Orange Not Looking Past Holy Cross

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – Syracuse (2-2) concludes its three-week stretch of home games on Saturday with a noon tilt against FCS opponent Holy Cross (1-2) at the Dome. Once a frequent opponent, the Crusaders have not played the Orange since 1973 and will be making their visit to the Loud House.

The game will be televised on the ACC Network. For the second week in a row, Wes Durham, Roddy Jones and Eric Wood have the call.

Holy Cross is coached by Bob Chesney, who is in his second season at the helm. The Crusaders lost their most recent outing to Yale, 23-10. They have not scored more than 13 points in any of their three games. Despite the statistics, Syracuse head coach Dino Babers cautioned that the Crusaders should not be overlooked.

"You never know what's going to happen in a football game and you never know who's going to get hurt in a football game," Babers told the media at his weekly press conference. "It's a serious game where the good players are allowed to get tackled and allowed to get hurt. We need to remain focused and locked in, so we can leave this game with the same amount of players that we walked in with."

The Orange stopped their modest two-game losing streak on Saturday with a 52-33 win against Western Michigan. Redshirt sophomore quarterback Tommy DeVito played the best game of his young career, accounting for five touchdowns, including four TD passes. Babers praised DeVito for the growth he's made to date and expects he'll continue to improve.

"You spent a lot of time with your starting quarterback, and the more time that we spend together, the better I feel," Babers said. "He's a very calming soul. He's young at heart, but he has a very mature side of him so he's easy to deal with and he's going to continue to get better."

DeVito helped loosen up the Western Michigan defense by running for a career-high 85 yards. He sprinted for 60 yards on a designed run on the second play of the game. In the second quarter, DeVito scored a 36-yard touchdown when he saw open space and decided to take off.

"That run was him reading what was in front of him. We don't always call those plays, it depends on the structure and who we're playing," Babers said. As a coach, you have to play some chess on whether you like some things, and if we like the matchup, we'll do those things. I'll tell you this, that touchdown run was not designed. That was just him seeing something and taking off, which is really good for us. When we do stuff like that we make ourselves more difficult to defend. "

Offensively, the Orange totaled a season-high 545 yards and averaged 6.6 yards per play against the Broncos. On the other side of the ball, the defense forced four turnovers, recorded three sacks, had two forced fumbles, and logged 10 passes defended, including nine breakups.

"One thing our defense is doing an outstanding job in is getting turnovers. As long as they keep getting us extra possessions, we're going to have opportunities to win games, so long as we're efficient."

Come Saturday versus Holy Cross another opportunity awaits.

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Syracuse University Athletics

Players Mentioned

Tommy DeVito

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