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SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 17, 2018

Dino Babers

New York, New York

Notre Dame - 36, Syracuse - 3

DINO BABERS: There's no doubt that that is a fantastic football team. That's a very complete win over a team that, over our football team that I think is at least a good team. But there is no misjudging what was going on there from an offensive, defensive standpoint, they handled us very well. And my hat's off to the job that the coaches and their players did and good luck in their last game. And if they play the way they played us they will probably have an opportunity to play for a National Championship.

Q. After the Louisville game you said that this game is a freebie because it doesn't affect the place in the conference standings. After a 33-point loss, how do you think it affects the national conversation around you guys?
DINO BABERS: The national conversation?

Q. In terms of what bowl game you guys might play in, where do you think that you stand nationally after this game?
DINO BABERS: Well, I think the main thing is that everybody else can handle that kind of stuff. We have got some guys that are hurting based off of what happened in a football game. We need to get back and regroup and play the type of football that we have been playing all season. This is a speed bump and we just don't want it to happen again. That was a doggone good football team. And -- is there a 33-point -- I can't remember the score, it was so dominating. But you can't dismiss what they did. We have got to rebound and we got to play much better than what we just did.

Q. We saw Eric Dungey went out. He might have been grabbing at his back. What can you tell us about how he's doing and his status for next week?
DINO BABERS: Don't know right now. Still waiting on the trainers. We got to get him back to our place and check him out.

Q. Talk about the run offense. You guys rushed for a lot against Louisville. What did Notre Dame do that you didn't see preparing for today's game?
DINO BABERS: I don't think they did anything we didn't see. They've got really good players. We attempted to do some things and they closed off some gaps with their length. They're very, very long as a defensive football team and because of that length they're able to cover up a lot more space in the gaps than what Louisville was being able to do. I thought the surface was outstanding. I thought it was a really fast surface. Hats off to the Yankees organization. That field was nice. Unfortunately, we didn't play our football -- the way we played football didn't match the way the field was prepared today, because the field was in excellent shape.

Q. Losing Eric really seemed to take a lot of your team. You've been through it before, but it really seemed to take a lot out of your team. It didn't seem like your team recovered from seeing him being helped off. How big a blow was that?
DINO BABERS: I don't know if that was that big of a blow. The thing that I saw, there was a lot of mistakes that were going on. Missed tackles, dropped balls, I mean, we were dropping touchdowns in the end zone on guys that have made plays for us the last two or three weeks. We have got guys that are jumping up and locking in and catching the football and then hitting ground, and hitting the ground and the ball's coming out. We had -- I'm not going to call any guys out -- we had very, very, for the most part our veterans played extremely well on three sides of the ball, offense, defense and special teams. But you start going back to our young people and it was not good. They did not handle the surroundings well. It was disappointing.

Now that being said, the cool thing about young guys is they get older. And the next time we have an opportunity to do something like this and lord willing there will be a next time, they will handle it a lot better. But we were a little young in the tooth on this one. We had a lot of young guys making a lot of mistakes.

Q. You've had the opportunity now to see two of the top four teams in the country. You obviously played Clemson, very tough, earlier in the year. Can you give us a little bit of prism of comparison of Notre Dame and Clemson having being across the side from both?
DINO BABERS: I've lost to both of them. I don't think it's fair to talk about them. I will tell you this, though, those, that Notre Dame is better than what people think they are. That's a really, really good football team and Coach Kelly, my hat goes off to Coach Kelly and Coach Lea, Clark Lea, the defensive coordinator. That was a fabulous defense he put up against us and they played extremely well.

Now all I will say is this, is Clemson is extremely talented. So I think that there's no doubt that those two teams are in the top four in the country and rightfully so.

Q. When you're down 29-0 and you're down near the goal line, what's the thought process about sending the field goal unit out and trying to get on the board there?
DINO BABERS: It's really simple. We could run another play and we could even score a touchdown, and then maybe even do an onside kick. And maybe score another touchdown. But we're not going to win. That's one scenario.

The other thing is that when you're running those plays you got a chance to get people hurt. We can get somebody hurt on the play, Notre Dame can get somebody hurt on the play. The score did not matter right there, so it was just go out, run out, kick a field goal, keep your guys healthy, move on to the next game.

Q. You mentioned you had some guys hurting in the locker room. Do you tell them it's a reality check? Do you tell them this is where you need to be? How do you use --
DINO BABERS: Where are you talking? Where are you? Okay. Thank you.

(Laughter.)

Start again, please.

Q. Yeah, sorry. You said you had guys hurting in the locker room emotionally from this. Do you tell them it's a reality check? Do you tell them this is where you need to get to? How do you use this to get better?
DINO BABERS: Well, you tell them the truth. I've got, we're a young football team, but I've got some talented seniors and some talented juniors who really wanted to go out and play a fabulous game in front of the country, in front of the nation. And we just didn't have enough underbelly to support that. If you look at Clayton, Chris Slayton, Alton Robinson and Koda Martin and Cody, I mean those guys, Dontae Strickland. There's some upperclassmen, Jamal, special teams, they played a heck of a game. But the rest of the team wasn't ready yet. We weren't mature enough, we weren't old enough to handle this football team. Now I'm a little amiss, I can't tell you how many seniors and juniors they have over there, but I would imagine based on the way they play that they have a lot of seniors and juniors over there and they're two deep, I just can't remember right now.

Q. Curious what you thought of where kind of the defense might have gone wrong tonight and how Ian Book's mobility maybe played into that.
DINO BABERS: I wouldn't say that the defense went wrong, the offense really didn't help those guys. I mean, they beat us with 33 points, that's not a lot of points to us. So I'm not going to sit here and talk bad about the defense. I will say that the mobility of the quarterback at Notre Dame is definitely an advantage and there's -- guys get very, very close to him and you think you got him, and then all of a sudden he's really slippery like an eel and he has the ability to, kind of like a punt returner to go up, to go back, to go in, to go out and our big guys really had trouble tracking him down. Now from another standpoint they were out there on the field so much and they were so tired it really wasn't fair to them to try to get after that jackrabbit like that with the amount of reps, the amount of plays they were out there playing on the defense on the football field.

Q. You mentioned Clark Lea a little bit earlier, I realize the quarterback back switch hurt you guys, but what did Notre Dame's defense do to keep you guys uncomfortable?
DINO BABERS: They were very simple. They were very similar to Clemson. Really they turned the game from chess to checkers and now guys have to make plays. There was numerous combination, passing combinations that we called and you looked out there and everybody was covered. And if there's coverage, there's nowhere for the quarterback to throw the ball to. If Eric is in the game he's going to create with his legs. Tommy does it a different way. And then there was a lot of throws where Tommy's just throwing the ball away. He's not being inaccurate, he's looking, he's looking, there's nobody open, the rush is getting close and he's putting the ball out of bounds, saving down and distance so we can have another opportunity on the next down.

Q. Obviously you mentioned the young players struggling in this game, in this big game. Well they're now going to Boston College and a bowl game. How are you going to get them to grow up fast and be ready for these big challenges?
DINO BABERS: This will make them grow up. They will go home, they will hurt, I'll hurt, and with all those, with those open wounds they will turn to closed scars and we'll get better and we'll remember. If it doesn't kill you, it makes you better. We're going to grow from this, there's no doubt about it. We'll be better the next time we come into this situation.

Q. You talked about the younger guys struggling. Is Tommy one of those guys you're talking about, where is he in his development, what did you see out of his development today?
DINO BABERS: I thought this was a big venue for him. He's back home basically in front of his family and friends and high school teammates and all that kind of stuff. I think when it's all said and done this is going to make him better as well. You guys, thank you so much.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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