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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 21, 2017Dino BabersGreensboro, North Carolina DINO BABERS: First of all, obviously, hats off to Coach Petrino. That football team we played Saturday night was outstanding. They beat us in every facet and every way. So hats off to them. Before I start with Boston College, I'd like to start this last week off with saying congratulations to you, Mike, on your retirement. I hope you fish long and hard and get to do all the things that we don't have time to do. How about that? MIKE FINN: Thanks, Coach. I appreciate that. I don't fish, but that's okay. DINO BABERS: Well, okay. Let's open it up to questions. Q. Just to take a look at the defense this season, I know, obviously, there's been the victory over Clemson where the defense is able to buckle down and Pittsburgh before that. Since then, 64 points and 56 given up. Just what you can say about how the defense has kind of gone through the peaks and valleys of this year, and just what your takeaways are. DINO BABERS: Obviously, injuries play a role in that. Everybody has injuries at this stage of the game. I think the biggest thing is the last two opponents have been able to run and throw the football. When you don't take a dimension away from a football team, it makes them very hard to defend, especially when they've been operating at the level our last two opponents are operating on. Obviously, our hands are full with Boston College because they want to run the ball no matter what, and they are more than capable of forcing their will on people. So it's going to be a very, very difficult task to stop them at our place, but we're looking forward to the challenge. Q. And when you look at finishing strong, even though that's not going to mean a Bowl game for this season in your second season, just what you can say about team buy-in and keeping the culture positive, and just how guys have responded to you as you move forward into the final game. DINO BABERS: I think, when you talk about what these 2017 seniors have done, they're going to be the cornerstone and the foundation of what we get done in the future. There's no doubt we're going to win here and be successful. But I think the 2017 class should get a lot of credit for that. One of the reasons why we want to send them out the right way is I hope, when these young men play their last game on Saturday and they come back in 2018 and 2019 and 2020 when things are different, that the people in the community and the football family gives them the due that they deserve because they've been a big part of this transition, and they're going to be part of the success that we're going to have in the future. Q. Dino, last week Bronco Mendenhall mentioned that he thought, if he had to make one rule change, it would be not letting coaches ever leave the school before their Bowl game. I'm curious how you think of that idea conceptually, especially as a coach that, obviously, once left Bowling Green before the Bowl game was played. DINO BABERS: I didn't enjoy doing that. I didn't enjoy sending my team to a Bowl game without my being there. It was part of the deal, and I get that. I started work here early. I think Bronco may be on to something. You're part of a family. You're part of a bond. I understand that, when you leave, you leave. One of the things I think is really important is I would take it a step further and let the team vote on it. If the team wanted the old head coach to be with them, he could. And if they didn't want him to be with them, I could understand that too. But to just say you can't do that because it's a new employer, I could see how that could have some merit. Q. I know you still have one game left, but how big of a factor to you is the lack of depth or is depth as far as being successful? DINO BABERS: You know, it all started when we started taking away scholarships from the football teams and when we cut back down to 85. That really limits the amount of people that you have, that you can actually play with, especially when you take the 85, and let's say that you're redshirting 15 to 20 of those guys. That means you're operating with 65 to 70 players, and depending on how the injuries fall, it can really affect your football team. Now, it affects everybody's football team. And on the flip side of that, one of the things that makes college football so exciting is the parity because, when guys do get hurt, if the coaches scheme it up right, they can make the game a lot closer than maybe it should be if they had more depth, especially when you're playing some of the bigger, more traditional schools. But don't underestimate the value of having enough good players at certain positions to be able to carry things out. It works for the positive, and it works for the negative. So it all comes out in the wash. But I think it is important. Q. It's been pretty important for you too obviously. If you had not so many injuries, you might be farther ahead. DINO BABERS: There's no doubt. Last year we had an opportunity, where we had a lot of injuries in the offensive line, and we just couldn't get things going. This year, knock on wood, we haven't had -- we've had one injury on the offensive line before the season started. Our best offensive lineman, we lost him in July, but outside of that, we haven't lost an offensive lineman. But when you flip over onto the defensive side, who was playing so well early, they've lost defensive backs, safeties. They've lost basically everybody but the linebackers -- defensive ends, defensive tackles. But, again, that's with everybody. That's why you can have maybe one type of offense at the beginning of the year and another type at the end and one type of defense at the beginning of the year and another type at the end. And just with the Clemson game, I mean, them not playing with their quarterback in the second half, you have to say that affected them, just like us not playing with our quarterback the last two years and the month of November is affecting us. Q. Good morning. Just to follow up on what you said about your run defense in terms of Boston College, what does the run defense need to do better than it has the last few weeks in order to stop BC this week? DINO BABERS: Well, I don't want to put the game plan out there, but we've got to do a lot -- really, Boston College probably runs the ball better than the last two opponents we just played. The last two opponents we just played had the ability to run the ball on us. That's not good for us, and it's really good for them. We have to find a way to put an effort out there that we haven't put out there the last two weeks if we're going to have an opportunity to have success at the end of the day. Q. What were you doing well on run defense earlier in the season that you kind of need to get back to? DINO BABERS: I thought, based on some of the injuries in the secondary, being able to play more man coverage with the guys that we have, now we have certain guys that are better zone players than necessarily defensive players. We've got to find a way to get back to that. Putting those guys in isolation situations on the back end where they can't hold up to superior wide receivers is a fast way to give up a touchdown. You can see that based off of some of our previous games. Q. Dino, as you look back across the season, as everybody looks back across your season, the Clemson game stands out. As you try to make sense of it, did that game ramp up expectations so much that it helps, I don't know, lead to a four-game losing streak? Or has it been injuries? And how will you look back on the season, particularly with that Clemson game right in the middle of it all? DINO BABERS: First of all, I'm not -- I think I know the question you're asking. Let me try to answer it this way. I thought in the 2016 season that the win over Virginia Tech with them winning the other side of the conference was a critical win for us even though we didn't get to a Bowl game. I thought that that win helped us in recruiting. I think in 2017 a win over Clemson that may have an opportunity to still win a National Championship, which is exactly what I stated after we beat them, is going to be a big help when it comes to recruiting. Now, in 2016 and 2017, both of those seasons, we had opportunities to go to Bowl games, and if we'd have been able to do that, that would have been outstanding. But don't take away the value of being able to beat the other side conference champion or being able to beat this side's conference champion or play close to a Miami team that has an opportunity to win the championship on the other side because that does help recruiting and it does help recruiting a great deal. So it's not -- it didn't finish exactly the way we wanted it, but I'll take those wins, and then I'll roll into 2018 and see how we can do. Q. Talk about your seniors. This is Senior Saturday of Senior Day. Just talk about you've only been there for two years. Let's talk about your seniors and what have they meant for your program? DINO BABERS: I'll tell you what, I'm so proud of these guys. I really feel like they're the cornerstone of the foundation we're building here. They've had to go through a transition, obviously, a second head coach. It's hard for young people to do that, to be recruited by one grown man in your living room saying this and that to your mom and dad and then to have someone else come along and change all that. They had to operate on faith, belief without evidence, and I really believe that the 2017 seniors is a part of the foundation that we're going to build here. And when we do win -- and we will win -- in the future, 2019, 2020, 2021, I hope that these guys can come back to the Syracuse area, and I hope that the football family and the community gives them their due because they're a part of that tradition, and it's going to be big when we start winning on the back end that these guys get the credit that they deserve on the front end. Q. And I know you played against Clemson and Miami. You beat Clemson. You had a tough game against Miami, came down to the wire. Just talk about those two teams playing in the title game next week, and what does it mean for the league for those two teams hopefully being in the college playoff? DINO BABERS: I think it's big for the league. Coach Richt is doing an awesome job, leaving Georgia and getting a very young Miami team into that location. I think the world of Coach Dabo, Coach Swinney. His program is one of the elite programs on the rise. It's going to stay there. They do a fabulous job. It's almost one of those old school coaches versus the young school, new ideal coach. And I think it's really good for the ACC, and I think it's really good for the league. I think it will be a fantastic game. Q. Coach, just a quick followup on Eric Dungey, obviously, going through injury the last few seasons here. Just what you can say about building toward the future, knowing that Zack Mahoney has been backing him up for a while and won't be there. Just what you can say about Rex and Tommy DeVito and just trying to prepare guys as you get set in case there is that unfortunate happening again. DINO BABERS: One thing I don't do is I don't talk about guys who haven't been on the football field yet. So I will not talk about Tommy DeVito. I think Rex is going to get better. As young men play, especially in the quarterback position, they have a tendency to get better. I think that the second half against Louisville was really his first really big time work where it mattered, and there were some really good guys in there playing, and he plays against them, and he did okay now. If he gets another opportunity -- and I suspect he will -- he needs to do better. That's what normally happens with young players when they start getting playing time. They get the speed of the game. They get the taste in their mouth. They figure some things out, and then normally, if they're made of the right stuff, they get better, and I think that Rex is made of the right stuff. So I would anticipate him getting better. Q. And then as far as Dungey, even when he's not out there, just what he means to this team on the sideline and just the importance of having his leadership and his energy with you, whether it's out on the field or if it unfortunately has to be there on the sideline. DINO BABERS: Eric is one of our elected team captains, and that's elected by the players. It's not selected by the coaches. And obviously, the way he plays is at a very, very elite level. The way he competes is a very, very elite level. I think that the guys appreciate the way he plays the game, and I think they appreciate, when he can't play the game, being on the sideline and giving them the mental and moral support that they can go out there and do some of the things that he was capable of doing, if not physically, then in heart. He's a big part of what we do. We appreciate him when he's on the field, and we appreciate him when he's off the field with us in spirit. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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