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(Opening statement)
“We kick the basket to go up 17 and you feel pretty good having a game in hand. We handled the ball well in the second half, but that’s to their credit. With this quarterback and they have some very good players, they were able to come back to this game. We shot there in the fourth quarter but we didn’t make it, we were trying to get a touchdown there and you end up punting after being three and going out. There are a bunch of games you come back to, obviously we’d like to play better in a lot of different scenarios. They ended up throwing 86 snaps, we got 62, that’s a big difference there. I thought we got a little tired defensively there the last couple of runs. We were in good shape, a few fourth downs and they ended up making the plays. These games are crazy, they come to the end as they are. You got to find a way to make one more piece, and that’s what it was tonight. It’s very similar to last week. One more room is what we needed. I’m proud of our attack there at the end to just give us a chance there. It was a good job with 22 seconds to come back and give us a chance. But that one hurt, two in a row like that. You’re sitting there with two games in those two games and you’re sitting at 5-1 instead of 3. But, a lot of ball to play, a lot of fighting ahead of us. We know this league is wide open and we know it is very balanced so you will have to play some great football to get the victory. “
(On what they did differently in Q4 to close the gap)
“I don’t know, they finished a few balls. It’s a little hard to tell. I thought we were in pretty good shape sometimes and they would do another pass and come down the field. They have a very good attack on the way. They threw it 61 times and it’s hard to create that pass rush, because Yasir (Abdullah) for example is one of our best pass rushers, but he can’t rush 61 times, it will run out. Ashton (Gillotte) played a little tonight, but not a lot and he’s our second-best passer. We try to mix things up and put pressure on it, but then you play man-to-man on the outside and you have lags and these guys made plays. In the end, they just made more games over the last couple of discs.
(Relying on the rush of three men)
“Like I mentioned, if you put the pressure on you’re going to play a little more man-to-man and hopefully the ball comes out quickly. And we have been able to put pressure on it several times. The ball comes out and we made a few plays and that’s why I think we led them to two fourth downs on that last drive because of that. Every time you go back to watch the movie, we’ll see. With the rush to three the idea is that you have eight guys to cover their four or five guys and now hopefully you cover those areas. Now (Brennan) Armstrong does a great job, when he sits down there and has the time he’s very laid back and does a great job of finding somewhere in that area where these guys were open. I thought he did a great job with it. Now we’re going to go back and see, do you put more pressure and just get him to get the ball out of his hands faster? Obviously, it’s something to watch, especially when they throw it 61 times.
(After two tough endings in a row, what do you think of the week off?)
“We just need to improve. We have to keep growing as a football team and find ways to make one or two more games. We got the bye next week and we need to heal. We have a lot of guys who are tired and we have to heal. Hopefully next week we can heal some of these guys, Renato (Brown) didn’t play, Ashton (Gillotte) didn’t play much tonight. (Marshon) Ford came out at halftime, came back at the very end. There are several more that are stuck, so we need to heal and keep improving. We do good things, we have to build on those good things and eliminate the things that we do not do well. We welcome Boston College in two weeks. We know we’re going to get all they got, the best shot from these guys and we’ve got to find a way to play better and make these games.
(On the Hassan Hall play today)
“He’s another guy who got hurt so he didn’t play as a running back as much. Tonight we got to put him on the line and we figured we could start an outside zone and he did a great job of reaching that and making some great runs. He’s a speedy guy, we know he can do it. We have several guys who can do this. At half-time, we didn’t do a good job as coaches to send the ball to our backs. I think our running backs had only 11 carries, we have to do better than that, so we put more effort into the second half to get the ball to those running backs and let’s see what they can do. They did a good job. We want to be more like that, we want to be more balanced. We had 270 passing yards and 233 rushing yards. That way, they can’t stand up for a single thing. It was nice to see other guys playing games, which is definitely a positive as we approach the week off.
(On Brennan Armstrong and her four games over 400 passing yards this year)
“Well, they throw the ball a lot, he’s number one. He has a lot of opportunities, but that said, you wouldn’t if he couldn’t. He is a very precise passer; he throws a really catchable soccer ball. They have good talented players, their tight end, No.99, three fell tonight, he got injured, but he’s a great receiver, number four in the slot. He has a great balance and I think he has great self-confidence. He’s a guy who feels like he can play, he doesn’t get shaken and it was obvious in the last lap with two fourth downs. He kicked the ball really well in there and that’s what makes him a good player. I think he’s one of the best passer in the country right now, but that said, we have to find a way out of the pitch; we have to find a way to make it a little more uncomfortable no matter what that means, by lobbying or whatever. Obviously we’re going to go back and watch the tape, but since you’re playing teams like that, we’ve played the top three offenses this year out of six games. It has been difficult for our defense and I hope we will improve because of it.
(On James Turner and the failed basket at the end of the game)
“No, it was not beyond his reach. He’s been perfect in 50 years of his career. It was 49 right there, I think in the first half it was 40 something, I don’t know how long it was, but he turned everything upside down in his career, we have great confidence in him, and he knocked down a lot of failed goals. That’s one of the things that disappointed me offensively tonight, we had to settle for baskets. We want to go down to the red zone to score touchdowns, and that was the disappointing thing offensively.
(On Malik Cunningham’s rush contained)
“If you go back and look at what he did to Virginia, I know in the last couple of years he’s been up to 100 yards on the ground and they didn’t want him to run the football and that was part of their plan so we felt if that was their plan so our running backs should be free and I think that’s why we wanted to give these guys the ball and let them carry the ball. didn’t call up a lot of Q points because of that, the way they would set their goals and bring the outside linebackers wide for the quarterback passes and then let the running backs run so I think that’s probably a bit of the of them.
(On Virginia’s ability to complete passes)
“I think it was a bit of everything. I think there were times he kicked the ball in the windows and made those throws, there were times we had guys on our backs and they grabbed, there were others times they were sitting in an area and they were free and open, and I think he did a good job finding these guys in those windows so, I think that was a bit of everything. Obviously we have to control what we can control which is being in the right place which makes it hard for them to be able to make these games because sometimes the attack will make these games but we have to make it more difficult for them. “
(Activated when momentum has changed in-game)
“I think maybe the reader when they got down to less than three, maybe right in there, you kind of felt it there a little bit. We wanted to come back and obviously do something offensively, but we didn’t do it on this particular route. It would’ve been huge at this point in the game, and then we end up giving the ball back to them and obviously we know what happened, but you’ve got to grab it somewhere, you’ve got to grab that momentum somewhere. I thought the Hassan (Hall) run, the long haul, that was part of it, I thought hey, we’re back, we’re back, we’ve taken it down into more territory. We wanted them to pass their timeouts so, we did that, they used all three timeouts. Obviously we want to try to score touchdowns, we needed one more first down, but it’s a fine line. Do you try to throw it and risk it being incomplete, now they have a timeout or maybe two. We were playing well with the ball so we said do it and burn their timeouts and hopefully we get a first try. It was disappointing that we didn’t have another first down because it could have frozen the game but you had to take the basket right there because it’s a three point game, now we go up six and do them drive the balloon without waiting times. We’re going to dissect the mess of this game as we get back to it and watch it, it’s so close, it boils down to the thread so I know there are a lot of things we could have done better.
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