ULM head coach Todd Berry
Opening Statement
“That was about as bad as I've ever seen us play. It may be as bad as I've ever seen one of the teams that I've been a part of play. There was very, very poor execution on both sides of the football, kicking game, penalties, and turnovers are all the things that get you beat. We didn't practice very well this week and this is kind of the way that it comes out whenever you aren't practicing very well.”
Going into this week, you were pretty optimistic about getting some guys back and there was kind of a sense of, 'Okay, we can show who we can be now,' but then to have this happen. How do you come back from something like this happening?
“Well, you know, it's amazing; your confidence and hope are two really extraordinary things and I was kind of hoping that gaining some players back would not just give us confidence, but it would give us some hope too. The moment that you don't have confidence, you play like that and the moment that you lose hope, you play like that. I believe that this is a more talented team than the 2012, which was arguably, maybe, the best in the history of the school. These guys are approaching the opposite of that because a lack of confidence and a lack of hope.”
As big of a motivating factor as hope is, what can you guys do to salvage this at this point?
“Well, that's where pride has to come in, right? Because pride revolves around you doing the best that you can every day in order to get better, regardless of what the other circumstances are and so the question is, do we have pride now?”
You guys were concerned about the defensive front going in. Not just the front four, but did you get what you thought you were going to see and how talented were those guys out there?
“They're good. They presented some challenges to us. We've struggled on the offensive line all year in terms of getting movement and that obviously didn't happen again tonight. We weren't able to run the football. I thought Garrett had a few bad snaps but he had some great snaps, too. And I'm still encouraged by how that kid can rally back after a tough snap and how tough he is; mentally, physically, emotionally tough.”
You guys were able to keep this thing within seven in the first quarter. You put together a few big-play drives and then after that, that was about it. Were they errors between the ears or what really changed there?
“Well, loss of hope because at that point in time it didn't look like the defense was going to stop them all night and it was one explosion play after another. Defensively, the turnovers and all those other kinds of things that hurt and the offense is probably looking out there going, 'Okay, we're going to keep giving up these explosive plays' and that's kind of what happened. Loss of hope.
In the locker room, do you think that there's a loss of hope for the rest of the season?
“I can't answer that one. I don't know. Obviously, the way we played today you'd think that. So we'll see if they have pride.”
Garrett Smith took a lot of shots tonight. Do you contribute that to Troy's defense; his style of play? A lot of read options, bad offensive line play? What do you contribute that to?
“Well, we really didn't run that much read option tonight. Yeah, most of it is the function of Troy in terms of their pressure along with their coverage and sometimes we didn't get rid of the football quite as fast as what we would have liked to. Then some of it is, I don't know if we played our best game on the offensive line.”
Defensively, usually that's your strong point. What do you feel happened tonight on that side of the ball?
“We didn't play well, lack of execution, couldn't make a play. We were in a position to make a play and don't make a play. We got the call right and didn't make a play. It comes down to executing and making plays and we aren't doing either. We haven't really been for a while on defense.”
