ULM HEAD COACH TODD BERRYOpening statement:
“Obviously this is a disappointing loss. Tulsa has a good football team. We continued to hurt ourselves with silly things. Some of that has to do with youth, and some of that has to do with the lack of discipline and that’s on me. I think we understand that some of the penalties and miscues are hurting us, because we have certainly talked about it enough, but it’s not getting fixed and that responsibility is on me. To Tulsa’s credit, they were able to make plays when they needed to make plays. We had a lot of missed talks and dropped balls, and those are plays we need to come up with.”
On overall problems today:“The youth issue we can’t solve, and that’s because of injuries. The only thing you can do with that (youthfulness) is keep coaching and keep tryeeing to grow it up. In relation to the penalties, which continue to hurt us, we have to address it to the point where all of a sudden if we are going to continue in that vein then they can’t be out there on the field. Those (penalties) are killing us, and it’s not like we haven’t pointed it out. They (players) have to make a decision to not have penalties or we will play somebody else.”
On late turnovers in the game:“Garret had one there that was a tough one, obviously Trey Caudwell, and thenthe kickoff return fumble. One of the things that you worry about when you put a defensive player back to return is that player hasn’t done the ball security drills in practice like your offensive players have. Although, Trey takes great pride in it (returning kicks) and the Tulsa player made a great play. We did have some momentum there, and they hurt us with those turnovers. I was proud of how we came out in the second half to play, because we kind of got re-energized a little bit. We knew going into this game that we would have to play a little bit closer to the vest, because of all of the emotions from last week. We didn’t have the opportunity to have as many practices to work on things we wanted to so we intentionally cut the game plan for today down.”
DL BEN BANOGUOn defensive success today:“We really honed in on it (Tulsa’s offense) in practice so we knew what we were going to get. We really opened up our playbook on defense and threw a lot of stuff at them. Whenever the plays opened up our guys were out there making plays, and it just so happened that some them (plays) were coming at me and I made them. I think we were just out there doing our thing, and we just kept making plays.”
On what to take from today’s game:“Our defense we put in some tough spots in the beginning. We were able to overcome some of them, and the others we just let get out of hand. I think that we can take everything that we learned both good and bad, and look at film and make adjustments to use against Appalachian State to help our team get a victory.”
On what it takes to get the issues fixed:“It comes from us. The coaches are going to say what things to get us going, but we just have to get back to our roots. We have to build up our chemistry, because right now when the offense is doing good, the defense isn’t or when the defense is doing good the offense isn’t. There are times that our special teams are shaky as well. We just need to have one of those games where everything comes together, and this upcoming week is a good opportunity to do so.”
TULSA HEAD COACH PHILIP MONTGOMERYPHILIP MONTGOMERY: Continuing to get better. These are the type of games that help you in that process, and so we'll continue to keep striving to get better each and every week. We'll go back and look at this tape just like we do every other one and learn from our mistakes and try to correct them and move on.
Q. You mentioned not having Keevan. How much of a challenge was that in this game? You had other guys step up but it's not the same when he's not out there.PHILIP MONTGOMERY: Yeah, with him, shoot, there's some match-up issues out there that you can definitely take advantage of. You know, and besides that point of it, just his leadership, his energy, his competitiveness, you know, not having him is a factor, but again, we don't have him. Not on the field. We've got him in the locker room and we've got him with us during practice but we don't have him on the field, so these guys have got to continue to keep growing. We've got some young guys out on the field right now so they've got to keep stepping up and get better and I think they took some really good strides tonight of being able to do that. I mean, Hobbs' touchdown route right before halftime, that's a big, growing step for him.
Q. Linscott, the interception, just talk about how it changed all the momentum and how huge that was.PHILIP MONTGOMERY: It really was. It was a changing point of the game. That and honestly the fumble we caused on the kickoff return. I mean, those two plays were huge momentum swings for us. And you know, Linscott, I don't know what the tackles were. I don't have that sheet in front of me, but I know he was in on a lot of them, and you know, Mudoh had a great game. I thought defensively we had a bunch of guys, DA was in there a bunch, Jeremy Smith, Trent, Craig, all those guys played extremely well, and so I was proud of them, and you know, I thought Linscott showed, again, who he was. Went back to just playing really smart, intelligent football, having his eyes in the right spot, and I think that helped him out all night.
Q. You guys had three missed field goals and a block tonight on special teams. How do you correct that moving forward?PHILIP MONTGOMERY: Well, I mean, nobody knows. Red is fighting through an injury right now. He's trying to battle through it. It's getting better. Not to provide an excuse for him, we've still got to go out there and hit those field goals and we've got to do a better job on the interior part of it and that's just something small that we've been working on and working on, and sometimes you go out there and you have a little lapse in concentration and you can't have those in those type of situations. That's what happened on the block part of it.
We'll keep stressing it and keep working with it. You know, Red has made some big field goals, too. Shoot, he hit us a game winner at the first of the year. We're going to still keep working and keep plugging, and we'll keep getting better.
Q. Y'all did run 107 plays tonight. That would seem to indicate that you were moving the ball pretty successfully, but it was -- you just couldn't punch anything in until the fourth quarter. Did it get a little frustrating there for a while?PHILIP MONTGOMERY: You know, a little frustrated is probably not the word I would use. But you know, the thing that I'm happy about is that our team continued and kept -- keep battling, and found a way to go win, even through all of that. Yes, it's frustrating. We've got to continue to keep working it and getting better.
You know, with that being said, you ran 107 and you've got the same five linemen working all 107 of those, and we're not working real slow, and those guys have got to continue to just keep grinding and working because when you get down there and you're looking at ways to take advantage of defenses, especially what Coach Berry and his staff do, they make it tough down in there. If you look at the scores that they've been -- of their other opponents, it ain't like Alabama and those people have lit them up. Georgia Southern did a good job with it, had a couple of defensive touchdowns, and they're an option-based team, which pushes a lot of stress on you. But I thought our guys, again, continued to battle, and we got us a big win, and that's the most important thing.
Q. The play in which Zack scored with six minutes left with the offensive linemen coming in, is that called something?PHILIP MONTGOMERY: Heavy. It really is. That's the name of the formation. It's called heavy. We're bringing in a couple of extra linemen, and you know, right before they went out this is what I tell them. I mean, this is why you lift all those weights. This is why you do everything that you do, put both them hands on the ground and create movement. I mean, we're going to put a lot of weight in one area, and Zack, you hit it and make us a yard-and-a-half or whatever we've got to make and go get it done, and they did a great job stepping up and doing it.
Q. The uniforms, the black uniforms, was that a surprise to the players today?PHILIP MONTGOMERY: It was.
Q. How did that go over?PHILIP MONTGOMERY: It was great. They walked in the locker room and it was like a little kid on Christmas, a five year old just opened it up and it was raining down. They were excited about it.
I thought they looked extremely sharp out on the field, in conjunction with all of our other uniforms, but I think it just adds another factor to us, and I know our guys enjoyed playing in them, and they were excited about it.
You know, I thought it looked good. Recruits like it.
“Obviously this is a disappointing loss. Tulsa has a good football team. We continued to hurt ourselves with silly things. Some of that has to do with youth, and some of that has to do with the lack of discipline and that’s on me. I think we understand that some of the penalties and miscues are hurting us, because we have certainly talked about it enough, but it’s not getting fixed and that responsibility is on me. To Tulsa’s credit, they were able to make plays when they needed to make plays. We had a lot of missed talks and dropped balls, and those are plays we need to come up with.”
On overall problems today:“The youth issue we can’t solve, and that’s because of injuries. The only thing you can do with that (youthfulness) is keep coaching and keep tryeeing to grow it up. In relation to the penalties, which continue to hurt us, we have to address it to the point where all of a sudden if we are going to continue in that vein then they can’t be out there on the field. Those (penalties) are killing us, and it’s not like we haven’t pointed it out. They (players) have to make a decision to not have penalties or we will play somebody else.”
On late turnovers in the game:“Garret had one there that was a tough one, obviously Trey Caudwell, and thenthe kickoff return fumble. One of the things that you worry about when you put a defensive player back to return is that player hasn’t done the ball security drills in practice like your offensive players have. Although, Trey takes great pride in it (returning kicks) and the Tulsa player made a great play. We did have some momentum there, and they hurt us with those turnovers. I was proud of how we came out in the second half to play, because we kind of got re-energized a little bit. We knew going into this game that we would have to play a little bit closer to the vest, because of all of the emotions from last week. We didn’t have the opportunity to have as many practices to work on things we wanted to so we intentionally cut the game plan for today down.”
DL BEN BANOGUOn defensive success today:“We really honed in on it (Tulsa’s offense) in practice so we knew what we were going to get. We really opened up our playbook on defense and threw a lot of stuff at them. Whenever the plays opened up our guys were out there making plays, and it just so happened that some them (plays) were coming at me and I made them. I think we were just out there doing our thing, and we just kept making plays.”
On what to take from today’s game:“Our defense we put in some tough spots in the beginning. We were able to overcome some of them, and the others we just let get out of hand. I think that we can take everything that we learned both good and bad, and look at film and make adjustments to use against Appalachian State to help our team get a victory.”
On what it takes to get the issues fixed:“It comes from us. The coaches are going to say what things to get us going, but we just have to get back to our roots. We have to build up our chemistry, because right now when the offense is doing good, the defense isn’t or when the defense is doing good the offense isn’t. There are times that our special teams are shaky as well. We just need to have one of those games where everything comes together, and this upcoming week is a good opportunity to do so.”
TULSA HEAD COACH PHILIP MONTGOMERYPHILIP MONTGOMERY: Continuing to get better. These are the type of games that help you in that process, and so we'll continue to keep striving to get better each and every week. We'll go back and look at this tape just like we do every other one and learn from our mistakes and try to correct them and move on.
Q. You mentioned not having Keevan. How much of a challenge was that in this game? You had other guys step up but it's not the same when he's not out there.PHILIP MONTGOMERY: Yeah, with him, shoot, there's some match-up issues out there that you can definitely take advantage of. You know, and besides that point of it, just his leadership, his energy, his competitiveness, you know, not having him is a factor, but again, we don't have him. Not on the field. We've got him in the locker room and we've got him with us during practice but we don't have him on the field, so these guys have got to continue to keep growing. We've got some young guys out on the field right now so they've got to keep stepping up and get better and I think they took some really good strides tonight of being able to do that. I mean, Hobbs' touchdown route right before halftime, that's a big, growing step for him.
Q. Linscott, the interception, just talk about how it changed all the momentum and how huge that was.PHILIP MONTGOMERY: It really was. It was a changing point of the game. That and honestly the fumble we caused on the kickoff return. I mean, those two plays were huge momentum swings for us. And you know, Linscott, I don't know what the tackles were. I don't have that sheet in front of me, but I know he was in on a lot of them, and you know, Mudoh had a great game. I thought defensively we had a bunch of guys, DA was in there a bunch, Jeremy Smith, Trent, Craig, all those guys played extremely well, and so I was proud of them, and you know, I thought Linscott showed, again, who he was. Went back to just playing really smart, intelligent football, having his eyes in the right spot, and I think that helped him out all night.
Q. You guys had three missed field goals and a block tonight on special teams. How do you correct that moving forward?PHILIP MONTGOMERY: Well, I mean, nobody knows. Red is fighting through an injury right now. He's trying to battle through it. It's getting better. Not to provide an excuse for him, we've still got to go out there and hit those field goals and we've got to do a better job on the interior part of it and that's just something small that we've been working on and working on, and sometimes you go out there and you have a little lapse in concentration and you can't have those in those type of situations. That's what happened on the block part of it.
We'll keep stressing it and keep working with it. You know, Red has made some big field goals, too. Shoot, he hit us a game winner at the first of the year. We're going to still keep working and keep plugging, and we'll keep getting better.
Q. Y'all did run 107 plays tonight. That would seem to indicate that you were moving the ball pretty successfully, but it was -- you just couldn't punch anything in until the fourth quarter. Did it get a little frustrating there for a while?PHILIP MONTGOMERY: You know, a little frustrated is probably not the word I would use. But you know, the thing that I'm happy about is that our team continued and kept -- keep battling, and found a way to go win, even through all of that. Yes, it's frustrating. We've got to continue to keep working it and getting better.
You know, with that being said, you ran 107 and you've got the same five linemen working all 107 of those, and we're not working real slow, and those guys have got to continue to just keep grinding and working because when you get down there and you're looking at ways to take advantage of defenses, especially what Coach Berry and his staff do, they make it tough down in there. If you look at the scores that they've been -- of their other opponents, it ain't like Alabama and those people have lit them up. Georgia Southern did a good job with it, had a couple of defensive touchdowns, and they're an option-based team, which pushes a lot of stress on you. But I thought our guys, again, continued to battle, and we got us a big win, and that's the most important thing.
Q. The play in which Zack scored with six minutes left with the offensive linemen coming in, is that called something?PHILIP MONTGOMERY: Heavy. It really is. That's the name of the formation. It's called heavy. We're bringing in a couple of extra linemen, and you know, right before they went out this is what I tell them. I mean, this is why you lift all those weights. This is why you do everything that you do, put both them hands on the ground and create movement. I mean, we're going to put a lot of weight in one area, and Zack, you hit it and make us a yard-and-a-half or whatever we've got to make and go get it done, and they did a great job stepping up and doing it.
Q. The uniforms, the black uniforms, was that a surprise to the players today?PHILIP MONTGOMERY: It was.
Q. How did that go over?PHILIP MONTGOMERY: It was great. They walked in the locker room and it was like a little kid on Christmas, a five year old just opened it up and it was raining down. They were excited about it.
I thought they looked extremely sharp out on the field, in conjunction with all of our other uniforms, but I think it just adds another factor to us, and I know our guys enjoyed playing in them, and they were excited about it.
You know, I thought it looked good. Recruits like it.
