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TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 24, 2011

Tommy Tuberville

Texas Tech Â– 35
Nevada - 34

COACH TUBERVILLE: Wow, what a game. Huge character builder as we all saw. I can't say it was a lot of fun on the sideline during the game being behind, what, three-quarters and 14 minutes and 35 seconds. But it was an interesting game, interesting game to see where on offense or defense the first half, we didn't take advantage of opportunities. Scoring 7 points on offense is not our fortÃ©. We gave up a lot of yards defensively. Had guys fall out.
Second half we came back and played much better. Had a couple good stops on defense. Can't take anything away from Nevada. They came in and knew they had to run the football to beat us, run the clock, try to outscore us. Fortunately for us, we didn't let that happen.
If you look at the stats, they had a lot of rushing yards. That's probably the thing we did the best, was run the football, run it, run time off the clock, move it down the field, score points.
I was proud of the guys. Huge character builder for us. I don't know what it is about injuries, but we had to go out on the field five or six times to help guys off the field. Playing hard. It's just unfortunate. Don't know when it will stop.
We played guys on defense that pretty much didn't practice all week. But we were to that point. Justin Keown, we were going a to play Max 20, 25 plays. Almost had to play the entire game because we lost our left tackle in Mickey Okafor.
A lot of guys had to put a lot forward and I'm really proud of them. Really proud of the fans. They stuck with us. The crowd stayed in it. That's what we needed to happen.
It was good to get that win right before we go into conference play. We got a lot of work to do. We got a lot of work to do on both sides of the ball. Got to show up tomorrow and find out if we got enough to practice. But we'll find them somewhere because we got a lot of good young guys over in that dressing room that just laid it on the line and refused to lose.
Questions.

Q. What was the discussion like on that fourth down call?
COACH TUBERVILLE: The last one? Wasn't a lot. We were going to run it without calling the timeout. I think Neal called the same play he called when we went to the line of scrimmage. We called timeout and ran it. I think they ran zone coverage, jammed our inside receiver who we were going to throw to.
Offense does a good job of working the quarterback in and out of the pocket when he has to scramble, when the reads are not there. I thought the held their poise tremendously on that play in terms of Seth not giving up, receivers not giving up, making the play.
It wasn't pretty until they caught it because it didn't work like we wanted it to work. But sometimes you got to take what they give you, and they gave us the opportunity to make that play.

Q. Talk about that other fourth-down call.
COACH TUBERVILLE: When we didn't make it? I think we all kind of noticed we was having a little bit of tough time slowing their offense down. When you got fourth and less than a yard, you should be able to make it. But we didn't. We're supposed to put a guy in motion, use an extra blocker. In the hurry up of getting that play run, the time and the moment, we didn't quite get that.
But that's chances you got to take when you're struggling on the other side of the ball. Right now offensively we're better than we are on defense. We've got to be able to score points. We wanted to not give up that opportunity, but they did a good job stopping. It's something we'd do again. Most time we should make that play. But they did a good job of stopping it.

Q. How big was it to stop them to a field goal instead of a touchdown in the red zone?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, it won the game. We didn't stop them. But I think we forced them to kick, what, three field goals. They missed one, made a couple, and they only punted twice. When you're moving the ball up and down the field like they were, they were keeping the ball out of our hands on offense. In the first half when we did get the ball, we didn't do much with it.
We were a little shell-shocked at halftime in terms of players understanding, Hey, this thing is serious. They're ahead, we can't stop them. They get the ball starting the second half, go down and score.
But deep down I think everybody on the sideline felt like we can win this game, we will win this game if somebody would just step up and make a play. I thought it was a huge play in the end zone, one of the DBs knocked the ball down on a fade route. Forced them into a third down. Then we stopped a third down.
It's a team sport. Somebody's got to make a play. Again, it was just fun to watch it. With so many of the guys out there that hadn't played much, they learned a whole lot about perseverance, keep on trying, something good will happen.

Q. Talk about Ben McRoy.
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, he had some very good returns. He's got so much speed. We thought after about the third one of taking him out because sometimes his legs go faster than his body and he slips down. He had the slips tonight. He was getting ready to score on one and he slipped down.
I thought Leonard did a good job of staying with him, him and Coach Scott, who works with our returners, talked to him about slowing down a little bit. We changed our return. Instead of making him cut inside, maybe his feet going too fast, we're going to go the field with it, let him run a 100-yard dash. He's pretty good at that. That was huge.
Ben has a lot of speed, a lot of talent. I think that will help him, too. It will give him a little bit of confidence going into conference play.

Q. Do you have any indication on the severity of Darrin Moore's injury?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, well, he's on crutches. That's not good. He'll be out for a while. It's knee and ankle. We can't just get one of them, we got to get two when we get an injury.
I think that Pete Robertson dislocated his shoulder. Mickey, ankle sprain. Bullitt, I don't know how he played. He hurt his hip, we didn't have anybody else. That's how he played. That's how tough that kid is. He made some pretty good plays. But he was limited. I think they noticed how slow he was out there at some point and they started running outrights on him. It was tough on him.
Again, it was a gut game. We found a lot out about a lot of these guys. They had to play hurt, they had to play with a little pain.

Q. Talk about Donnie Carona's night.
COACH TUBERVILLE: Ryan had a couple down inside the 5. Donnie kicked the ball great. We tried to kick it to the corner. We've got some pretty good speed on that side. Only one time they tried to go the field, away from our speed inside. Our coverage teams were very good.
It was important. They still got a lot of yards, but if they had had a shorter field, this game probably would have been different. Making them go 80, 90 yards trying to run the ball, it's hard. It's hard to do that without making a mistake.
It wasn't pretty to watch. But it will be for coaches tomorrow when we look at this and see guys that probably need to be standing over with us at times just because of the fatigue and all the things they'd gone through, hurting a little bit. But they fought through it and made enough plays.

Q. Can you talk about the youth, especially in this game, its effect that had on the team?
COACH TUBERVILLE: We talk about youth. We're old enough now. Most guys have played three games. We would like to have them out there practicing a little bit and not beat up to the point where we can get better instead of just playing in game. Tre' Porter took a little lick this week. Doctor told us we should hold him out. He was a starter we held out. We held Cody Davis out because he had a bruised thigh and he didn't practice much. Held him out.
When you see the option like we did tonight with two of your more experienced players not playing, with guys out there that hadn't played a whole lot, makes it a little bit difficult. We missed tackles, we missed assignments. I'm sure they felt pretty good about their offense.
But that's the reason you play for four quarters. We were able to score more points than them. We took advantage of the opportunities there in the last half.

Q. What kind of adjustments did you have to make with the injury to Darrin Moore?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Jacoby Franks went in and did a great job. Made a third-down catch one time, it was picture perfect. We got receivers that can play other than Darrin obviously. They showed up tonight. Had they not, we would have been in trouble.
It's good to see them do something under pressure like they did. Jason made some plays, Alex Torres made some plays. Every week it's going to be different players. We're going to have to forget about the youth. We're not young anymore. Whoever is healthy, we're going to have to play with them. We have to get them ready to go.
We're going to have a good football team if we can keep building on our confidence and keep working through some of these problems that we're having.
We go on the road next week, our first conference game. We'll have to pick it up a notch. That's part of it. We'll feel good about it going in. We just have to get better as we go through practice this week.
Thank you.

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