SWC75
Bored Historian
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2011
- Messages
- 31,338
- Like
- 60,203
AmeriCU Dino Babers Show Returns Thursday - Syracuse University Athletics
The AmeriCU Dino Babers Show returns to the airwaves on Thursdays this fall, and will once again be broadcast live from Heritage Hill Brewery.
Coach Babers’s show this year show will be Thursday nights at 7PM except when the game is not on a Saturday. This year it will be 90 minutes, with the first hour being with Dino and the last half hour being with a ‘special guest’, who in the past just got a couple minutes at the end of the show.
The show originates from Heritage Hill Brewery in Jamesville:
Heritage Hill Brewhouse
Heritage Hill Brewhouse in Pompey. Handcrafted Beer, Homemade Food & Amazing Views set upon our active crop and animal farm. A family friendly destination that's an escape but close enough to call home.
You can also listen to the show live each week on the Syracuse IMG Sports Network and Cuse.com. Wednesday's show will be on 99.1 FM and 97.7 FM, as well. The show will regularly air on 99.5FM (Syracuse) 99.1 FM (Utica) and 1200 AM.”
You can also get it on: https://tunein.com/radio/home/
There hasn’t been any change in the phone numbers, which last year were 315-424-8599 (local) or 1-888-746-2873. You can call to ask questions or submit them via Twitter at: https://twitter.com/CuseIMG (Update: this account seems to have closed.)
#AskDino or through Cuse.com, (the SU Athletic website):
Submit a Question! - Syracuse University Athletics
You can (or could last year, anyway), listen to a podcast of the show, probably the next day, at: Search results for babers | Free Internet Radio | TuneIn
My Question(s) or Comments (or theories)
“Coach, two questions:
I’ve always heard that punt returners with their backs against the goal line are told to stand at the 10 yards line and let the ball go if they’d have to step back to catch it. We had fair catches at the SU 8, 5 and 7. What do our punt returners get told?
We had the ball at the Florida State 1, 2nd down with 37 seconds and two time outs left and let the clock run out. We hadn’t scored a touchdown in either of the last two games. The kids, mostly second teamers, had driven 64 yards in 8 plays, all on the ground to get there. How did the players react to not being given a chance to score there and could they have called a time-out themselves to give them a chance?“
The Show
(I sometimes re-arrange the comments so that statements made on the same subject are reported together, even if they came at different points of the show.)
Another scheduling note: The next Babers show will be next Wednesday. There will be no more shows after that as the BC game is the last of the regular season. The Boeheim Show will be off next week as the team will be in Brooklyn, so this is the last time they will be back-to-back as they have been these last two weeks. Also, the Northeastern basketball game will be at 5PM, (not 4PM) as it’s on the ACC Network, (not ACC Network +, which is Watch ESPN), and the ACCN is covering the funerals of the Virginia players who were killed. The Wake Forest game will be at 8PM, also on the ACCN. Also, the 11/26 basketball game with Bryant has been switched from 7PM to 4PM.
The weather at Wake will be similar to what it is here now: upper 30’s to low 40’s. November football weather.
Matt noted that Dino didn’t bring his game plan and Matt didn’t have his roster sheets, so they were ‘winging it’. Dino: “They have 22 seniors. Most of them, we know. We’ve seen plenty of them. I thought Harman was going to play the entire decade.” Matt quoted his statement: It’s not his ‘intension’ to come back. Dino: “I choose to assume that his word is good.” (Laughing) Matt comments on all the good quarterback we have faced this season – Aiden O’Connell, Brennan Armstrong, Jordan Travis and now Sam Hartman. We avoided Devin Leary, (and he didn’t mention Malik Cunningham). “It’s tough to do it year after year with all the owies”.
This brought about a discussion of how hard it is to build a team and a program these days. “You try to develop players. Then comes Covid, an extra year, now NIL and the transfer portal. You have to be a football coach, a recruiter and a general manager. Our young men are trying to acquire a degree – with NIL.”
I called in my questions. I tried reading them both, (so Dino could answer the second one first and then ask me what the first one was again). He had had enough of that and told me he wanted to answer the first one before I got to the second. (FYI for future multi-question calls.)
“Back in the day, the rule was stand at the 10 yard line but teams have gotten better at stopping the ball withing that so now we use the 8 yard line. 10 yards is too much room to give them. Analytics say that if the ball is downed within the five and you can’t get a first down the chances of the other team scoring are through the roof. So we tell them to stand at the 8 as if you are on the edge of a cliff. But young people can make mistakes. Fielding punts is one of most skillful things you can do in football that people don’t get credit for. Out of 105 guys on your roster maybe 2.5 of them can do this. When you are tracking the ball to make sure you catch it, it’s easy to lose track. You can try to catch a ball a yard behind you, maybe two yards.” Matt suggested wind could alter things, too. [but not in the Dome.] He came up with this fun fact: SU is 3rd in the country in average kickoff return yardage but would be 7th if they fair caught every one, which would be the equivalent of a 25 yard return from the goal line. [Why bother to return them at all? I guess my problem is that I’m ‘back in the day.’]
“On the last drive, I told the players not to call a time out and run the ball. I did call a time out when I thought LeQuint Allen looked a little loopy. I wanted to talk to my player.” Matt said that Allen could have gone to a knee and gotten an officials time out. “He can be a good player for us someday – he’s a good player now. I wanted to avoid getting him injured. He’s very military so I don’t normally say things to him twice but I twice asked him if he was OK and he said he was so I sent him back out. I told the players to try to score if they could but we aren’t going to call times outs to do it.” [Which doesn’t mean you can’t run a play with 37 seconds left and a yard to go.] “We had 60 minutes to score a touchdown with our starters. It was our 2’s vs. their 2’s. Sometimes you have to teach yourself hard lessons in life. Kids are told not to touch the stove but they touch it anyway. It’s about life lessons. That’s why I got into this business.” [I still wish we had scored there and I suspect the second teamers wanted to. I guess it was the equivalent of Jim Boeheim signaling for his players to stop trying to score at the end of a basketball game – I guess. But why even run the ball down the field? Why not just take a knee?]
Andrew in Atlanta asked how practice was. DB: “Outstanding” Will our quarterback be able to play, even though he’s not at 100%? DB: “He’s moving around well. He can decide when to pull the ball and when not to. He will play a lot better than that, (the Florida State game), the next time out (the Wake Forest game).” Tom in Pulaski wanted to know if Garret Shrader will be 100% for the final two games. DB: “Running backs, linebacker and linemen are never 100% at this point in the season. The key is whether they are better than the guy behind them. If their 85% is better than somebody else’s 100%, they will still play, even if they aren’t going to be healthy, fresh and bubbly until the bowl game.” [Has Garrett Shrader ever been bubbly?]
John in Baltimore said that we’ve won 4 blow-outs and lost one, that last under due to “November injuries”. He wanted to know why we kept the starters in as long as we do in games like this. “Louisville can run you down lickety-split. For Connecticut and Wagner you want to get your timing right for the big games. We want to practice at the highest level. I know all about injuries and I take guys out a lot. There’s not a lot of blow outs when you have teams like Purdue and Notre Dame and a UCONN team that will be in a bowl game. We’ve got 6 wins and only Wagner and Virginia are not in bowls.” (Dino was feeling pretty passionate tonight)
Dino said that as a coach he can’t gamble but if he could, when he heard in pre-season that we were predicted to win only 4-5 games, “I’d be all over that. I got fired up for what the fans and media were saying – I loved Mike Tirico’s tweets. When you go after Clemson, it’s going to cost you. The early injuries and that Clemson game really hurt us. But we’ll have experienced guys coming back with extra years and that will really help us.”
Then they went to what he’s really passionate about: the Virginia killings. Matt said it was quite a ‘handful’ for Tony Elliott to deal with in his first year as head coach. Dino: “I’ve had deaths at other universities for other reasons. Nothing is worth losing your life. This thanksgiving, we will feed the players on this team like no other players at the coach’s homes. The kids have met the coach’s wives and families. A team is a family. Robert Anae recruited all three young men.” [That would include Devin Chandler who transferred in from Wisconsin but never player for him.] he sat down with their parents and asked them to let their sons come back to Virginia in his care.” (Dino signed heavily.) “All coaches take responsibility of caring for someone else’s children. We have passed on some players if we see a red flag that indicates they are not a good fit for Syracuse. The safety of our family is important to us.” [This appeared to be a reference to the shooter, who was a walk-on.] Only time will help us get over it.” Matt added that Lavel Davis Jr. always insisted he be known with the name ‘Junior’ to honor his father. Virginia Tech and Liberty, who will be playing each other and also William and Mary will be wearing decals on their helmets to honor the deceased players. And Virginia’s game with Coastal Carolina has been cancelled.
Matt said the wanted to “pick up the pace so they’d had time with Strength and Conditioning coach Sean Edinger. Taking a call from Stefan from Utica might not have been the best idea. He normally speaks very slowly but in this case he was brief, wanting to know what other quarterbacks on the roster we have who “might be watching Garrett Shrader to take his place someday”. DB: “ We have quarterbacks on the roster, some injured and also possible transfers and recruits. If I’m not mistaken – I might be wrong – Garrett Shrader can come back.” [I would hope he would not be mistaken about something like that.] Luke in Pompey wondered if the limit on new players is still capped at 25. DB: “I believe they can go to 30 but I hope I’m not a dumb-dumb.” [We hope so, too, Dino.]
Matt asked Coach Edinger what he can do to help players at this point in the season. “We regulate their intensity. Some are walk-ons. Some are regulars. We need to optimize everything for them. Sometimes you have to hold them back. They want to go all out all the time.” Matt suggested that a strength coach is really an assistant line coach. SE: “We’re going to have them at least three years if they don’t portal out. they go from being the best player on their high school teams to being, really another species when they leave here, especially if they are going on to the NFL.”
Coach Edinger’s advice for Thanksgiving: “Everything in moderation, including moderation. Go get the calories you’ve earned.”
