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Tulsa-North Texas Post-Game Quotes
9/16/2006 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 16, 2006
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North Texas Head Coach Darrell Dickey
Opening Statement...
"It was a very frustrating night for us, especially offensively. Tulsa has got a very good football team. They've got a lot of returning players from a team that won a conference championship last year, and won it rather convincingly. We came out early in the game and created some opportunities for ourselves. Took advantage of one of them and got down and got a field goal. Squandered a few others and from that point on we were just kind of a little bit of a comedy of errors. Offensively we just can't seem to get anything established in our running game. Tulsa did a good job of shutting it down. We've got to go back and look at is it the fact that we got manhandled at the point of attack with blocking. Is it maybe our scheme, that maybe they have a better defensive play for the offensive play that we're running. Is it just mistakes? You know there are a lot of concerns for all of us right now and we're all accountable for the fact that offensively we didn't make much happen. Obviously Tulsa's defense deserves a lot of the credit for shutting us down. We had some chances tonight and that makes it very frustrating, especially in the first half. Defensively I thought that we tried to play hard, hung in there against a pretty high-powered offense.
Strategy on the offensive play calling...
"We are kind of new at quarterback. We've got three guys there. We are very intent on establishing the running game and it isn't happening. We had 31 carries for 27 yards, that's not even close to what we've been able to do in the past. It's not even close to what we'd like to do. We've got to take a hard look first at what we can do to run the ball. If it means throwing the ball to spread the defense out, so be it. We've got to be able to be balanced offensively. We have to be able to run the ball so that we can do those things and right now, offensively, our running game is very inconsistent."
On coming off the win against SMU...
"Anytime you lose its disappointing. I think our players played hard. I think anytime you look inept it's very frustrating, because you practice hard and you work hard. Our players and coaches spend time studying film and coming up with a good game plan. Knowing that we've got plays that we think if we can execute them, we can be successful. The frustrating part is that we keep having breakdowns, we keep having mistakes. Not being able to sustain drives is tough, and you know with all that said, defensively, as hard and as well as we played we gave up some big plays there, too. I think it's frustrating because we expected to play much better."
Tulsa Head Coach Steve Kragthorpe
Opening Statement...
"A great crowd tonight. I was excited that people showed up for Homecoming Weekend. It was a great weekend. Great to see a lot of the great players, Drew Pearson was here tonight, all those great teams, from 1976 and 1991 celebrating their reunion. It was great to see all of those guys. I was happy we were able to come out with a win. I thought we did some good things in the game. Obviously the drive at the end of the first half, 96 yards to score to take a 7-3 lead was big. I thought we came out in the second half and played a little bit better, our defense tackled well and played well. I was pleased overall with the way we played, it is always good to win."
On a slow offensive start...
"We had some plays that we felt could get it, we could pick it up, I felt like our defense was playing extremely well, so I was not worried about putting them back on the field at that point in time. I just wanted to continue to try to stimulate the offense, to jump start it a little bit, prime the pump so to speak."
On Coach Kragthorpe's halftime speech...
"We talked about what we needed to fix. We had made some errors early in the game, but I thought Paul settled down, did a good job of throwing the ball and took what the defense gave him. They were playing soft on the edges so he did a good job flipping it out there. Ryan Bugg made some nice catches and did some good things. We took some shots down field, the big play to Idris Moss in the first series of the second half, I thought was a big play to get us jump-started."
Tulsa Player Quotes:
Paul Smith:
On converting the first fourth down conversion.
"It gave us a lot of momentum. We came out and sputtered a little bit and then we got three out of four of those fourth downs. That was a big factor for us to get going and we had a lot of confidence in the defense.
Going for it on fourth own late in the first half:
"I think our coaches wanted to get some momentum going at halftime. Up to that point we sputtered a lot before that. They decided to go with that, I was about ready to go into halftime, and then all of a sudden we're out there."
What did the coaches tell you at halftime;
"They told us to keep doing what we were dong. At the end of the half we did pretty good and put a long drive together. Obviously, they didn't have much to say to the defense. They did what they came to do today. The defense held them to 89 yards, and we owe them a lot of credit."
Ryan Bugg:
How does it feel with some redemption from last week's loss?
"It feels good but we still have a lot to work on, but overall we had a good week of practice and preparation and we came out hard tonight. It was a good win."
On the long drive before halftime:
"That was huge for us because we were sputtering a little bit in the beginning, so it was nice to have that long drive."
