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UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 8, 2016

David Beaty

Lawrence, Kansas

TCU - 24, Kansas - 23

DAVID BEATY: You know, tough loss. Nonetheless, it's still a loss. When you don't come away with the result that you're looking for, it should do one of two things for you. You're either going to get motivated and continue to work to get better to get the result you're looking for, or you're going to pack it in.

I've said a long time, for a long time now, I like this team, and I like these kids. Just watching how they handled Matt Wyman was pretty cool. Pretty cool. Those guys are united and they believe in one another.

Man, I was proud of a lot of things that those guys did today. They fought and they believed that they were going to win the game all the way until the end.

Some good things today, but obviously we're going to look back at it and see a lot of things that were things -- we wish we could have those plays back.

Let's take some questions.

Q. The 54-yard field goal, what did you think when that was in the air?
DAVID BEATY: Well, I was praying, just like the rest of our team, and man, we got in a position to where we could take a shot at it, and as a coach that's all you really want. When you don't have a lot of time left on the clock and you've got to execute a two-minute drill against Gary Patterson's defense, that's tough, now. That dude is a good football coach.

Man, we got down there and we gave ourselves a chance. I mean, for that I'm elated. I'm so fired up that we're starting to grow a little bit as a team. We gave ourselves a chance to win, but man, I am burning inside with the fact we weren't able to get the win because I felt like we gave it away in a lot of ways, so we've got to go back to the drawing board and not just let some self-inflicted things keep costing you.

Q. Three of your biggest defensive players sat all day in the backfield. What do you make of that?
DAVID BEATY: Man, I'm so proud of those kids. Proud of our coaches because I think that means we've evaluated pretty good, and those guys are starting to make progress, which is good. You hope young guys by the time you get to the fifth or sixth game you're going to make some progress, and they did. Just watching Loneker run around out there again, man, I love that kid's attitude. That's something we saw right here when he was a local player. It's great to see a local kid playing that well. He's kind of taken Joe's place while Joe was out and really kind of left us with not much of a void there, so it's been fun to watch him play. Rosser is a guy we don't talk about a lot, but man, we couldn't block him. I figured it might be just a matter of time before he gets to the backfield and makes some TFL's and sacks. I want to say he had four today and he had a couple sacks. Some good production there.

Q. Can you talk about Ryan.
DAVID BEATY: Yeah, you know, tough day from a perspective of turning the football over. There was no point where we talked about changing quarterbacks because like that run he made for the touchdown, that cap was going to get to the end zone. He was very determined. I love the spirit. I said it last year, I love the spirit. He's doing to continue to improve. He got a lot of experience today versus -- they're just like everybody else. They didn't show anything in practice. They showed single high man three the entire dadgum day. They mixed in a little bit of man.

Man, that's a tough show for a quarterback that hasn't started really, and they're throwing all kind of different things at you, and he handled it pretty well. He still had some nice production. But the thing I love about him, man, is spirit. That dude, he controls the huddle well, but we've got a long way to go because there's a lot of good teams in this league, and we've got to play at a high level. If not, we won't get the result that we're looking for.

Q. What's kind of your biggest regret on some things that went wrong in the fourth quarter?
DAVID BEATY: I think the thing that's probably going to be keeping me up tonight is not putting the ball in the end zone from the 1-inch line. That's a big deal. I mean, we had the ball down there, and that play that knocked us back where we had to kick the field goal, we've just got to be more disciplined as a group. If we can get my man Taylor just to stay right up inside, we only needed about an inch, and you've just got to continue to stay disciplined.

That's not Taylor, and I'm not blaming that on Taylor. Taylor, man, he made some great plays. He had that touchdown that got called back. Did some great things today.

But when we do exactly like it's designed, we tend to have success, and when we don't, sometimes you might get away with it and you might not. More times than not, you're not going to. We took a chance there, and he wasn't able to make it happen, but we did put it through the goalposts and gave ourselves some more points, which was good.

Q. Your thoughts on going for it when you were on the 1-inch?
DAVID BEATY: Yeah, we'd have been on the 1-inch line again, we would have went. There's no doubt. But when we lost yardage and we got back to a 4th-and-2 situation, there was really no decision to make there.

Q. Is this another step? It's not going to be easy. Everyone knew that. Is this another step?
DAVID BEATY: You know, I want to say no, but the truth of the matter is, yes, it is. The pride in me wants to say that it shouldn't be, but you know what, we're developing. I love our team, like I said before. They're showing improvement in a lot of different things. If we continue to do that, I think we'll continue to play competitive football and give our fans something they can be proud of. We're going to stay the course.

Q. How long has the hook-and-ladder been in the arsenal?
DAVID BEATY: We've had it here for -- I mean, it dates back to my Rice days. It's been in for a while. We're about to get free on that thing.

But we executed some things today to get us down there to get in position to win the game, which was great. I mean, that play that Kenny made -- what a good play, man. I mean, what a heads-up play by that kid. I don't think I've ever seen that. I'm not sure anybody in here has ever seen that, either. I asked the officials out there; I said, I don't really know what to say because I've never seen that, and they said, Coach, we don't really, either. It was crazy. It was a crazy play because we grabbed Kenny by his facemask, and the tendency there was to kind of hold up, and the ball came out and there were so many crazy things, but that was a big play in the game. He made a big run out of that.

You know, he made a lot of mistakes today that really kept us in the game at times, but man, when they needed him, he scored a touchdown, he scrambled to go get that ball down there and get it -- and they scored a touchdown off of that. That's what real players do, man. He's a real player.

I mean, the one thing that just sticks out to me from our defensive standpoint is I think we held them somewhere around 200 yards below their average. With guys like this and teams like this, that's really hard, so I'm very fired up about that.

Penalty-wise, I thought we were smarter than them. The bad thing is the penalties we got, man, they hurt. So it's not okay to have low penalties when the ones you have are really, really bad. I don't think if there's a such thing as a good one. But we said going in, this team is in the lower category of every four areas of penalties, and we can't play that game, and we didn't, but we had five penalties for 61 yards. I think every one of them were pivotal in the game.

We have to learn from those things so we don't let them happen.

Q. I know you like to look at film, but the final couple minutes, the crowd was so frantic, so loud, and your guys are not used to being in those situations very much. Do you think they handled it with poise? Was it normal?
DAVID BEATY: I mean, that's why you play, why you coach, because that's fun, man. That was so much fun. We had more fun over there. Our guys, when they went in and kicked that field goal, our guys over there, you would have thought they had four minutes left in the game. They were ready to go, which that's what we're looking for. We're looking for them to have that kind of belief.

I've got to take my hat off to the offensive line. I thought they did a nice job protecting Ryan for the most part today. There's some sacks that we gave up that was Ryan's fault. He's got to get rid of the football, and he's learning, but there's no such thing as a sack on our offensive line, not from what we did offensively. There was a way and a place to get the ball out, and we weren't able to do it a few times, but for the most part those guys handled that pretty well, so proud of that.

Q. (Question regarding time out before the field goal.)
DAVID BEATY: Yeah, a little bit. I thought they were about to review that and see if we actually had possession of the ball. There was some talk about whether or not we had possession of the ball. Yeah, I'd love to have that few seconds back, no doubt about it. But we had to move on with it. We still got in position to -- we kept that last pass and we don't bobble it -- I didn't see the ball, but I guess he bobbled it. That ball is up there five yards closer, and that makes a big difference on a 52-yard field goal.

I mean, you're going to have those and you don't need to talk about those because those really don't matter. The story of the game is what the scoreboard says, and then we've got to go to school on the parts in between to get better for next week, because we're in the Big 12. Our league, a lot of great football teams.

Proud of our team. We're moving forward. But there's a lot of things we wish we could have back, but we don't get them back.

Q. Some big moments in the offense today. Can you talk about that?
DAVID BEATY: Yeah, really the thing that I was really proud of about that was Shaq. Shaq started from the first snap and played for us. That was big. He had a couple of nice catches on 3rd down and some middle yardage type situations that he made a couple of tough catches. You've got to make the tough contested catches in this league. You've got to do it. They made a couple, and then we made some today, which was really good.

You know, that was a change we made to move him over there, and it worked out pretty good for us. Coach Phillips does a great job with those guys.

Q. Is it hard for you to gauge that when you guys end up losing a game like this?
DAVID BEATY: We lost the game, but there are still going to be questions whether you win or lose about whether you are getting better or whether you're not. The answer to that is absolutely. We have to continue to develop, and the win and loss will be a byproduct of us doing things right in our life and on the field, and once we get all that right, we'll start closing the gap even further and we'll get in the win column.

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