Tulsa 38, UAB 30
9/29/2007 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 29, 2007
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Tulsa Quotes
Coach Graham Post-Game QuotesCan you talk about the TU run game tonight?
"Charles played really well. I am really proud of him. Jamad winds up going down. Tarrion was fatigued. You can tell he was getting the ball an awful lot. He is really carrying the load. Our offensive line is getting better each week and becoming more productive. We wanted to be able to run the football tonight. I think it was 362 yards rushing, which is pretty good. We have a great offensive football team, but on the same hand it doesn't matter how many yards you have, it matters how many times you score. We keep score. I told the kids at half time we do not need to be patting ourselves on the back and looking behind us and talking about how good we are. We need to look ahead to the next week and get better. I think we got better this week. At times it was ugly. What made it ugly were the turnovers and them hitting some [big plays]. We missed a field goal right before halftime. That was an extra point. We are not punting the ball very well. We bobbled a punt snap. We should have just went ahead and kicked it. We have to get those things corrected in a hurry, let me tell you, because it is not going to get any easier."
Can you talk about Paul Smith?
"I thought Paul put the ball in jeopardy way too much. One interception early, we can not throw those kind of interceptions. But on the same note he is a great player. He makes great plays, but we expect perfection from him. Not only that, there were several other plays where we are getting pressure on him and he under hands the ball. We are throwing the ball in traffic too much, we are risking the ball. The good thing about our offense is that they expect to score a touchdown every time they go on the field. They tend to press a little bit at times. But golly, 600 or 700 yards of offense, 38 points, that doesn't match up. We missed a lot of opportunities to score. But I am proud of them. We have a great scheme, a great plan about what we are doing. I was proud of the defense. I thought we got better defensively. I thought we did better against the run. We made them one dimensional where they are just throwing the ball. Then they just hit us on a couple of passes, or we blew the coverage, and then other times we are not making a play for the ball. We have some really, really inexperienced guys that we have to do our jobs as coaches to get them to play better. We gave up 242 yards passing, 160 on rushing. Most of those rushing yards were quarterback running out of the pocket. Very disappointing in our pass rush. We can't blitz six guys to get pressure on the quarterback and make a living in this business. I mean you can't do that. We need to get guys more passionate about getting a four man pass rush and getting pressure on the quarterback. I am proud of our guys. We are a good football team. We just have to continue to get better and put that note in the win column and move on."
What did you learn about your defense tonight that you did not know before?
"I think that we are fine. When we start playing in Conference USA, as far as stopping the run and doing those type of things, we have two or three of the three best linebackers in the league, Brandon Jones, our nose tackle is as good as any in the league. Germany, I don't think there is a better strong safety in the league. Steve Craver played better tonight. Charles Davis played better tonight. I like his attitude. "Hey coach, put me on their best guy. I will cover him." Right now we are getting poor play from one cornerback position and the free safety position. We call timeout before half. We tell them which play to expect. They run the exact play and score a touchdown. We can't do that. We have to improve those things and not have those things happen to us. We are inexperienced in the secondary and we knew that. There were some areas of concern when we came here: offensive line and receiver, which is not a concern any more. We just need to quit dropping passes. That is basically it. If we don't drop the ball I think we are going to score a lot of points. The offensive line is getting better and progressing like they should. The defense backfield is giving up way too many big plays. A lot of them are alignment errors and stuff like that, but we cannot be any more simple than what we are doing right now. I mean you can't be any more simple than what we are doing. We expect the team to get better, but I think tonight I saw a lot of good signs. I think our defense took some pride in going out there. We have to get guys to step up and start playing and quit making those kind of mistakes. We have athletes. We have good skill there. It is just experience and knowledge of what they are doing. We just have to continue to get better. Right now it is making us a marginal defense because we are giving up big plays."
Tulsa QB Paul Smith
It wasn't a pretty win, how do you feel?
"I never call wins ugly, because you can be a lot more disappointing than you are when you get a win. It definitely wasn't pretty. We'll call it unattractive."
Did you feel the game was in hand despite the score?
"We played pretty lackadaisical at times. I wouldn't say we were lucky, but fortunate to win, because those are the type of games that if you do that long enough teams can sneak up on you. I just didn't play well. I was very prepared. I was trying to force a couple things early. I just wasn't hitting on all cylinders. That's going to happen every once in a while."
Talk about the running game tonight...
"I thought we ran the ball really well. Obviously our best game this year running the ball. Tarrion was running downhill quite a bit and was tough to bring down. That's a lot of fun as a quarterback when you're carrying out fakes and you see him breaking tackles and running over people. I was real proud of the running game. In the passing game I didn't have a very good night throwing the ball. But that happens every once in awhile. I need to go back to, not the fundamentals, but just back to the basics of playing quarterback and managing a game."
Tulsa DB Anthony Germany
Is your favorite part when you were left unblocked?
"I like coming off the edge and make some things happen. I think that's a strong point in my game. They left some gaps open for me to exploit a couple times."
How well did the defense play today?
"Overall, I think we played average. I think we played very well at times. I think we showed the potential of how we can play night-in and night-out. We let some things happen that we really shouldn't have. I think in the secondary we're playing better every week. Our guys are gaining confidence every week. We're going to go out next week and continue to get better on our fundamentals and in our communication."
Tulsa RB Tarrion Adams
Were the holes tonight as big as you've seen?
"They were exciting me. They were huge. I was excited to play tonight. Our offensive line has been working hard and been getting better week in and week out. They came out and really opened them up tonight. I give those guys all the credit. They did excellent today.
Were you feeling worn down with all the carries?
"No, I'm the type of guy that likes to feed off the other team. I notice as the game goes on the other team begins to wear down and get more tired. I just keep trying to go harder and harder. We established the run tonight, as long as we win games it doesn't matter how we do it. Something we focused on this week was to establish the run. That's something I feel that we did. We feel that if we could run for 300 yards, and throw the ball for another 400 yards a game it would be hard to stop our offense."
UAB Quotes
UAB Head Coach Neil CallawayOn the Game:
"I was disappointed on both sides of the ball. I do not think we executed what we were trying to do. I think there were a lot of opportunities offensively to score a lot of points that we did not take advantage of. Defensively, we had trouble getting lined up and getting people in the right spot. I was proud of the fact that we were competing at the end, but if we cannot play smarter than what we played on both sides of the ball, we will struggle."
Starting Quarterback Sam Hunt
On the loss:
"It was really, really disappointing. We could have scored more points, but we just couldn't put it in the end zone tonight."
On not scoring touchdowns:
"It is nothing more than execution the last couple of weeks. We have got to fix that."
On leading his team back into the game: "I was glad I got a chance to get back in there. Unfortunately, Joe (Webb) got banged up a little bit, and I hated to see that. I needed to get in and make plays. We were able to score a couple of times, but it was not enough."
