NEW YORK – Dana Holgorsen sat back in his chair and thought. His offense has exploded at times but gone cold at others. Syracuse’s offense is equally capable of putting lopsided numbers on the scoreboard.

Thinking about how many points it’ll take for a win presents a confounding task. The West Virginia head coach knows the Mountaineers may not get too many.

“Syracuse has got a great defense so asking to score anything in the neighborhood of 49 or 63 would be ridiculous,” Holgorsen said during a press conference at Yankee Stadium Friday.

West Virginia has done both behind Geno Smith and the playmakers that surround him. Syracuse has to shut them all down in the Pinstripe Bowl on Saturday while its own offense picks up where it left off in November to win the bowl game for the second time in three years. Both teams run up-tempo offenses led by strong-armed quarterbacks capable of dazzling the crowd with electrifying passes.

First, though, Syracuse has to find a way to lock Smith down. The Orange beat the Mountaineers in each of the last two seasons, but didn’t completely silence Smith. The quarterback threw for 516 yards in the two games combined. This season, his first as a Big 12 quarterback, he’s thrown for a total of 4,004 yards and is averaging 333.7 yards per game.

His top two targets, Stedman Bailey and Tavon Austin, averaged 230 combined receiving yards per game in the regular season.

“Stedman Bailey and Tavon Austin, they’re the types of receivers that make people miss and make big-time plays,” Syracuse strong safety Shamarko Thomas said. “Geno’s a very smart quarterback.”

Syracuse’s defense was stout for much of the season. Its secondary, though, often struggled. The Orange allowed an average of 25.67 points per game, but also allowed 236.92 passing yards per game, which ranked fifth in the Big East.

West Virginia had game film from last season and all of this year to look at Syracuse’s defensive schemes. Bailey said it’s a unit that presents many forms of coverage, and said the Mountaineers’ success in the Pinstripe Bowl will depend a lot on how West Virginia’s offense responds.

“Just adjusting to as many things that they do on their defense,” Bailey said. “I see that they blitz a whole lot, and there’s just a whole lot of outside adjustment. If we can pick all those things up and execute our game plan we should be pretty good.”

Smith also said when he watched the tape from his team’s 49-23 loss to Syracuse last season he immediately saw things he needed to adjust to avoid falling to the Orange again.

“Some different things as far as our mentality goes,” Smith said. ”Just being able to get the ball out of my hands quickly in pressure situations, getting the ball in the right areas, putting guys in the proper situations, move the chains and just get my offense going.”

West Virginia has scored 69, 70 and 59 points in three games this season. But Syracuse’s offense is also capable of blowing away defenses. Its no-huddle system wears opposing units down. It gives the Mountaineers’ lackluster defense something else to prepare for.

The Orange showed in the Pinstripe Bowl two years ago that it’ll pull a new play out its playbook when it needs to. Syracuse ran a flea-flicker that resulted in a 52-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Ryan Nassib to wide receiver Marcus Sales.

“Every week we’ve got a couple new wrinkles that we like to keep in our back pocket just in case the opportunity presents itself,” Nassib said. “The one thing about those plays is that the way they work is you get the look you want.”

It’s impossible to predict just how many points these two explosive offenses will put up, but the level of talent that’ll take the Yankee Stadium field on Saturday is well documented.

“There’s no doubt about it, there’s two high-power offenses going against each other. I think our defense is ready to go,” Nassib said. “They’ve worked their tails off all postseason to get ready for these guys.

“They know what they have ahead of them.”

Published on December 29, 2012 at 1:00 am

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