UNIVERSITY OF TULSA FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 16, 2023

Kendarin Ray

Marquis Shoulders

Press Conference

Oklahoma 66, Tulsa 17

MARQUIS SHOULDERS: His hand already hurt, so they're trying to prevent that from getting worse.

Q. He didn't start basically because he was still having some effects from his hand?

MARQUIS SHOULDERS: Yeah, he still had some issues with it.

Q. Defensively it looked like -- I'll bring up a positive. End of the first half, it seemed like there were enough penalty flags to get them in the end zone but you still kept them out. That had to be a little satisfying keeping them out of the end zone when it looked like they were going to score?

KENDARIN RAY: It was just trying to do what with the game plan is and try to get a stop and communicate on all levels and just execute the play call.

Sometimes we didn't do that as well, but glad that we stopped them that time and just gave up a field goal, but looking forward we're going to watch the tape and go into this next week and grow.

Q. Kendarin, what do you take from this two-week stretch where you've played two of the best teams in the country?

KENDARIN RAY: Really just an opportunity just realizing the type of competition we went against and just really looking forward to the next week and learning from the mistakes that we have and hopefully we can just progress, and like I say, grow as a defense and as individuals.

Q. K-Ray, for you, it looked like you were involved in a lot of plays. Obviously you led in terms of stats on defense, but even still, what did you feel like your role was in this game defensively, especially given how successful they were on offense?

KENDARIN RAY: I'd say my role is the same as always, just being a physical guy, trying to make tackles whenever I get the opportunity to make tackles, just be around the ball and just do what I have to do to put my teammates in a good position and hopefully we can get off the field and put the offense back on the field to try to score points for us.

I feel like just in general, we have to just do that better as a whole. We had a couple missed tackles there today, and like I said, we'll watch film tomorrow and clean it up and go into this next week attacking it.

Q. Marquis, for you, when you contribute, at least help your team get some points on the board even when you're down so much, how do you celebrate and/or not celebrate something like that in a game like this?

MARQUIS SHOULDERS: When you score, you've got to have some excitement, try to get some momentum rolling. You can't just be down. Got to celebrate a little bit, and then when you get back on the field, try and make it happen again, get back in the game.

Q. Coach Wilson said earlier this week that he'd be happy if you guys just played 100 percent to the final whistle. Do you think you did that this game and you made him happy?

KENDARIN RAY: I can say we definitely fought hard. Just probably looked a little bad not getting the stops that we wanted defensively and just the turnovers might have seemed like we didn't fight as hard as we did, but overall I believe we fought until the end and did our best to try to just keep progressing for ourselves even though we was down a lot, but at the end of the day we just wanted to continue to try to make plays for us and make ourselves better.

Q. Overall just getting to play in your first sold-out crowd as players, how did it feel to see Tulsa show up and support you guys?

KENDARIN RAY: It felt great, really. Being a sixth-year senior, that was my first time experiencing that type of environment here at this stadium, but you know, it's good to have that fan base behind you, but we really didn't look into that as much. At the end of the day it's 11-on-11 on the field and just got to try to do your best to win your one-on-one match-up.

MARQUIS SHOULDERS: I've been here two years. I've never seen it like this. It was definitely exciting, but I don't focus too much on the crowd. I just focus on the field, 11 versus 11.