Coming off a bye week, the Syracuse Orange (4-4, 2-2 ACC) head back on the road this Saturday, traveling to “Death Valley” in South Carolina to take on the undefeated No. 3 Clemson Tigers (8-0, 5-0 ACC). In the first College Football Playoff ratings released just last week, Clemson was ranked second, just behind the reigning national champs, the Alabama Crimson Tide. Syracuse will need to perform more than perfectly to pull out one of the biggest upsets in college football history, but as SU head coach Dino Babers mentioned in this week’s press conference, “Don’t bet the house on it, brother.”
With just 4 more regular season games left, Syracuse needs at least 2 more wins to secure a spot in a bowl game according to the latest projections. The schedule doesn’t get much easier for the Orange though, with tough teams like NC State, Florida State and Pittsburgh coming up right behind Clemson. Syracuse is looking for their first bowl game since their 21-17 win over Minnesota in the 2013 Texas Bowl Game. The Orange don't boast too bad of a record though overall, going 15-9-1 in the 25 bowl games the program has seen since 1953. The team this year hopes to make its 26th trip to a bowl game and its first in the Dino Babers era.
The games you remember are the ones in November and we’re going in November where the games, they matter, you know whether there’s something riding on it. Now, I don’t know if we’ll win another football game, I hope we win them all, and to be able to maybe let this senior class go out on a high note, I mean I think that would be outstanding.
While Syracuse is coming off a bye week, Clemson is coming off a tightly held victory over Florida State last weekend, beating the Seminoles 37-34 for the first time at home in ten years. Although ranked No. 2 in CFP rankings, many people have called out Clemson's recent victories as just luck, winning 5 of their 8 games by
only 7 points or less. Heading into Saturday's game, both Clemson and Syracuse will be looking to prove themselves this week. Clemson will look to keep their undefeated season alive in the quest to become the ACC Champions, while Syracuse will look to prove that they can compete with the best and make it past the .500 mark.
You know I’ve seen a lot of football teams but they’re extremely talented and they are athletic. There are a lot of guys who are gonna be millionaires playing on both sides of the football field, offensively and defensively for them. It’s gonna be a huge challenge and I heard it’s gonna be a TV game so a lot of people are gonna get to see it, and we’ll show up and we’ll see how we can do.
SU @ Clemson Saturday 3:30 PM. Pre game coverage starts @ 3:00 on WAER 88.3
Syracuse is hoping bring the same heat they had against Boston College two weeks ago. That is to bring the same intensity without causing a fight and being issued unsportsmanlike conduct penalties, but we all have our days.