	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 15, 2011

Tommy Tuberville

KANSAS STATE Â– 41
TEXAS TECH - 34

COACH TUBERVILLE: All right. Sloppy coaching, sloppy playing. That's about the most hit and miss game I've ever been involved in. Ups and downs, the effort was good. We just didn't coach as good as we needed to, didn't play as good as we needed to.
We know the situation that we're in in some positions, some situations, but can't give away that many points. Two blocked field goals, kickoff return ran back. Interception return ran back. I mean, it's just you know we led in every category, but we lose by 7.
But I sat here and told the team that this is one that we didn't want to look back on and say we wish we hadn't done this, we wish we hadn't done that, and we did exactly that. It's going to be one that we can probably look back and harp on and say if we had just done this, played a little bit better there.
But give credit to Kansas State. That's how they've won all year long. They don't do anything special. I thought the changes they made which they had to make at the half, and we knew they'd do that. They had to come out throwing in the second half. We pretty much stuffed them in the first half.
Their quarterback couldn't complete a ball. We had them on their heels and they did exactly what we expected them to do, we just didn't react to it very well.
It's just amazing to me how we can continue to keep giving up points when we matched up pretty good with these guys. That's the part that just kind of makes you wonder. But we had some good efforts. We had some guys that played some pretty good games, but you can't turn the ball over like we did, especially in the second half.
They took advantage of their opportunities and we didn't take advantage of ours. We had too many missed opportunities. Questions?

Q. Texas A&M and Kansas State, neither one of them had a turnover against you. Is that because they're playing well or you're not doing things to force turnovers?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, we've got plenty of opportunities to make turnovers. I thought there were a couple tonight that we had a chance to intercept. They had some balls put on the ground, and we didn't get them. That's just -- you can't hang your hat on that. I mean, you've got to lineup, and you've got to take advantage of your opportunities when they show up.
But what disappoints me is the few things on special teams that keep haunting us. If we make those two field goals instead of getting them blocked, you know, we tackle the guy on the kickoff return, just little things that absolutely kill us.
We're not young anymore. We don't talk about that. We've got guys that have played and played in what, five games, six games now. It's time to grow up. It's time to grow up and start doing what you need to do to win games.

Q. Coach, you said at halftime that you weren't happy and you had a come-to-Jesus meeting at halftime. Were you surprised that they didn't respond at the start of the third quarter?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, that was pretty much special teams how we played. We absolutely played horrible on special teams the first half and had an 8-point lead. If we had done anything in the first half, it would have been much more than that. But that's what we're talking about.
Offensively we played well. We moved up and down the field. We scored points. Other than the one turnover, we had total control of the game and so did we on defense.
I mean, it was one of those games where they were having a tough time getting a first down, much less scoring points. So we were playing well.
But we just didn't make that adjustment well. We talked about it on defense, they've got to throw the ball. They've got to throw it more. They've got to throw it down the field. They've got to make us back out. And you know we knew it was coming, and that's what we'll look at film tomorrow going we told you this was coming and we just didn't make the plays.
It was pretty much set in stone the first drive. We kickoff to them and they score on about five plays. Kansas State put their knife in the turf and said, hey, we're going to win this ballgame like we won the other ones and that's the reason we're ranked high, and we didn't respond.

Q. In the first quarter, you weren't able to pull away from them. Did that lead to the feeling that maybe we should be putting these guys away but they're still in the game and then they took the lead?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, you look at the first half how we moved the ball. We scored 28 points, but we had six point that's we gave up. One of them probably should have been a touchdown. We just made penalties. Should have been up in 30 points in the first half.
But the special teams, it all goes back to special teams. We just didn't have anything going for us. Again, it's just we've got to make the transition. When people adjust, we've got to adjust. We've got to be able to make plays.
We just looked like in the third quarter we got caught on our heels like, hey. That's not supposed to happen. We're at home. We're playing good. Defensively we start giving up plays, then the offense start turning the ball over. We started having a couple of hiccups, and everything just got away from us.

Q. On the blocked field goals, what did you see was the issue?
COACH TUBERVILLE: They did a good job of coming. They came through different gaps. Number 95, 94 just got their shoulders turned. Got penetration, and we weren't physical enough at the point of attack, bottom line. Wasn't like what we saw last week where we got beaten off the corner. This was totally different.

Q. You had that string of three straight turnovers in the fourth quarter. How tough was that to overcome?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, you can't overcome three straight turnovers. The way we were playing on defense, we knew it was going right back to the old days, we were going to have to score to win.
The offense has been good all year long. They've kept us in games, they've won games for us. We got back to our old ways on defense, and put everything on the offensive shoulders. We can't keep doing that. You keep doing it, and you're not going to survive.
I mean, this can't be a one-sided team. I thought the last half of the A&M game and first half of this game we played about as good as we've got the potential to play. But it all turned around and went the other way in the second half tonight as we all saw.

Q. How did you think Crawford played?
COACH TUBERVILLE: I thought he played good. He got tired in the first half. He made that long run, dropped a ball. We had several guys drop balls out of the back field that we're not used to happening. But, you know, that didn't beat us. I thought with the first game with those young guys, the two freshmen and Aaron, I thought they did a good job.

Q. Can you talk about Alex Torres and his night tonight?
COACH TUBERVILLE: He played great of course, Seth was looking his way a lot because you throw it over there, and he's going to catch it, a great night. It was just he's one of those guys last year we saw him in spring when I first got here and how this guy can catch the ball. Then he gets hurt first in two-a-days last year, and he's not healthy all year.
He's a football player. He's a competitor. We've got a lot of them. They wanted to win. There are a lot of guys over there right now just sick to death about what happened knowing that we're at home playing a team that we can compete with. We weren't able to get it done in the second half.

Q. What's the importance of obviously losing this one at home with what you have coming up?
COACH TUBERVILLE: They're not anymore important than others. You lose them at home, lose them on the road, they're losses. I get sick of talking about we should have done this, we should have done that. Again, hey, it doesn't get any easier. I expect to win on the road every time we go, and every time we play here. You've got to expect it. Your players got to expect it. Fans got to expect it. You've got to know how to win. You've got to learn how to win.
This team knows how to win games. They've shown that the first part of the season. Maybe not against as tough of competition as what we've seen, but they know how to win games. They know what they've got to do, and they know it's not a two-quarter game, or three-quarter game, it's four quarters, and we didn't get four quarters tonight. We played about two, two and a half.

Q. Why was Jacoby Franks not playing?
COACH TUBERVILLE: He didn't practice well all week long. He had an ankle last week, and he tried to play on it some. Just the thing about it is Alex and him pretty much play in that position, and move them around. We've got to go with the guys that are healthy.
Darrin Moore is probably 90%. We're going to play guys that practice. If you practice, you can get better, and I think the players around you respect you for going through it. If you're not going to practice, you're not going to play. Coach Brown has told all those receivers that.
It's fun to catch balls in games, but it's hard to go out there and practice. So if you're not going to practice, you're not going to play.

Q. Are you going to make changes on special teams?
COACH TUBERVILLE: I would imagine we'll make quite a few. Problem is we're getting into a situation Ben McRoy got hurt in the first half, we had to take him out. We've got several starters now that we've worked down the ladder that are going on special teams.
We're probably going to have to bite the bullet and play a lot of these young guys and put them in and let them play because they're standing over there watching while you're got a guy playing 60 or 70 plays on defense. Then having them play 15 to 20 plays on special teams. It's just hard to do that.
We're trying to get the best of both worlds, but we're playing a lot of young guys at other positions. So we'll make some changes going into this week on special teams.

Q. (Inaudible)?
COACH TUBERVILLE: He had several things. They came in and X-rayed him, so we'll have to see what happens. But I'm not going to speculate on it. I haven't talked to the doctor since halftime.

Q. The interception that Seth threw, could you tell how many of those were on him?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, they're always on the quarterback. If the quarterback throws it, he gets the blame. He's going to get the credit if he throws the touchdown. He's going to get the blame. That goes with the territory.
Again, they did a good job of sitting back and kind of reading him and breaking on him. He'll learn. This is a good learning game. We'll see a lot of this defense over the next course of his career, and it's a little bit different than what he's seen. But he tried to force it. There is no doubt about it. We'll look at the film, and he's going to wish he had some of them back.
But a good quarterback's going to try to make plays. We're not going to fault Seth Doege for how he's played these first six games. He's played pretty dang good. He played good tonight except for a few plays. Even though he threw those interceptions, you've got to think that -- you've always got to think no matter what happens, you're going to find a way to win the game, and we just weren't able to do that the last two weeks.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297