SYRACUSE, N.Y. – The Orange football team continued #CuseCamp16 on Saturday morning with its first scrimmage of the preseason inside the Carrier Dome. The scrimmage was broken up into two halves and was played without special teams.
Head coach
Dino Babers was pleased with the pace of the session, as the team ran 150 plays in 1 hour and 45 minutes.
"I thought the tempo was extremely good," Babers said. "I thought it was physical. There was some good hitting out there, which is important when you're trying to get ready for a tough conference like the ACC. It was nice and humid in the Carrier Dome, just the way we like it. Although we didn't have the sun in our face and grapes in our mouth, I thought we got better today."
The defense held its own in the first half with two sacks, one interception and several fourth-down stops, including two in the red zone.
Dontae Strickland scored the first touchdown of the scrimmage on a 30-yard run up the middle just before the break.
The second half began with a pick-six by freshman defensive back
Evan Foster. Coordinator
Brian Ward's unit added three more sacks in the half, including one on fourth down to thwart a potential scoring drive. A fumble recovery by
Troy Henderson at the goal line late in the second half kept the offense out of the end zone again.
After scoring once in the first half, the offense tallied five second-half touchdowns.
Jordan Fredericks and
Amba Etta-Tawo both scored twice after the break, and Strickland added his second rushing TD of the morning on a 5-yard run.
Quarterbacks
Eric Dungey and
Zack Mahoney combined for three second-half touchdown passes. Dungey connected with Etta-Tawo on a long scoring pass down the sideline. He also hit Fredericks underneath for a short touchdown. Etta-Tawo's second TD reception came on a beautiful 30-yard strike from Mahoney.
Defensively, Henderson recorded a sack to go along with his fumble recovery. Freshman linebacker
Tim Walton made a nice interception on a tipped pass, and down linemen
De'Jon Wilson,
Jaquwan Nelson,
Steven Clark and
Kenneth Ruff all recorded sacks.
Saturday's scrimmage capped the team's first week of preseason camp. The Orange will hold a short walkthrough on Sunday before hitting the field for a pair of practices Monday.
