After Brendan Carney booted six extra points Saturday, he predicted he would place kick against Pittsburgh.

Turns out he was right.

Carney, a sophomore punter for the Syracuse football team, will continue place kicking for senior Collin Barber. Carney replaced Barber after the senior missed two field goals, an extra point and had a field goal blocked against West Virginia on Oct. 21.

‘I’d love for Collin to win it back and be a great kicker,’ SU head coach Paul Pasqualoni said. ‘But the fact remains that we need consistency in the red zone. So we’re gonna give Brendan a shot.’

Carney missed one 43-yard field goal in SU’s 42-30 win Saturday over Connecticut. But he hit all six extra points.

‘I’m taking a lot of pride in it,’ Carney said of place kicking. ‘I plan on coming out and making every single kick.’

Before his first extra point, Carney said he felt so nervous his hand was shaking. But when Carney looked back at the film, it turned out he executed that kick most soundly.

On the field goal, Carney failed to close his right hip, causing the ball to sail off.

‘I wish I had hit that one,’ Carney said, ‘as sort of an icebreaker.’

When the NFL granted Larry Fitzgerald the right to enter the draft, Big East coaches waved goodbye with smiles glued on their faces.

But Pasqualoni, for one, isn’t smiling.

‘I’m not sitting here saying, ‘Thank God Larry Fitzgerald is gone,” Pasqualoni said, ‘because Greg Lee is doing well.’

Lee, a sophomore, has four touchdowns and is averaging 92 yards receiving a game.

But losing Fitzgerald, a Heisman Trophy candidate, depressed Pitt’s passing game and took the Panthers off the nation’s minds.

‘He was a great receiver,’ SU quarterback Perry Patterson said. ‘When you have someone like that, all you have to do is throw it up in their vicinity and they’re gonna go get it. Losing him for Pitt is just as big as having him.’

Fitzgerald is on the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals now, for whom he has 371 yards and two touchdowns through seven games.

Said Pitt coach Walt Harris: ‘I don’t think you can ever bounce back completely when you lose a talent like that. He’s a rare talent. And he loves challenges. So I don’t think there was any question he was gonna go.’

Both Syracuse and Pitt have first-year, left-handed quarterbacks. Both teams stack eight men in the box. And both are vying for a bowl berth.

Syracuse’s 4-4 record overall puts the Orange in a more precarious position. If SU loses to Pitt, it must win its last two games – against Temple and Boston College – to remain bowl eligible. And even then it’s uncertain if SU will earn an invitation.

Pitt, at 5-2 overall, needs just one more win in its last four games – against SU, Notre Dame, West Virginia and South Florida – to become bowl eligible.

‘It’s big,’ Pasqualoni said. ‘Having a chance to have a successful season, to have a bowl season, it’s something everyone is trying to get to. Pitt’s going to try to get to a bowl game, too.’

Published on November 1, 2004 at 12:00 pm