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LOUISIANA TECH UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 10, 2016

Skip Holtz

Ruston, Louisiana

South Carolina State - 24, Louisiana Tech - 53

Q. We talked at half-time, sloppy first half, the turnovers, penalties; much cleaner second half.
COACH HOLTZ: Much cleaner in the second half. I mean, the first half, we had 355 yards of offense and had four turnovers; two of them were backed up that led to ten points for them. We put our defense in bad field position twice, and then two of them inside the ten before the half and then the one fumble as we were going into the end zone.

So it was a sloppy game, but we came back in the second half. I thought we cleaned some things up. We did a much better job of protecting the ball in the second half and we got an opportunity to play a lot of guys in this game which is always good. I mean, we got a chance to give some guys some valuable experience, some guys that are one play away from being starters.

I think Trent Taylor is outstanding. He shows up each and every week. He had the one fumble on the punt return but I thought he played a tremendous football game and I thought Jarred Craft showed up and did a lot of good things. There were a lot of positives in this game. I think Xavier Woods constantly is making his presence felt. And then it's always good to get guys like Ronald Lewis and Cyril both in the game tonight and let them play quite a bit at corner because they are two upper classmen that just lack experience.

It was good to get a lot of guys a lot of reps tonight. Proud of the way they competed. We found a way to win the game. Because you know what, all over the country, there are people that are finding ways to lose games like this early in the season, and this team found a way to win.

So I'm just proud of what they did but certainly we have to clean some things up and we have to get better.

Q. Sixty passes tonight, was that the game plan going in? You had a lot of offensive plays obviously, but did you expect to throw it so much tonight?
COACH HOLTZ: You know part of it was -- no, I didn't. But part of it was what they were doing to us. They did a really good job. I think Buddy Pough is great football coach, and they did a really good job of mixing up their coverages with us playing. They gave us some zero cover, some pressure, some cover one, two-deep, two-invert, three-deep, three-cloud strong, three-cloud weak. I mean, they gave us quarters, quarter-quarter halves, about every coverage that you could play we saw tonight.

Just when they started pressuring me a little bit early, they put us into a passing game and then I just stayed with it because we were having some success. You know what, we've got -- this is the first game Ryan's played really in three years of any significant time. And so I hate the mistakes that he made, but hopefully we can learn and grow from them because I thought he did some good things tonight, too.

I thought J'mar did a really nice job there coming in there in the third quarter -- in the fourth quarter. I thought he did a really nice job, went four-for-four tonight. Showed some poise. Really did a nice job. Overall just really pleased with the effort that we were able to win.

Q. You touched on Ryan, but again, 52 passes, 409 yards. Really the two interceptions, you take those away, he really didn't play poorly.
COACH HOLTZ: No, the one, and really the one right before the one from the sideline when we got holding. We made a first down. Darrell Brown got called for holding, put us in the third and long and we threw it up against two-deep and the ball got tipped and they intercepted it.

But the one before half, those can't happen. Those have got to be great teaching lessons. We got three points on the board. Driven all the way down the field. We have got two time-outs left. Just run it, slide, take a time-out and we are in great shape.

It will be a great teaching tool for us tonight. I thought Ryan did some really good things but definitely the one play right before half I felt like was something -- those are mistakes that he had not been making. He's been doing a really good job protecting the ball, but like I said overall just pleased with the way that we came out and played especially in the second half.

Q. Good to see Jonathan Barnes come out and have a good night kicking field goals?
COACH HOLTZ: Certainly was. He didn't kick the ball off tonight as well as he had last week. But as I told him, he's out here two hours before the game in 105-degree heat index, he's out here kicking a thousand balls. We've got to be a little bit smarter with that. He wears himself down a little bit.

He did a really nice job kicking the field goals, and we put him in position where he had to kick a couple of them tonight. So I trust Jonathan. I made the comment last week, if you had to kick a game winner and put the ball on the 39-yard line, he's the guy I would pick. I mean, I think he's a football player and he came out here, and I knew he would rebound and I thought he did a really nice job tonight.

Let me also say, this I don't know how many more questions, how much longer we're going to talk, but we get a 10:30 kickoff and how awesome was the student body tonight, the band, the people that stayed from the six o'clock kickoff all the way till now. I thought it was really nice to see. And the people that were here were loud, and I thought it was awesome that this many people stayed for a game that ended at one o'clock in the morning.

Q. And finally, you play Texas Tech next week. All they did tonight was put up 55 points but get beat 68-55 by Arizona State. So we might have a five-hour game next week.
COACH HOLTZ: I know they can score a lot of points. I know they have got a really dangerous quarterback who can run and throw. I've been really impressed with him watching him on film this summer. I know what kind of talent he is.

It's going to be a challenge. We're going to have to play -- we're going to have to play really well because it's definitely -- they are a hard team to stop and they can put up a lot of yards and a lot of points.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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