2010-2011
College Football Season
Pinstripe Bowl
Post-Game

Game Recap

by CFP Staff
December 30, 2010

Syracuse survived a late rally by Kansas State for a 36-34 win at the inaugural Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium in The Bronx.

Two crucial mistakes foiled the Wildcats' chances at overtaking the Orange.

First, a fake field goal attempt failed with 4:49 left in the game when a successful kick would have brought Kansas State to within 33-31. Instead, the Orange drove for a field goal to make it 36-28 with 3:07 left. The Wildcats scored a TD to make it 36-34 with 1:13 to go, but an extremely questionable excessive celebration penalty pushed the 2-point conversion try back to the 18-yard line and a incomplete pass sealed its fate.

Neither team ever led by more than 8 points in the see-saw, offensive battle that saw 42 points light up the scoreboard in the 2nd half after a 14-14 halftime tie.

Syracuse entered the game ranked 106th in total offense but posted 510 yards against the Wildcats' 10th-ranked defense. Marcus Sales, who entered the game with just 1 TD all season, had 5 catches for 172 yards and 3 touchdowns of 52, 36 and 44 yards.

The Orange were projected by collegefootballpoll.com's Congrove Computer Rankings (a.k.a. CCR Top 120) to finish the regular season 4-8 overall and just 1-6 in the Big East. The Wildcats were forecasted to suffer through a 2-10 season overall and wind up 0-8 in the Big 12. Both teams either didn't get that bit of news, and other gloomy forecasts or, more likely, chose to ignore it.

It was the first bowl game for Syracuse since the firing of Paul Pasqualoni following the 2004 season which culminated in a 51-14 loss to Georgia Tech in the Champs Sports Bowl. The next five years brought nothing but despair to Orange football fans who witnessed their team lose 45 of the next 59 games. The Greg Robinson era was a complete debacle that lasted four dreadful seasons and resulted in a 10-37 tenure that included a 3-25 record in Big East games.

Doug Marrone needed just two seasons to turn the Orange's fortunes around. The Orange are bowl champions for the first time since 2001, culminating an 8-5 season. During the regular season, the Orange snapped an 8-game losing streak to West Virginia, a 5-game losing streak to Cincinnati, and a 5-game losing streak to USF. They broke a 4-game losing skid to Rutgers last year and now own a 2-game win streak over the Scarlet Knights.

There's still work to be done as conference foe Pitt as taken 6 straight from the 'Cuse, but there is now reason to believe if you are a Syracuse fan.

Kansas State is another team which was mired in the muck of a post-Bill Snyder era that lasted just three seasons before Snyder himself unretired to save the program he built into a regular Big 12 contender. It took 54 years for 14 coaches to win a total of 137 games at Kansas State prior to Synder's arrival in 1989. With Snyder at the helm, the Wildcats won 135 games in 17 seasons and went to 11 bowl games in-a-row from 1993-2003. They had appeared in only one bowl game before Snyder turned the program around.

In the three years Snyder was absent, Kansas State went bowling once (a 37-10 loss to Rutgers at the 2006 Texas Bowl), was 17-20 overall and just 9-15 in conference games. Ron Prince's last season of a 3-year tenure saw a decline to a 2-6 Big 12 record. Since Snyder's return, the Wildcats are 13-12 overall and 7-9 in the Big 12 - not a drastic improvement, but a sign that things are heading back in the right direction. Kansas State was 7-6 overall this season, 3-5 in the Big 12).

This was the 3rd meeting between these teams in bowl games. Kansas State defeated Syracuse 35-18 in the 1997 season Fiesta Bowl. The Orange returned the favor by downing the Wildcats 26-3 in the 2001 Insight.com Bowl. They have never met in a regular season game.

Kansas State fell to 6-8 in its bowl history while Syracuse improved to 13-9-1. The Orange are 3-3 in their last six bowl trips, and 10-3 in the last 13.