CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. — As Syracuse drove down the field up 14-10, it hit a stall in the red zone. In four plays, the Orange gained 54 yards and a roughing the passer penalty handed SU another 15 yards, putting Syracuse on the Boston College 19-yard line.

The final 19 yards took five plays. SU committed three false start penalties and one holding penalty. The Orange faced a second-and-goal from the BC 20, a third-and-goal from the BC 18 and a third-and-goal from the BC 11.

Despite the penalties, Syracuse quarterback Eric Dungey launched a fade to wide receiver Steve Ishmael and put the Orange ahead for good.

“We’re going to have to go back and check the tape,” SU head coach Dino Babers said. “I think that some of it we have to see because that’s very uncharacteristic for you to have that many false starts without there being a reason. So we will go back and check the tape.

“But they called them on us, so I’m sure we must have did it. I’m assuming.”

In the first five plays of Syracuse’s (4-4, 2-2 Atlantic Coast) 28-20 win over Boston College (3-4, 0-4), there were eight called penalties between the teams. The start foreshadowed the rest of the game. SU and BC finished with 24 penalties for 201 yards, and SU racked up 16 of those for 135 yards.

The Orange’s nine false start penalties were more than BC’s total penalties and accounted for 56 percent of its total penalties. The Orange still managed to pull out a 28-20 win over the Eagles with the penalty total.

“Sometimes it would be like hard counts,” Syracuse guard Aaron Roberts said, “and sometimes it would be somebody didn’t know it was a hard count or something like that.”

Syracuse had more false starts than it had penalties in six other games this season. The only other game the Orange has had double digit penalties was against South Florida, when it had 10 for 69 yards. Prior to SU’s matchup against Boston College, the Orange had not tallied triple-digit penalty yards this season.

After the game, Babers was asked whether he’d thought about calling a timeout to calm his team down, but the SU head coach deflected instead.

“I’ll tell you what, in between series, I sure did get myself around to where they could feel me,” Babers said about potentially calling a timeout to settle SU down, “and made sure that they settled down.”

Published on October 22, 2016 at 7:41 pm

Contact Chris: cjlibona@syr.edu | @ChrisLibonati