ULM Head Coach Todd Berry
Opening Statement…
“That was a great win, it really was. The thing I continue to be impressed with from this group is our resiliency. We talked about it before about finding ways and when you find ways to win, especially early in the season there is some confidence that is derived from that so I'm really, really excited for the team. I don't think we played really well but some of that was to Idaho's credit. It wasn't clean, it wasn't pretty, we certainly got a lot of work to do but it's a win and any win is a good win. I think the interesting thing about this one is that it was kind of a reversal of what happened this week where the offense played pretty well and took advantage of some things. Defensively, we didn't play as well as we needed to.”
On the team's fourth quarter resiliency, (making big plays at the end of the game)…
“I think that those things are significant. I think it gives you confidence. Hope is a powerful thing, you've heard me say this before. Hope is powerful. When a team has hope, when they think they can find a way to win, it can carry you through a lot of those time frames when maybe you aren't playing quite as well as what you would like to play. We need to play better than what we played tonight, but in the same sense too we found a way to win and for that I'm really proud of the team. Even though we didn't make some of those plays that were out there when it came time to make plays, we found a way to make plays.”
On coming back after the rain delay…
“This was a difficult preparation, because they had so many new players. Because we didn't have a chance to see them the week before, we didn't really know what they were going to do with them, and quite honestly what kind of college player they were going to be. I was really impressed with their quarterback. Really impressed. He was tough. We hit him. He kept throwing strikes. He made some throws, especially early on, that for most everybody else would have been intercepted. I was really impressed with him. I know they have to be pleased with him. I would be pleased with him. I think the rain delay did help us to some degree, because they came out early in the game and did some things we weren't expecting. It gave us a chance to kind of talk about some of those things. We didn't play as smart as what we needed to. We didn't get to play an awful lot of people again, which I think is significant moving forward. We came out of the game pretty clean, from an injury standpoint too, which was good. Ben Risenhoover's got a little bump and Hunter Kissinger got bumped early on, but then came back into the game. He didn't get quite as many snaps as he normally would. All-in-all, we'll take it and move forward.”
On keeping the players ready to play during the rain delay…
“It is hard when you start talking about that. We played some music for them. It looked like it was going to be an extended delay. We had them take their shoulder pads off and relax a little bit. You can't keep them keyed up for that long of a time frame. I've been involved in rain delays before. We've certainly had them this year in pre-season camp. We've had six or seven times where we've had to come in off the field and wait in here before we went back out to practice, so it wasn't like we weren't used to it. Our players, they didn't blink on it. They really didn't. There was a time frame where we were getting ready to take the field about an hour into the delay, and then all of a sudden we had a lightning strike within that six mile range. So all of a sudden we had to sit them back down. I think that's what gets hard, when you are up and then down and then up.”
Tyler Cain, RB
On the last drive of the game…
“Yeah it was a big fight, because they have a great defense, but I wanted to be that spark for the offense. I just wanted to make a big play because I know we needed it. I just want to give all credit to the offensive line, they did a great job. Pete made a great pass and I just did what I was supposed to do. Luckily it worked out. Coach Farmer made a great play call.”
On the conversation before the last drive of the game…
“We practice the two-minute drill almost every day, so it's routine for us. We knew what we had to do in order to win the game. Nobody doubted that we would win the game. We just had to go out there and execute, and we did and the outcome was great.”
Idaho Head Coach Paul Petrino
On the final minutes of the game…
“We didn't execute. We had the ball with a little over two minutes and a tie game. You have to go score. You have to win. We had a couple mistake. We had a holding penalty. That was what really killed us because we had a seven-yard gain on first down. That penalty put us in the hole. We let the go down and score. I was really proud of the players though. I told them in the locker room afterwards that this was a big step forward for this program. They fought their tails off the whole game. You just can't have 13 penalties versus two in one game. As far as just effort and fighting, I thought we did a good job.”
On the miscues…
“We had a couple key drops. I thought Matt Linehan played his butt off. We competed unbelievable. It's just a tough day. We took a couple steps forward. Now we just have to get on that plane, take a long ride home and get ready to go next week.”
On next week's matchup…
“Any time you want to be great, you've got to start a home-game winning streak. Western Michigan played really well their first game. They almost beat Purdue. It's a tough team. We've got to bounce back and be ready to go get after it.”
