ULM Head Coach Todd Berry
Opening Statement…
“Obviously disappointing in a lot of different ways. Congratulations to Appalachian State for a well-deserved victory. Quite honestly at halftime I felt really good. I really did. There were some things that obviously we needed to clear up. Unfortunately, we have a relatively young football team out there right now. I thought there were some things at halftime we could make some adjustments on and take advantage of some things. Obviously that didn't come to fruition. Second half, they got after us pretty good, and the game got away from us. They just kind of kept putting it on. Some of it, again, I think has to do with a little bit of our youth right now in relation to who is playing and some of it has to do with confidence. I don't think we are a very confident team right now. They are, and they kind of got on a roll.
On what Appalachian State did in the second half that differed from the first…
“Oh nothing – it was not anything about that. It was whether we were going to be able to score fast enough to keep track with them. They were already up 10 then up 17, ok, and then all of a sudden it was out of hand. So consequently it wasn't so much that, we just went into two-minute mode after that.”
On if his team loses confidence after going down by a substantial margin…
“Sure – that's the difference between – That's kind of what I mentioned last week. (Appalachian State) is a confident team even though their schedule hasn't been our schedule. They're confident because they're used to winning, and that's what happens whenever you win. Whenever you lose, all of a sudden you start losing confidence. Unfortunately we are pretty young out there especially on offense right now. We have a young football team out there.”
On Ajalen Holley's injury…
“I don't think he is going to be out for the rest of the season, but he could be out for a little while. We're pretty banged up right now. We have quite a few guys down.”
Appalachian State Head Coach Scott Satterfield
Opening Statement
“The first half we played okay. We didn't play as well defensively early on. We challenged the guys to come out in the second half and really play well. We had an awesome third quarter – maybe the best third quarter we've had all year. We extended the game at that point and we really finished it out. We have a lot of respect for ULM and Coach Berry. Our kids really responded with a great week.”
On the offensive game-plan
“ULM was stacking the box trying to stop the run. We knew we had to take our chances down field throwing the ball; we hit on some and missed on some. When you're taking shots like that, your completion percentage isn't going to be the best, but if it's 50 percent then it's great because when you're hitting those it is a big-time momentum getter and sometimes a touchdown. So we were willing to take those chances.”
On stopping ULM on fourth-and-two when leading 17-14
“That was huge. Our defense has had the mentality of bend but don't break. After that stop, we then took it and got it all the way down to the six-yard line in just a few plays. It was a big-time momentum switch and it probably set the tone for the rest of the game.”
On getting the run-game going
“This ULM defense is good. It held Alabama to 303 yards. For us to come out here and have two guys rush for over 100 yards is amazing. Our offensive line was really pumped-up for this game. They really came off that line and helped us establish the run, even knowing that the box was going to be stacked against them. I'm really proud of them and the tight ends. The receivers also hit some big plays. That's what we want out of our offense. We aren't going to score this many points every week but if we can control the ball and score then that's how we give ourselves a chance to win.”
On the defense
“ULM plays a lot of empty-sets with five-wide and its quarterback was very good early on. [Garrett] Smith was dinking and dunking a lot of balls underneath and then hit some deep. We tried to blitz and got caught a few times trying to get around it, so sometimes it's just a cat and mouse game. Once we figured it out, our defense settled in and played a lot better. The takeaways were huge for our defense today and we're always trying to win the turnover margin.”
On not having much time to celebrate with a short-week against Georgia Southern coming up
“I told our guys that we'll celebrate on the plane ride and that's it. We'll be ready for Georgia Southern, it's a big-time game for our program.”
On preparing for this game today
“Our staff did a great job of preparing our guys. We weren't looking at anything except ULM or else we would have gotten beat. Every week you see teams getting beat so you have to get your guys ready and prepared. This was our super bowl. And now it's Georgia Southern. Every week we're going to be focused on the team in front of us.”
