Doug Marrone won his first Big East game in absolute attention-grabbing fashion – over Syracuse’s main recruiting rival Rutgers and in totally dominant fashion - but the first-year coach said he’s barely taken a phone call over it. Or read a story lauding it. He hasn’t had the time.
“We had a recruiting weekend (and) what happens is it takes away your time from preparation and you have to make up for it,” Marrone said. ”If I did something like that and then we went out and didn’t play well against Connecticut, I’d look at that as I was a big part of us losing. If I’m going to ask my players to focus on this football game, I have to be able to do that first and foremost.”
Ironically enough, going into that Syracuse game, Rutgers was coming off its biggest win of the season, a totally dominant drubbing of then-ranked South Florida. And while it’s essentially expected that Marrone wouldn’t give up much on getting that big first win, he was equally nonchalant about the effect that win might’ve had on all those recruits.
“There’s still a lot of work ahead of us,” he said. “Nothing’s done until Feb. 3.”
Still, the Orange did add one very impressive recruit off the win, though, Donnie Webb reported in the Syracuse Post Standard. Syracuse has 17 committments so far. And yet, Marrone just said, from his perspective, he doesn’t see the one win selling a kid who was on the fence about joining that group.
“I truly believe in what we’re doing as a program, not just on the football field but what we’re doing academically. So I always feel comfortable, I always feel great about what we stand for, what we represent,” he said. ”It’s just what I believe so when I talk to parents, when I talk to student athletes, it’s very easy for me.”
With or without, apparently, having had that win.
Aditi Kinkhabwala has written a regular column for SI.com and been published in Sports Illustrated.