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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 26, 2018

Dino Babers

Greensboro, North Carolina

DINO BABERS: Well, we're just really excited to be 4-0 at this stage of the game and going down to play a fine Clemson football team down in Death Valley. We know we've got a big task in front of us, but we're looking forward to the challenge.

Q. Just speak on the elevated play of the defense in the last two games for you. I know that you've spoken on the praises of the defensive coordinator Brian Ward and the staff and what you can say you've seen in the last two games specifically.
DINO BABERS: Well, I think we've been extremely fundamentally sound, and we've really done some nice things. We're winning our one-on-one battles up front with the defensive line. We're being opportunistic in the back end with our DB's get an opportunity to touch a football for an interception, their catching percentage is through the roof right now, which we're really excited about.

And then our linebackers, although they're the youth of our defense, they've been coming along and playing steady for us. That combination of the guys up front really setting the pace has really been effective for us.

Q. And then as far as running the ball and Joe Morris had come back in to be honored, he said he spoke with you about the future and the guys on the ground and respecting Eric Dungey's ability to run. But when you look at the true running backs Jarveon Howard as well as Moe Neal and Dontae Strickland, what you've seen from them as a group moving forward?
DINO BABERS: I think as a group, we have a good solid running crew. I think everybody kind of brings their own dimension back there, everybody has their own special talents. I don't think that one guy has stood out. If one guy stood out he'd be the guy back there most of the time, and until someone separates themselves from the group, I think those guys have been very unselfish the way they work together.

Q. I'm sure you learned today about Kelly Bryant transferring, just like the rest of us. How does that affect the way you guys are game planning this week? Obviously you knocked Kelly out last year. Is there anything that kind of gets the D-line kind of fired up knowing their backups aren't as ready as Kelly would have been?
DINO BABERS: No, I don't know about that. First of all, they've got -- their offensive line, they've got some guys that are really good; three really, really good guys up there, not to take away from the other two. Getting to him is one thing. That's a hard thing to do, even last year when we had the one hit where he happened to leave the game. It wasn't because we got to him in a pass rush, it was because we took off and we kind of caught him at the line of scrimmage when he was about to bust off a big run.

I think the offensive line is really good. I think they'll do a good job protecting the young freshman, and obviously if Dabo made that call, the guy is going to be outstanding, and you can see it on tape. He's a really exceptional player, aged beyond his years, and he's behind a fabulous offensive line and a really good football team that's ranked in the top four in the country. So he's not going to do it all by himself, and I don't think he has to. That's a good football team.

Q. Just kind of related, it seems like guys deciding to transfer after week 4 is going to be something that happens just with this new redshirt rule. I'm curious, is that something that you've seen at all in your locker room in deciding who are we going to play, who are we not going to play? Is that something you guys have had come on your radar?
DINO BABERS: You know, this thing that's happened, it's kind of new to me. It surprises me that someone that would be with their senior class would do that. Now, when you stop at look at it, you can understand the reason why, and he needs to take care of himself in that situation and that's acceptable.

But this was a little bit of a surprise to me. I really anticipated playing against both quarterbacks. So I really haven't digested the whole thing yet.

Q. I've heard you talk in the past about Sean Riley and his unique size. In what ways do you think that almost gives him an edge out there on the field?
DINO BABERS: As long as he doesn't get hit, he's got a huge edge. When you've got something that small squirting around through everybody, sometimes it's tough to get down that low to put a good whack on him. But when something really, really big hits something really, really small, normally really, really small doesn't feel too well.

Q. I know with the whole hotel situation we found out you guys were staying at the Double Tree last year instead of the Crown Plaza, but I heard from the players that you didn't say why, you just sort of went to a different hotel. Was there a specific reason behind that or did you just not think to tell the players?
DINO BABERS: You know, it had nothing to do -- we're sleeping in a different bed in the same town. It just didn't seem like a big deal at the time.

Q. Did you notice anything through that hotel trip, anything different, or did players just kind of ride with it and get a good night's sleep?
DINO BABERS: You know, one of the things that we like to do is we like to have that philosophy of Heartbreak Ridge, that movie, adjust and improvise. We constantly -- throughout camp we change things up, we change schedules because when you go on away trips, you never know what's going to happen.

I was talking to Sean Lewis, one of our ex-offensive coordinators from last year. They were taking a trip last week, and their airplane had a flat tire and they couldn't take off. So somebody had to come and lift the plane up and change the tire, and they ended up doing their meetings in an airplane jet hangar up on a wall. And he said, you'd be proud of us right now, adjusting and improvising, and he showed me the video, and it made me proud.

You've got to be ready to just adjust. You never know what's going to happen on an away trip, and sometimes things are totally out of your control, but you still need to be able to get your job done. We kind of look at it as no big deal. We'll go somewhere else, we'll sleep somewhere else, and we'll still try to go out and do the best job we can do.

Q. As you look back at last year's match-up with Clemson, what did Eric and your ground game, what did you do particularly well that you kind of want to recapture that formula this week?
DINO BABERS: Well, I don't know what we did particularly well. I thought we mixed up our formations, we mixed up our shifts, and we did some things at tempo that I thought gave us some advantages. But I'd be very surprised. That defensive coordinator, Coach Venables is a fantastic coach. He gets paid a bunch of money, more than a bunch of Power Five coaches, that's for sure. I'm sure that stuff is not going to work this year, so we're going to have to come up with something new, and I don't know what we're going to come up with, and it's already Wednesday.

Q. As you look at Trevor Lawrence on film in preparation, what about him kind of catches your eye, what's your impressions of the concerns he poses for you?
DINO BABERS: Well, first of all, I thought Kelly was a fantastic player, but there's no doubt Trevor Lawrence is going to be a star in this game. He's got an outstanding arm. The ball jumps out of his hand. He's a tall guy. His body hasn't filled out yet, but after two years of putting some muscle and some weight on this guy, he's going to be absolutely unbelievable. He's as talented as everybody thinks he is.

Q. Talk about Clemson's defense, how great is that defense from Clemson?
DINO BABERS: Wow, where do you want to start? I mean, they've got four first-round draft picks. I mean, 99 is built like a tree. He came to Media Day and he just blocked out the sun. I could have walked around him on the beach all day long and never got a tan.

Between him, Austin and Christian Wilkins and Dexter, they're fabulous players, and that's not even counting the guys they've got behind them. So you've got that group, which is probably the best D-line in college football; the linebackers are outstanding. They've got cover corners. They've got a safety, No. 19, I'm for getting his name, but I think he scored two touchdowns on us in two games. So he's averaging a touchdown a game every time we play him.

So I don't know where you start attacking those guys at. I think they're really, really good, and it's going to be a really, really hard challenge for us to go down there in Death Valley.

Q. Coming into Syracuse you took some of the players that were there before and then have brought in and recruited players that are under obviously your system and your coaches. With that balance, just what can you say about growing this team and being successful with a team that partially had been there before you, and then the other part had come obviously during that because I don't think there's a lot of respect from the outside looking in how hard it is to balance that together and find success.
DINO BABERS: Well, first of all, that's a fantastic question. Here at Syracuse, we really don't just kick kids to the side. We really want young men to be able to graduate and graduate with their degrees. It's really the mission statement of this University and something that as an employee of this University that I take great pride in. You're right, we try to jigsaw puzzle this thing together, we try to take what we can from the old team and then recruit what we can from outside and try to put something together that's respectable on the football field that people would enjoy looking at and gives us an opportunity to win.

And it's a slow process. It's a lot slower than other processes, but we do feel like it's the proper way to go about it.

Q. Going through this process, what you can say on the recruiting trail from the day that you got into Syracuse to where you stand right now, how the response has been or if there has been an uptick or more appreciation for the program as you continue to build?
DINO BABERS: Well, I think there's no doubt that the win over Virginia Tech, our first year with them winning the other side of the conference and then playing a close game against Clemson in the championship, ACC Championship game, obviously helped us. The win last year against Clemson actually helped us, as well.

We haven't had the blessing of being able to go to a bowl game in our first two years, which is obviously a negative. But to have two wins like that and have something to point to to tell young men that if you come here, we're doing it the right way, you can have an opportunity to play early and you're going to play big-time football, especially when you play in the ACC Atlantic, has definitely helped. And now we've got to see how far we can take this thing. It's one game at a time for us. We are not looking ahead. We have a huge task this Saturday versus a championship football team, a top-4 caliber football team, and we're going to go out there and give it our best.

Q. Playing in the ACC, what's the biggest challenge that you have that other Power Five conferences don't have to deal with?
DINO BABERS: You know, I don't know about just playing in the ACC, but I can talk about the ACC Atlantic. I really think that our side of the conference has got to be one of the top two sides of conferences in the Power Five. When you talk about the Clemsons, the Florida States, the Louisvilles, the NC States, and you talk about the job that Wake Forest, Boston College, and hopefully people mentioning Syracuse is doing, that I think in our side of the conference, it's drastic. The styles are different, but the coaches know exactly what they're trying to do with their offenses and their defenses, and I think it makes for a very, very competitive side.

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