Syracuse, N.Y. -- Dino Babers, incredulous at first, needed to take a moment during his postgame press conference to compose himself.
"We had 43G out there today?" Babers said, referencing the largest home crowd since he became Syracuse's football coach three years ago.
"That's really cool. That's really cool."
The Honolulu native has taken Syracuse football fans on a trip of a lifetime -- for some, at least -- elevating a success-starved program to heights not reached since the turn of the century.
Here, on a night that delivered a 54-23 victory against Louisville, a four-hour celebration of a senior class that has turned the vision Babers laid out into a reality, it was the fan base that, momentarily, left Babers at a loss for words.