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TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 5, 2010

Tommy Tuberville

COACH TUBERVILLE: Good start. We obviously have a lot of work to do on a lot of things. First off I'd like to thank the Red Raider fans for coming out the way they did and wearing their red, and all the way from Raider Walk to the time we came on the field, you stayed with us.
We showed it's going to be some ups and downs this year. We're going to have a lot of growing pains. But when you win with growing pains, that means you're doing something right.
One thing I'd like to say is SMU did a fantastic job of staying in there. I thought we had them knocked down a couple of times, but they kept getting up. We had a little more depth in some areas. We were able to move guys in and out, but they've got a good football team and they'll win a lot of games. I want to thank our players for how they went out there and just fought.
The thing that we want to do this year is finish. Finish the game off and win no matter how. That wasn't pretty at the end, but sometimes you have to win them like that. I put them in a bind by going for that fourth down. I forgot we don't take many snaps underneath the center. I've got to get that out of my mind, but that was my fault and my call.
Defense held pretty good. I thought Cody had that interception on fourth down, but thought he got me out of a bind. But that was a tremendous win for our team, our coaches, administration, fans, everybody.
The first game, you don't know what to expect. Especially us this year on what we were doing and how we were doing it, and we didn't know what to expect from SMU. They hung in there tough and had a tough time with a couple of little power plays that they ran.
But it's good we get it on film. Now we've got something to work towards. We're done beating on ourselves. We'll go back to work and get better. Overall, it was a team win, and we'll get that behind us. Now a short week, and we look forward to the next game. Questions?

Q. What can you say about some of the plays by the defense whether it was the interceptions leading to scores or Brian Duncan with the sacks at the end? They seemed to make all the critical plays.
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, you've got to step up and you have to make plays. I mean, you've just got to point to them. Usually it's different guys, but it's just effort. You know, the effort is what I was so proud of.
At the end we kept coming, we kept coming. Our defensive front was tired, but you've got to learn how to win games like that. Fortunately, for us, we went through that and we learned, you put them back to the wall and we got it done. So it was a lot of great effort on both sides.
Again, as I told our players, lot of mistakes but not anything you can't correct. You can't correct effort, and we don't have any effort problems. We've got some mechanical problems, some technique problems, coaching problems like I made on the fourth down. I'll get better after this game. I'll get better next week. Questions?

Q. How would you describe your defense's play as a whole on the first half?
COACH TUBERVILLE: I thought the defense played excellent. I was really, really concerned with the young defensive backs, new scheme, we're playing a team that runs every formation in the book, and they threw it all at us. Screens, draws, power plays, crossing routes, and I thought they did a good job. They kept us thinking at times.
But you know you just go back and look at the sacks that we had from our D-line, and putting pressure on the quarterback at the end. I thought it was huge.
You don't ever point to one play, but I think the second drive that they had of the second half when they went deep, and B.J. Hall, I think, intercepted the pass when it was a little bit -- it was a pretty good throw. He got beat a little bit, but he did his technique, caught back up, turned back and made the interception, and that was a huge, huge play in the game.
Defense will just get better and better. We played a lot of guys and that's going to pay off for us as we go down the stretch.

Q. You mentioned the fumble a couple of times. Could you talk about what you saw that caused you to go for that on 4th and 1?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, when it's 4th and a couple inches, in college football you should be able to make that. That's really a no-brainer. But I put our defense in a bind, and again, that's one thing we'll have to work on.
We're not an every down snap underneath the center and the quarterback. The ball never come back out. It wasn't anybody's fault but mine. I put us in a situation where it should have been a no-brainer. We should have lined up and punted the ball and made them go the length of the field.
But we were punting into the wind. You know, just several things went through my mind. But I put our guys in a bind, and we held on and were able to pull it out. That's a credit to them.

Q. What is your impressions of Taylor Potts today, and what happened to the field goal kicking game?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, yeah, our first field goal was kicked low. Looked like he kicked it and overstrided a little bit and didn't get the ball up.
They had No. 92. They led the country last year in field goal blocks. He did a good job turning sideways and getting his hand up. He got a piece of that one. And the other one we kicked our other kicker because he's our long distance guy. He just didn't connect very well with it.
We'll get better at that. You've got to take those points. As we get down the stretch and get ready to get into conference play after this week, every point is crucial. And so if you're going to miss them, this is the time to miss them and get it off your back, know what you can do better, work on it, know your mistakes.
But you've to the to give credit to SMU, too. That 92 gets into that same route where the kicker's kicking his ball and gets his hand up. He's a tall kid that makes a lot of plays.

Q. Tommy, where is your defense in relation to where you think it can be?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Defensively, we're a work in progress. But I tell you that the way they practiced and the way they concentrate, they get better. Today at times, I think we went four or five possessions before they even got across midfield.
I would have never guessed that because, you know, we didn't know what to expect. So we didn't know what to plan for. And Coach Willis and all the guys got ready to make plays and made plays. They were able to put pressure on the quarterback.
We stopped a running game a little bit better in the first half. But, you know, this defense will improve. And again, the confidence, I know we gave up 27 points and that's way too many. That's 14 points too many, I think. We want to try to have every shutout we can. But this defense again will get much, much better.

Q. Can you talk about Ben McRoy running down on that kick return?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah. That's the reason we recruited him. He can run. The thing about that kid is we were getting tired, and I promised a lot of our guys they'd play. So we had to win it or back. I knew we'd kick the ball in the end zone.
We put a lot of our back-up guys in on the kickoff return because we were gassed. We had some of our starters going offense, defense, and we had to rest them.
We missed three tackles and Ben ran them down. Huge play, huge play, because the defense stood up and forced them into a field goal. And that's how you win games. You win games when times get tough, somebody makes a play. So somebody makes a play, and a big crossing route. Somebody tipped that ball and owned the second down that was a huge play.
Again, it's about learning how to play, how to play the defense, playing your role, everybody's showing up. Different guys making plays. We had a lot of different guys make plays today.

Q. Can you talk about Lyle Leong's game and also Alex being back?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, Alex pulled a muscle in his back about a week ago, and he just now in the last few days started getting better. We thought around Tuesday or Wednesday he might be ready to go. He just didn't get any practice time, so it wasn't fair to the guys that really practiced hard. I think maybe he was about 90, 95%. He'll be ready to go next week.
And the other guy that we need is Mickey Okafor. We need some help. Offensive line, those guys play a lot of plays. They started getting pressure on our quarterback because we started getting tired.
But it was, you know, Lyle Leong making plays, everybody made plays. We had a couple of drops, which you've got to make in certain situations, but, again, we found out a lot about some guys and some guys stepped up. There are a lot of things we've got to work on.

Q. Could you comment on your running game? How satisfied were you with it?
COACH TUBERVILLE: That's what I'm looking at right here. We rushed 31 times for 102 yards. I think a great game for us rushing is probably 150 yards, maybe the same amount of running plays.
But we gave up two or three sacks that we were disappointed with. The running game, we'll get better. We didn't do a whole lot, but there's a lot of things in our game plan that Coach Brown did not run. We just pretty much put the pressure on Potts, and he did a good job. But we made some good strong runs at the end, and that was a big plus for us.

Q. Can you comment a year out of the game, any emotions being back on the college football sideline?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, I found out after a year it doesn't get any easier. Getting going in the games, getting nervous, going through every snap, but it's fun.
I'm a competitive guy. I really didn't miss it for a year and the players and the coaches have made it easier on me. They've responded.
It's just I'm proud to be a part of this team. This team is positive. Everybody's pulling for each other. We're a team. We won as a team out there today, and it just makes it really easy on me. So I'm along for the ride.
Just appreciate especially the seniors for what they've done in the eight months that we've been here. This is a win for them. But I'm glad to be back on the sideline and excited. I'm looking forward to getting some sleep tonight because I haven't slept much lately.

Q. If you could talk about how you feel going out of this with Texas a couple weeks away, and do you feel team's ready for it?
COACH TUBERVILLE: We have a lot of work to do. It's good we have another game on the road before we jump into the Big 12. You know, we're not a great team right now. We play hard, we work hard, but execution has got to get a lot better.
I've heard that it's been pretty normal in my coaching career of 30 years of watching, you normally get better, much better at any time of the year from your first and second game.
So now we can look at the film and guys will understand what we're talking about. They look at their effort, look at the little things they did wrong, and we'll take it one game at a time and just look forward to going to Albuquerque this week and taking on New Mexico.

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