Posted by ESPN.com's Brian Bennett
They're 2-8 and their head coach has been fired. But Syracuse's players say they're not ready to give up on the season yet.
About 24 hours after Greg Robinson was dismissed on Sunday afternoon, the Orange were back on the practice field, trying to put that out of their minds and get ready for this week's game at Notre Dame.
"To tell you the truth, I thought maybe it would be a distraction, but we might have had our best two practices of the year so far," safety Max Suter said on Wednesday.
Robinson will coach the team's final two games, and he has said he wants the focus to be on those contests and not him. He made sure his players knew that this week.
"He's approached practice like it was the first one of the year as far as enthusiasm goes," linebacker Jake Flaherty said. "He's coaching us really hard and is going to stay with us to the end."
The team would love nothing more than to give Robinson a proper send-off by pulling off the upset Saturday and/or at Cincinnati in two weeks.
"Definitely," Suter said. "There are a lot of guys here that really care about coach Robinson and who came here to play under him. It's unfortunate that he ran out of time. People here are looking to get this for him and for the other coaches."
Though there aren't many tangible goals to play for this week, motivation hasn't been too difficult. The Orange are going to play in South Bend on national TV. This is like their bowl game.
"Any bowl you might make, besides the BCS, it would be tough to get an environment that compares to Notre Dame's environment," Flaherty said. "So I think we are treating it like that."
The Orange will be heavy underdogs on the road, but the rest of the Big East will be rooting for them. If they can beat Notre Dame, that could knock the Irish out of contention for taking the conference's spot in the Gator Bowl. Notre Dame is 6-4 with a game remaining at Southern Cal, and the Gator Bowl might have a difficult time justifying a berth for a 6-6 Irish team that lost to two Big East squads. Pittsburgh won in South Bend earlier this season.
Not that Syracuse is too concerned about all that. The Orange just hope to gain something positive out of this season, both for their departing coach and for themselves.
Bennett joined ESPN.com in August 2008 after nine years at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., where he covered college sports and the University of Louisville beat. He lives in Louisville.
