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UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 17, 2011

Joker Phillips

LOUISVILLE Â– 24
KENTUCKY - 17

COACH PHILLIPS: Injury report: Gene McCaskill hurt his back and did not play after the first quarter. Larry Warford hurt his ankle late in the game, and we will evaluate it tomorrow. He did go back in the game, but we'll evaluate it tomorrow and see how he does and how he'll be.
A game of missed opportunities again. Offensively we started fast, missed a couple opportunities to get the ball in the end zone. We had an error made that did not allow us to get the past to Josh Clemens in the end zone, and we had to come away with three points.
We had a missed opportunity on the fumble early in the first quarter, but we got a big play, got a big play, and we turned the ball over. That's one of the things that we put a huge emphasis on in a game like this. Turnovers is the key, and running the football is the key, and I know people want you to throw the ball all the time all over the place. I would have much rather ran the ball for 255 yards and threw the ball for 35 yards, much rather. I would have much rather sit there with 500 or 600 yards. But running the ball is the key to winning games. You look at them, they ran the ball for 181 yards, they had zero turnovers, and that's the difference.
Like I said, it's a backyard fight, backyard brawl between two good football teams. Regardless of what anybody thinks, two good football teams were out there playing today, and it was missed opportunities. When a person in a backyard brawl drops his hands and gives you his chin, you've got to take it. You've got to take it, and we missed opportunities by putting the ball on the ground, not playing clean, which allowed them to take advantage of us.
I thought that E.J. Fields really stepped up and did a really good job for us. Again, when another receiver is struggling, he gets a chance to go in the game and was a guy that took advantage of an opportunity. All he did was go in and catch seven passes and a touchdown, but we've been expecting it from E.J. a long time, okay, but he's got to show it to us every day, and I expect him to do that every day.
I thought our defense battled their tails off, had a couple short fields and did a good job. But we just can't give up the big play. Had two really big pass routes that they hit us on, two fades, and again, the difference in the first half, they threw and caught, we did not throw and catch. Again, a game of missed opportunities by us.
Questions?

Q. Can you talk about the play of your offensive line?
COACH PHILLIPS: Well, I mean, when you run the ball for 35 yards, it's not good enough, and we gave up six sacks. I'm not saying they were all on the offensive line, but still not good enough. So it would be crazy for me to sit here and say they played good enough to win.

Q. Why do you think he struggled to run?
COACH PHILLIPS: Well, I mean, the one thing you've got to do is put a hat on a hat. We had a couple runs that we thought were blocked pretty clean, and at that time we would stumble and fall, we thought had a chance to come out, and then you've just got to win one-on-one battles, and I don't think we won a lot of one-on-one battles, enough one-on-one battles to run the ball efficiently.

Q. What did you think of Morgan tonight?
COACH PHILLIPS: He fights, he scratches, he claws, he does some good. But there's some things that we've got to get cleaned up with Morgan, also. I mean, I think our guys played with great effort on offense. I don't think we played good enough to win offensively.

Q. What did you think of the freshman Bridgewater?
COACH PHILLIPS: They did a good job of running the ball downhill and staying ahead of the down and distance with him and not getting into 3rd and longs. I think that gives a young quarterback a chance to play. You know, ran some nakeds with him, ran some quick game with him, again, which gives him a chance to give the young guy a chance to play.

Q. Were you saying that Louisville won the game in the trenches?
COACH PHILLIPS: Definitely. They rushed for 181 yards and we rushed for 35 yards, we had six sacks against us, so yes.

Q. Is that disappointing that they beat you at the line of scrimmage?
COACH PHILLIPS: Yeah, it's disappointing that they beat us, period. I mean, they beat us. They beat us because the score was 24 to 17. They beat us, period, not because of them being able to rush the ball for 181 and us only being able to rush it for 35 yards, not because of that. It's because they beat us, period.

Q. Is that a toughness issue?
COACH PHILLIPS: No, because we've got tough kids, because our defense, those guys are doing a really good job of flying to the ball and tackling. We tackled better. The thing we have to do is we have to hold the point and then we have to make sure that we open up holes for our backs and give them a chance.

Q. You said at times in the past that to have the type of season you all want to have you have to win this game. I know it's early in the year, but where do you go from here?
COACH PHILLIP: We've got a chance. It's still a long season. We're only three games into it, and it's good that a lot of these young players were in a game like this, which is an SEC atmosphere. I think that really helps the young kids that we're playing with. We'll go to work tomorrow and get ready for our SEC opener.

Q. (No microphone.)
COACH PHILLIPS: Well, I mean, we got into a spread the field a little bit and went into a two-minute mode. It opens up some running lanes for us late in the game, and we actually -- I think Shik's biggest runs were off pass plays. His biggest runs were off pass plays because his longest run was only nine yards, so most of his big runs were off being able to dump the ball to the back on pass plays and giving him a chance to get up the field for us.

Q. Did Josh get nicked up? He didn't play much.
COACH PHILLIPS: No, but he did play. He played a lot. He probably played more than CoShik. We didn't have the ball very much in the third quarter, and Josh was playing two series and Shik was playing one. We went three-and-out and was going backwards in the third quarter, had crappy field position, couldn't get anything going, and I think that's the reason why it looks like he didn't play very much, because when his series was up, we went three-and-out, or one time I think we went four-and-out. The one time on the one-yard line, our offense did a good job of getting it out of there, but we were stalled after about five or six plays. That's the reason why you didn't see him as much.

Q. Louisville has been good at sustaining the run anyway. What was the plan in terms of trying to get the running game going?
COACH PHILLIPS: Well, we've got to run the football. Again, like I say, we've got to try to run the football because it opens up all the other things that we want to do with the play action. That also gives you a chance to run past people because they stack the line. That gives you those chances. So we've got to try to run the football.

Q. Did you see the play where they ripped the ball out, it looked like you had the 1st down --
COACH PHILLIPS: Yeah, it's a deal where we've got a chance to have the ball 1st and goal, I think it was inside the 10-yard line, and we catch a hitch route and they just got the ball out. Didn't see a replay, really couldn't see because it was on the far end away from our bench, but it can't happen. Can't happen. Can't happen. We expect our guys to -- it's zero coverage, which means they bring an all-out blitz, we expect our guys to make people play when they bring zero coverage, we throw a hitch route, make a move and walk in the end zone.
But we didn't do that. We made a huge mistake that put us at 3rd and 6 or 7, and we just didn't convert on the -- I'm sorry, 4th and 6 or 7, and we didn't convert it. We go from having a 1st down to having 4th down, and we got hit as he was throwing the football trying to convert the 4th down.

Q. Preseason you said the O-line would be the strength of the offense for the first time.
COACH PHILLIPS: Well, we all said that. We did return four starters and a guy who had started some games, so we said -- it's not just me, we all said that. It hasn't happened. It has not happened. I don't blame it on injuries and all those things, or I don't blame it on having played together. We've just got to get better. We've got to get them better. We have got to get them better as a staff.

Q. Last week Charlie was saying that he felt like your team was ahead of his team. Have they made up that --
COACH PHILLIPS: Well, that was a ploy to get his team ready to play, I understand that, and I just think that we've got to continue to work to get our football team better every week. I'm not comparing my team to their team. Today they were the better team obviously, but I'm not comparing my team to their team.

Q. What do you tell your guys in the locker room?
COACH PHILLIPS: I mean, it was a game of missed opportunities. That's what it was. It was a game and a hard-fought game like this, you cannot, you cannot miss the opportunities. You've got to make people pay when you get in the secondary after catching a big pass and we've got a chance to have the ball in the red zone, we can't put the ball on the ground. We can't let them convert 1st and 15 two times in a row. We can't have a punt blocked. Our defense did a great job of getting them stopped, but we can't do that. It takes your stinger out for a while. It took us a while to get back from that. And it also gives the other team the momentum when a punt is blocked.
Again, it was just a game of missed opportunities, but a hard-fought game. I really appreciate their effort, but we can't miss opportunities.

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