar game with a career-high 10 catches for 179 yards, dropped a fourth-down pass from Nassib in the end zone to finish that second drive with 9:49 remaining. The Bulls promptly drove 83 yards for a touchdown that made it 30-10 and sent what was left of the crowd of 41,582 scurrying for the exits.

“A lot of drops during the week translates right into the game,” Lemon said.

“When we have the opportunity to make a big play and get that first down and Ryan’s counting on us to make that big play and we don’t, it’s kind of frustrating. You want to get the ball back but it’s kind of hard when you are dropping the ball all the time.”

In the big picture of reaching a second consecutive bowl game for the first time since 1999, the Orange is dropping the ball. After walloping then-No. 11 West Virginia 49-23 Oct. 21 at the Dome, SU entertained thoughts of a Big East title and possible BCS bowl berth. Now, the Orange is playing for its bowl life.

“We have put a lot of time and effort into this, so it is pretty devastating to be put in this situation here,” sophomore center Macky MacPherson said. Is that Marrone’s fault or the players’? Either way, the Orange has only two games left to get it right.

“A lot of us are going to have to step up,” Nassib said. “It doesn’t matter what the age is. It doesn’t matter what position you are or what your ranking on the depth chart. Something has got to change.”

Orange Slices: Nassib, who completed 23 of 46 pass attempts for 297 yards and two touchdowns, broke his previous school record for completions in a season with 217. . . . Nassib and Lemon hooked up for a 58-yard touchdown pass late in the game, the longest catch in Lemon’s career.

—Matt Michael

Almost a Done Deal

Construction workers have been toiling daily double shifts to get the renovated Landmark Theatre ready for its close-up—and they’ll surely be cutting it close, all right, with a gala grand reopening slated for Friday, Nov. 18, and Bill Cosby bringing the funny for a comedy concert on Saturday, Nov. 19.

Yet the multimillion-dollar overhaul is almost completed, although many of the improvements will remain unseen to most Central New Yorkers, unless they are current employees of the vaudeville-era palace or musicians, actors or stagehands coming in as part of a national touring show. Or, in this case, journalists from your favorite altweekly getting a privileged sneak peek, with Landmark executive director Denise Fresina DiRienzo and house operations manager Christina Rodgers serving as sherpa-like guides who schlepped the newshounds up and down the 83-years-young venue.

Locals will first notice the venue’s new box office digs, which have been rerouted from its Jefferson Street location after nearly two decades of service and returned to 362 S. Salina St., just to the left of the main entrance. The box office is in the same spot that recently held a Cricket cell phone outlet (its neon-green signage is now found across Salina) and, some 20 years earlier, was home to the taste treats sold by the senior sweethearts known as “the Peanut Sisters.” Inside you’ll find a stylish space decorated with light raspberry-hued tiles and recessed lighting, with a Syracuse New Times rack standing proudly along the back wall. What locals won’t see behind a certain closed door next to that rack (did we mention that it holds current issues of The New Times?) is a hallway leading to new offices for staffers in a revamped and sizable space that stretches back to the theater’s main lobby and into the area where the handicapped-accessible washroom facilities still hold court.

Now that you’ve got your bearings straight, let’s ogle the high-tech consoles and screens of the new soundboard, which has uprooted more than a few seats in the makeout rows at the very back of the theater. The old soundboard used to suck up valuable seating space between the orchestra’s rightcenter rows P and T, a mere 15 or so rows away from the stage. Now those ousted red-velour chairs from the back row will be physically moved to that location to assure more opportune sightline nirvana.

Next, clamber aboard the stage and look straight up, with the stage’s ceiling now topping out at a dizzying 94 feet, nearly two stories more than the original’s 76-foot nosebleed height. When  combined with an enlarged stage depth that is now 48 feet (up from 33 feet) and nearly 20 feet more of wing space at stage right, that translates   into lots of room to roam for big-ticket traveling tours, with capacity aplenty for eye-filling sets and wild special effects. (Insert your own Clarissa the Landmark ghost joke here.)

Some longtime stage components have been yanked, such as an old-school spiral staircase, while a new loading dock now doubles the former number of docks and a wall of new electrical gizmos and rigging weights at stage right has replaced yesteryear’s technical appointments. There is also a small powder room at stage right behind the curtain (you don’t want to know the cost of the toilet), so perhaps Bill Cosby will christen this crucial addition during his Saturday show.

Unless you have a backstage pass, you won’t know that much structural activity has taken place below the stage, in what could best be described as the Landmark’s former catacombs. Most prominent is a new basement area equipped with washers and dryers, plus a locker room for visiting musicians and color-coded tile floors that show the show people where to head. These new pluses should lure more prospective tours to the Salina Street doorstep, especially since DiRienzo reports that theatrical firms need site visits for their big productions and that certain requirements must be met before they even contemplate booking the Landmark.

More renovated dressing rooms are found on the venue’s second level, with a windowed hallway that overlooks the Jefferson Street side and travels into a ruby-red VIP room with yet more windows that offer a view of the Landmark’s marquee. (There is speculation that some shows featuring lots of leggy dancers may attract a throng on the Jefferson sidewalk as they wait for costume changes.) And there are more dressing rooms in the newly created third floor that hugs the expansion on the Jefferson Street side. When DiRienzo comments that the Landmark now has a three-level floor plan, she’s not kidding.

Of course, $16 million can only buy so many improvements, so other items on the  Landmark’s must-redo list have to wait. Yet the tour of the basement area, which spills out into the downstairs’ paneled  Walnut Room, still yielded a few surprises, such as a long-abandoned screening room that featured a 35mm projection booth and a seating capacity of 50. DiRienzo holds out some hope that the area that still houses the old air-conditioning unit could be transformed into a showcase for memorabilia from the Loew’s State days.

And there are several shelves of dusty plaster casts of ornate decorations, which were presumably pressed into service whenever a cracked geegaw would surface and was in need of replacing. DiRienzo is thinking about selling them at $150 apiece, as “a Christmas gift for the person who has everything.” Are you listening, Santa?

—Bill DeLapp