Doug Hogue doesn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on the numbers. Not at this point, just 10 weeks into the season.

To Hogue, the fact that Syracuse enters the weekend as 13th-ranked defense in the country is a trivial piece of information. It doesn’t at all speak to where the Orange hopes to be at season’s end. And focusing on it doesn’t do anything but bring complacency.

And that’s not something the Orange can have with the nation’s No. 5 rusher coming to town on Saturday in Bilal Powell.

‘Personally, I never really pay attention to those things,’ Hogue, a senior linebacker, said of the defensive ranking. ‘We just have to keep it up and keep building. I feel as though we have yet to play our best defense. We’re going to have to keep improving.’

Hogue’s mentality isn’t just his own, either. It’s one that is shared by his teammates, all the way up to SU head coach, Doug Marrone. Together, the Orange defense collectively understands that each week is a new obstacle to overcome. A new team looking to exploit what has steadily become the rock upon which SU’s season relies.

And as the Orange prepares to take the field against a much improved Louisville offense Saturday in the Carrier Dome, that mindset won’t change. Facing an offense that features one of the premier running threats in the country in Powell, the Orange can’t get caught up in what it accomplished last week or the week before. For them it’s another new challenge. It’s another opportunity to continue improving.

Gone is the ‘swag’ and brash trash-talking mentality we saw from the defense in the first few weeks. Now it’s all business.

Because it didn’t really matter that the Orange defense had shut down Akron and South Florida on the road earlier this season. Directly following each of those two games, that feeling of complacency set in, leading to embarrassing performances against Washington and Pittsburgh, SU’s only two losses of the season.

Now three weeks removed from that loss to Pitt, the same mentality that accompanied the Orange on the road in impressive wins against West Virginia and Cincinnati must remain Saturday against Louisville. Though Powell — who leads the Big East in rushing — is questionable for the game with a swollen right knee, the Cardinals have enough offensive weapons to exploit the Orange if SU takes the game lightly.

Perhaps that’s why Hogue and his teammates are staying grounded. Despite what was accomplished last week or the week before, the approach remains the same: Don’t look back, just ahead. Focus on the task at hand.

‘It’s all about us maturing each week,’ SU strong safety Shamarko Thomas said. ‘The Pitt game just made us a tougher defense. It brought us together and taught us that we need to communicate better and know our roles out there. And we’ve been doing that each week ever since.

‘We had some miscues against Pitt. But it ultimately helped us become an even better defense. That game helped us mature.’

And after holding WVU and Cincy scoreless in the second half of each of the last two games, the defensive unit only appears to be getting better with each week.

That’s the only thing that interests Hogue and his teammates right now. The numbers and past accomplishments are virtually meaningless to this group. The defense has evolved from the trash-talking unit that had that ‘swag’ at the beginning of the season.

Now, after each win, it’s simply on to the next one.

‘Every week we just try to forget about what we’ve accomplished the previous game,’ defensive end Mikhail Marinovich said. ‘This week it’s a new challenge. We face a good offense, and despite what is behind us or ahead of us, this is our focus.’

Perhaps that’s why Hogue and the rest of his unit aren’t paying attention to the numbers. Despite what this defense has done in previous weeks, the biggest challenge for the Orange is the one just around the corner.

Regardless of whether or not Powell is lining up in the backfield.

Andrew L. John is the sports editor at The Daily Orange, where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at aljohn@syr.edu.

Published on November 3, 2010 at 12:00 pm