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TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 8, 2011

Tommy Tuberville

TEXAS A&M Â– 45
TEXAS TECH - 40

COACH TUBERVILLE: Not a lot of consolation, other than we became a better team tonight. We fought hard. I was proud of the guys. We gave ourselves a chance. At the end, we made way too many mistakes.
I thought the coaches did a good job on defense adjusting at halftime. We couldn't stop the run and made a few tweaks and played much better, much better. We just didn't get anything going offensively in the third quarter. We had to kick too many field goals and too much time ran off the clock.
But a lot of good efforts. I'm really proud of everybody. We're a much better team now than we were the 1st of September. You just hate that you let little things turn a game around like that in terms of not having a chance really to play the best we could play. But that's football.
We hate to lose Eric Stephens. It doesn't look good. Our prayers are with him and his family in a tough situation like this. He was having a great night, but those things happen.
We had a lot of good performances, but we just made way too many mistakes. Too many little things got away from us. The blocked punt or blocked field goal and return. You can't give up a touchdown in a game like this on special teams. You do, 90% of the time you'll lose.
But we just lost our focus a couple times. Had some motion penalties, and just a situation where we're not good enough to dig our way out of.
So we'll learn from this and go on. We've got a lot of tough games in front of us. 4-1 after the first five games, and we keep playing like this and improving like this, we'll win a lot more games.

Q. Coach, would you talk about the decision in the fourth quarter to kick the field goal when you were down 45-30, to make it 45-33?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, I think it was 8 yards. It was just too far out, and we knew we could score some more points. We just had to score touchdowns, so that brought us within 12, and, of course, we scored again to put ourselves within five, within a touchdown. If we don't kick that, then we don't have a chance right there at the end.
So you've got to take points as much as you can. I would have love to have gone for it, but the odds of making that weren't really good, so we took the points and went on with it.

Q. Can you talk about Seth today?
COACH TUBERVILLE: I thought Seth played pretty good. We threw 66 passes, that's a lot of passes. Kid got hit a lot. He blitzed almost every play. They'd bring overload from one side, and I thought he did a good job holding on to the ball. He made some clutch throws. There were times when he threw the ball a little bit low, but he had a good night.
We had 105 snaps. He had a lot of opportunities. I thought he threw the deep ball well, and he made a lot of good decisions. Didn't throw an interception. When you've got 66 passing plays and don't throw an interception, you're doing something right.
We had some problems with the receivers that weren't getting the routes in the beginning of the third quarter for some reason. We had a couple of third down plays where the receivers read the wrong routes and he didn't have anybody to throw it to.
So those things are what I was talking about. The little things that count when you have to focus in a tough situation. They were mostly young guys doing that. But we'll learn from that, and we'll go from there.

Q. What is Eric Stephen's meant to this football team?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Oh, Eric Stephens is huge. You know, he's a guy that brings a lot of leadership. He comes to practice every day and works hard and all -- you need an older guy like that for the younger guys to follow. We've got a lot of good young guys, and he was a great example for them.
What can you say about Eric? He was on his way to being over 1,000 yards and having a good night.

Q. What did the trainers say specifically? If he is out, how do you put together a running game now?
COACH TUBERVILLE: We'll have to evaluate that tomorrow. It's not good. I thought Aaron Crawford did a good job coming in. He'll get his opportunities. DeAndre Washington, Kenny Williams. We've just got to go on with what we have. We do have some depth, we just don't have a lot of experience.

Q. Defensive adjustments did you make at halftime, because the defense did play outstanding the second half?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, went to a little bit of a five-man front. We knew that with their situation the way they did in the second quarter of moving the ball, we had to stop the run. I thought our guys did a good job once we got them in third-down situations. They were 5 for 7 for the first half, and I think they were 2 for 7 in the second half.
Third down conversions were huge for us. We were making plays on third down, guys were breaking on the ball a lot better. It's going to take confidence.
We've got players back there that haven't played a whole lot, and that is the best receivers I've ever seen Texas A&M have. They're big, physical, fast. They pushed us around pretty good, but it was good to see our defense grow up a little bit?

Q. Why was Tre' Porter not in on the defense?
COACH TUBERVILLE: I think he got kneed in the hip, Porter, and he just couldn't go.

Q. In practice?
COACH TUBERVILLE: No, he played today. He got hurt early in the game.

Q. What about Tramain Swindall?
COACH TUBERVILLE: No, he's fine. He just didn't play much.

Q. Did Darrin Moore get into the game?
COACH TUBERVILLE: I don't think he went in. We were planning on playing him some on the goal line, but I don't think he ever went in.

Q. Would you talk about Donnie Carona. He had an outstanding inning?
COACH TUBERVILLE: He did. Long field goals, long field goals. That's the reason we thought we could make the 50-yarder there at the end when they blocked it. But he had a good night other than he had a lot of kickoffs.
The one kickoff he had that went out of bounds, the wind was kind of swirling on him. We tried to kick it from our right to the right corner and, the wind was blowing that direction. He just didn't catch it right. He had a good night. Donnie's a gamer. He's going to be big for us down the stretch.

Q. What did you say on the one that was blocked, the reason for that?
COACH TUBERVILLE: That it was blocked?

Q. Yeah.
COACH TUBERVILLE: He just came off the corner from the outside. No. 10, real quick, real fast. We got a hand on him, but we didn't get enough of a hand on him. That's just not very good execution.

Q. You mentioned that the penalty just now right before that kick that it was somewhat questionable on the motion?
COACH TUBERVILLE: No, we moved. We moved on that. We just lost our focus and got to key the ball. Don't look at anybody but the ball. But our right end moved, 5-yard penalty.

Q. Do you think the A&M injuries during your drives and your chances on offense with your momentum?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Our what, now?

Q. Did the A&M injuries hurt your offense momentum?
COACH TUBERVILLE: The injuries in the first half? Yeah, kind of slowed us down a little bit. Kind of interesting. They'd go down and come back the next play, but I guess that's football.

Q. Sherman's in his fourth year over there in the other locker room. In a lot of ways you're coming in in your second year trying to change some things as far as culture. Do you kind of look to that and say that's kind of the footprint that you kind of want to do and kind of change your program as well?
COACH TUBERVILLE: What?

Q. Just become a more mature program.
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, yeah. We're not very old. We have one senior starting on defense, two on offense. This group will get better and better. We've just got to keep them healthy.
Just hate for a young guy like Eric to get hurt. We've got a lot of other guys that are fighting through bumps and bruises. They're growing up as we go through the season. They'll have to dig deep. They got knocked around pretty good tonight.
It's a physical game, and we'll have tough ones coming up. Just as tough or tougher. We'll see how we bounce back. This is part of learning and playing. You play this level of football, you're going to have setbacks like this.
Again, it all goes back to we made progress, we played hard, we gave ourselves a chance even though we made a ton of mistakes.
I want to say something about the crowd. The crowd was excellent. We had a lot of enthusiasm. It was great to see that many people here dressed in black and cheering us on, because that's a huge part of it.
Now it's time to do it again. Same time, same place next Saturday, and hopefully have the same kind of atmosphere, because we're going to need it. It doesn't need to be for one game, it needs to be for all of them, so looking forward to next week.

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