	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

April 19, 2018

Dino Babers

Greensboro, North Carolina

DINO BABERS: Had a fantastic spring, and we really felt like we got a lot of things accomplished. We didn't get outside much. The weather has been really crazy all across the United States, but luckily for us we've got a whole bunch of enclosed football buildings up here. We've got a lot of buildings we can practice in, and we think we had a fantastic spring. Questions?

Q. Going into spring, you probably had to call it winter practice with the weather you had. What is the hardest position to develop?
DINO BABERS: I don't know about the hardest one. I think you've got to obviously work an entire football team. The cool thing about football is you really have 23, 24 positions that you need to get ready. Any one of those positions can cost you a football game, so you're really developing all those positions. I'm not sure I could pick just one.

Q. Do you go into spring with an ultimate goal, or is it a lot of small goals you're trying to accomplish?
DINO BABERS: I think it's a combination of both. If you're going to hit your big goals, you better start with a bunch of little ones. You talk about the discipline and being in shape and doing the little things and taking those six-inch steps, right, those small, six-inch steps, and you do those things and it gives you an opportunity to do some big things. I thought the big thing we got accomplished was physicality that we had this spring.

Q. How's Rex Culpepper doing?
DINO BABERS: He's doing really good. He's on his second thing of chemo up here. He's splitting between Tampa and New York City. I think both of us have outstanding hospitals in those areas. So he's up in our hospital on his second round up here right now. He's doing a good job.

Q. What was the moment like in the spring game when he was able to come in for a little bit and able to throw the touchdown?
DINO BABERS: We talk about family, we're a big family up here. Big Ohana, la familia. When a family member's down and he's out there showing all that strength, leading the charge, it's an emotional time that gets everybody fired up. We were happy for him. It was my pleasure to do it for him.

Q. Wanted to ask a follow-up with that. What is his prognosis, and will he be available full-go once fall practice rolls around?
DINO BABERS: First of all, he has the type of cancer that he has is very, very curable, and it wasn't a perfect diagnosis, but based off of what he had and some of the symptoms off of that, we feel like he's going to get a clean bill of health. We're just waiting for the doctors to okay him.

We can't predict when he's going to get cleared because he does have to go through these treatments. Even though we're very positive it's going to work out the correct way, you never know when you're dealing with something like that. We're going to have to just wait and see. But the spirits are high. We feel like we're going to be able to not only contain it, but get rid of it, so he can have an opportunity to continue playing football.

Q. Have you had a situation like this where you've dealt with a player who has to go through cancer treatments and, obviously, the love and support of the team is so important, but I'm curious if you've had experience with that?
DINO BABERS: Not with cancer in itself. Obviously you deal with a lot of things as a head football coach and as an assistant coach. Especially when you have been in it as long as I have. But if you're talking specifically about a cancer situation like this, no, I've never had this before.

Q. To go off of that, just what you could say about Rex Culpepper being an inspiration? I know when you came into Syracuse, he was one of the guys that you wanted to continue to -- he was committed to the team and you wanted to bring him in and have him be a part of the future of what you were building. From that decision to today, just how he's inspired you and what he's done for the team?
DINO BABERS: The guy comes to -- he goes to class with a smile on his face. He comes to practice with a smile on his face yet he's a very, very serious competitor. Anytime you've got a young man at that age that's so focused and so determined, and he knows what he wants most, and he's not willing to trade that in for something at the moment, that person's going to always be a positive reflection, not only on himself and his family, but also on his teammates.

Q. As far as the defensive side of the ball, the linebacker corps with Zaire Franklin, Parris Bennett, Jonathan Thomas all moving forward, just what can you say you've seen through the spring through the linebacker corps?
DINO BABERS: I see youth. I see guys making mistakes. I see a lot of young men getting opportunities to play that haven't had an opportunity to play in the past because they couldn't move those guys that you mentioned out of the way. We're going to be younger there, they'll be more experienced. They'll have fresher needs and fresher shoulders.

But there is no way they'll see as much as those linebackers that you just mentioned that are trying to get opportunities to play in the National Football League.

Q. You mentioned after the spring game that you would consult with the team doctors. Is everybody healthy?
DINO BABERS: Yeah, we really are. We came out clean. We had a couple of broken bones through spring ball, but those are four to six-week deals. They heal up better than they were before, so we're really happy with the way we came out of it, and we're ready to move into the summer part of our program.

Q. Do you feel like you're further ahead this year than you've been in the last two years?
DINO BABERS: I feel like we know more not only about our opponents, but about ourselves, which is probably the most important thing. So based off of that, I think that we're ahead.

Now we're going to still need the freshman class. We've got some really good freshmen coming in that we believe are going to be able to get into some of our depth. We're going to have to see. If that's the case, we'll have to reevaluate everything from there. But right now we feel like we have a good grip on what's going on.

Q. Eric is back at 100% or close to it?
DINO BABERS: Yeah, I would expect Eric to be green light go, yes, sir.

Q. Wanted to ask about your impressions of Willie Taggert. I know you guys matched up together back in '16, your first season when you played USF, I was wondering if you had any experiences running into him on the recruiting trail, and your impressions of him as a coach, now that he's taken over at Florida State?
DINO BABERS: I haven't run into him on the recruiting trail. We may be recruiting different guys. Now that he's -- he came up here with the University of South Florida and got a fantastic win at our place up in the Dome up here with South Florida's athletes. Now that you're giving him Florida State's athletes, I'd imagine he'd be even more dangerous.

He knows what he's doing. He's always had explosive offenses, and I think it's going to be another guy that everybody's going to have to reckon with in the conference.

Q. Coming out of spring, between Eric and Devito, how are you feeling about your quarterback position?
DINO BABERS: I like all of our quarterbacks. I think that we've got probably our best group of quarterbacks that we've had in a long time here, maybe ever since '98. The whole room has really got some skills. Some people do some things better than others. But I think that we have a group of quarterbacks that everybody in Syracuse, New York, is really happy about.

Q. Talk about your defense. I know last year you had some close games at Miami and a close game at Florida State. Is this something that your defense needs to do to finish ballgames to get better to win these close ballgames this year?
DINO BABERS: I'm not so sure it was the defense in those games more so than the offense. Our defense, I feel, gave us enough opportunities to win last year. We needed to do a better job on offense. I didn't think we scored enough touchdowns in the red zones. We kicked too many field goals. Then when we got to the last part of the year where some of those scores started to get really whacked. We had so many guys banged up and hurt that we weren't playing with the same offense or defensive personnel that we started in September with when we got to the month of November.

So our deal is to make these guys bigger, stronger, keep increasing our depth. So when we get to those later months and we have to play some of the back-ups because the starters are banged, bruised or out, that we have more athletic abilities in those twos and threes on the field than the ones we had before.

So I think it's more of a team situation more so than one side of the ball.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297