The Orange play their home opener against Georgia Tech at the Dome./
After 0-2 start on road, Syracuse hosts Georgia Tech at Carrier Dome
Syracuse coach Dino Babers didn’t see the big improvement he expected when his Orange dropped their second straight road game to start the season. He remains upbeat.
“We’re barely misfiring on stuff. It looks big to everybody else. It ’s small to us,” Babers said. “We’ve got to take care of those little things. If you take care of the little things, the big things will take care of themselves. I’m looking for the day when we come out of the clouds, when we get out of the smoke, and everybody sees what we can do.”
Playing the first game inside the newly renovated Carrier Dome might provide that boost. Syracuse (0-2, 0-2 Atlantic Coast Conference) plays host to Georgia Tech (1-1, 1-0) on Saturday in a rare trip north for the Yellow Jackets.
The game comes 40 years and six days after the first football game ever played inside the Dome — a 36-24 Syracuse victor y over Miami of Ohio. That game attracted an overf low crowd of 50,564, still the record for the building. The new scoreboard will be f lashing and the new sound system will be cranking, but the Loud House won’t be the same without fans, leav ing it up to the players to do the energizing.
“I feel like you just have to have a
unique imagination,” Orange defensive back Andre Cisco said. “Sometimes when I go work out by myself I just imagine the fans being there. It just motivates me to work harder. You have to use your imagination and be a kid again and picture the stadium full. It ’s going to be all right. Playing these past two games, I really haven’t even noticed the fans not being there.”
The Yellow Jackets won their season opener at Florida State, 16-13, then lost last week 49-21 at home to No. 13 UCF. They trailed in that one by just seven points in the fourth quarter before fading.
Babers said he planned to rotate quarterbacks but kept redshirt junior Tommy Devito as the starter and Rex Culpepper the backup. Devito has struggled behind an offensive line that too many times hasn’t given him much time to throw and it shows — Syracuse leads the nation in sacks allowed with 14 and is averaging just 186.5 yards of total offense, last in the nation.
“We’re going to play the best guy. We’re not trying not to play the best guy,” Babers said. “There’s no doubt that Rex has his packages, and we’re going to play those two g uys. We’re going to see how they go.”