Post-Game Quotes vs. UL-Lafayette, Nov. 15, 2014
ULM Head Coach Todd Berry
Opening statement…
“I've got a team in there that's really hurting. Congratulations to Mark and ULL. They made the plays when they needed to make them. We didn't always make them. As this game has been played out over the last five years, there have been some strange events happen. Things that you just haven't seen guys do. It's obviously disappointing. The difficulty defensively, we didn't play with great discipline and didn't hit our gaps very well. That's frustrating. That's two games in a row that has risen up. Offensively, we are playing a little better right now than what we were earlier in the season. We are throwing the ball better, but we had some turnovers. That's something we work hard on, and the turnovers were significantly costly tonight. It's frustrating because we are top 20 in the nation with fewest turnovers. We had several here.”
On speech during final timeout…
“I told the team we couldn't take a sack. We can't dump the ball underneath in a two-minute situation. It can't happen. Obviously, we need to get better protection. We whiffed on a guy, completely whiffed. We didn't touch him. That's can't happen. We couldn't take a sack in that situation. We couldn't dump the ball off for three yards without burning a timeout. We didn't have any timeouts left. Everything from that point in time would help us get down the field, and that was what we were explaining. We needed a first down, and we obviously didn't get that either. We dumped it off to Kenzee and he fumbled. It was a very poorly ran two-minute drill.”
On losing in the final minutes…
“You cannot believe how much it gnaws at every fiber in my body right now and the team's body too. The losses have all been like this. It's tough. We got to find a way to finish. The first thing is that you don't put yourself in that situation to begin with. We put ourselves in this situation tonight. We've got to get some defensive stops at some point. We didn't get them any very similar to last week at Appalachian State. We are pressing a little, and we aren't hitting our gaps the way we need to be hitting them. I don't know what the final numbers were, but I'm sure they had quite a bit of offense.”
On the air game…
“We felt like if we could protect, we could get their dominant players out of the game on defense. We felt the way to do that was to throw the football around and spread it around. It makes sense the play action helped slow the rush down. We had a couple screens to slow the rush down. Overall, we were relatively effective at it. We had some big plays. We had some plays that we drop the ball when we could have converted. Overall, we were decent, but poorly executed two-minute drive is sitting on my mind right now. Thing is, nobody works harder on a two-minute drill than we do. I promise you. It has been so much a part of us since we've been here. It seems like all our games come down to these moments. It certainly have these last seven.”
UL-Lafayette Head Coach Mark Hudspeth
On the win…
“Our kids are such fighters. You know you have a special group when you get better each week. And we've gotten better each week for the last six weeks. I couldn't be more proud of this group, especially the defensive side of the ball as they've improved, coming up with some big turnovers tonight. Then offensively, playing like we've been playing, doing a great job moving the ball and taking care of the ball. I'm proud of these coaches, proud of these players. Great win on the road here. ULM give them credit, I thought they had a team that played really hard, but I'm really proud of us tonight. We're one step closer to our goal.”
On the line playing well…
“They really did (play well). We got good movement up front, offensively. Defensively, we got pressure on the quarterback, got some big hits on the quarterback so we felt like our front seven had a good night.”
On the final home game of the season, next weekend…
“We certainly do (want a packed house) and these players deserve it. There on a six-game winning streak and undefeated in the conference. These players are sort of asking, hey what else do you want from us. So, I expect to see a great crowd to come see people like Daniel Quave's last home game. Alonzo Harris' last home game. And some of these other seniors that have had such great careers.”
On battling to stay undefeated in conference…
I'm proud of this football team. They kept battling all night long. I couldn't be more excited for us tonight. Big win on the road to move to 6-0 in the conference.”
