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TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 21, 2011Tommy TubervilleCOACH TUBERVILLE: Well, wasn't very fun this week trying to get over whether you lose a game and getting ready for the next one. Yesterday was a tough play for all the players and coaches alike. Just talk a little bit about that game. We played well enough to win, we just didn't finish it off at the end. Great effort by a lot of kids, especially some guys that didn't even expect to play. Unfortunately, we had some injuries. Second half, I thought our offensive coaches did a heck of a job putting the pieces together trying to have any kind of a running game and passing game with two of our top guys out, then we lose an offensive lineman, so that was a struggle because we've got to play well on offense for us to have a chance to win. Great drive at the end, just unfortunate they made a great play and got the interception but some very good efforts. I thought obviously our kickers did a good job, our kickers and punters. I've never been in a situation before where we didn't have a healthy punt returner or kick returner in a game. We just had to put people back there to try to make it work. Just take your hat off to the players and the coaches for giving us a chance in that situation. A lot of emotion. It's tough when you go on the road and play a team that's supposedly much better than you are, and you win most of the battles and don't have that win, especially the way this month's going. Attitude was good yesterday. Talked to the players, seniors were good. They know this is ‑‑ and we talked about the bowl situation about we have to win this to even have an opportunity to go to a bowl. That's not a guarantee. They didn't want to hear it. They didn't want to hear talking about a bowl. This is a big game for them. They want to go out and just win this game, and I thought that was pretty good of them to say, hey, Coach, let's win this game. Let's not worry about anything else. Because a lot of them, if you don't win this game, this is the last time they put on a helmet or a pair of shoulder pads. It's been a good group all year long. It's been a tough time for them in off situations in terms of trying to keep the team going. Proud of what they've done and how they've done it. Baylor this week playing at Cowboy Stadium puts a unique aspect to it. Having an opportunity for these kids that have been played in this stadium. Supposedly, and I would agree, the top stadium in the world in terms of athletic events, and a chance to go to Dallas and play against a team that's playing as well as any team in the Big 12 right now. Baylor has a Heisman Trophy candidate, a lot of weapons, lot of points. It will be a challenge for us, a huge challenge. But bringing it up at the end of the year, I think it's a good chance to go out and finish on a good note. It will have to be‑‑ we'll have to play very well in a lot of areas. We'll have to do some good things. We'll have to compete for four quarters because we just saw how they played Saturday night. Pretty much most of us got to see the last half of it live on television, and that was a great atmosphere and a big win for them and their program. So we've got our hands full. Robert Griffin, quarterback, faced him last year. Both teams moved up and down the field, scored a lot of points, I think. Last year Taylor Potts set a Cotton Bowl record in terms of pass yardage. Went back and forth and would suspect that it would be the same as it was last year. Lot of players on both sides played in this game. Both teams know exactly what we're getting into. It should be a very good game, a good challenge. Finishing up on this things giving weekend. We've got a lot to be thankful for. We wish we could have won a lot more games and played a lot better. But those things didn't happen, and so we're looking forward to an excellent week of preparation starting tomorrow. Questions? Q. How bad is the injury situation? COACH TUBERVILLE: It's pretty bad. I've not been in one like that Saturday night. Just basically draw it in the dirt is pretty much what we had to do in terms of a lot of the kicking game. Lot of the running game we lost DeAndre. We were doing some things in that first half in a three‑back set that was working pretty good for us. We had to get out of it. We didn't have enough backs. I thought the offensive coaches did a great job improvising in the second half, making plays. That drive again was unbelievable. And we had Aaron Crawford come back, and he's probably about 50% running back, trying to make plays. He did good. He played well. It's a tough sport. You've got to be ready to go at any time. David Neill played 25 plays, and he hadn't played 25 plays all year at offensive lineman and he played well. It was an interesting night. You hate it for these young guys that got hurt, a tough situation. Most of them really even non‑contact. So we'll see. Today they're all being scanned. All three players that went down. Also Crawford is being X‑rayed on his ankle, so we'll see. We'll probably have by Wednesday the full thing on exactly what's wrong with them. Q. Texas played in the turf (Indiscernible). Is there anything wrong with the field? COACH TUBERVILLE: You can't tell. The only thing that I could tell a little bit was there was a definite difference in height of the seams where the lines were, the five‑yard lines. There is a difference there. Turf is turf and grass‑‑ we had been warned and told by other coaches. Even the officials complained about it. That's a moot point now, because I think they're getting ready to take it up anyway. It probably makes for a good talk. But the bottom line is the last two weeks there have been five guys that will probably have to have surgery from playing there. It could have been a coincidence. You can't blame it on any one person, that's fate. There are a lot of guys that have played on that turf that haven't gotten hurt, and I think they even practiced on it. I saw their sleds at the end of the field where they practice. It's probably more coincidence than anything. But what's done is done, and I'm sure they'll do the right thing and replace it. Q. Can you talk about what you gain if you do go to a bowl, and what you'll lose if you don't in regards to practices and getting offense? COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, the big thing is you want to make a bowl a reward. We practice awfully hard with the guys that don't play a whole lot. I think that is the big advantage is you probably get about ten practices with the players that are not going to participate a lot in the bowl game. You get extra practice time. You get to be around them more. But it is a reward. You want to treat it like that for all the players and especially for the seniors. The rest of these guys will have opportunities to go to other bowl games, but I thought it was pretty unique what the seniors talked about. Hey, let's treat this as more important than any bowl game we play in and playing a conference team. So they'll be ready to go. They'll have the team ready to go. Q. Are the injuries putting you behind for the season? COACH TUBERVILLE: No, we've already gotten put behind. We'll probably have seven or eight surgeries in the next two weeks of having, and those guys will not be in spring practice. That's what's going to hurt us more than anything. We've got players that are playing after the season's over we'll fix whatever is ailing them, and we've got quite a few doing that. We haven't talked about it much all year, but there are several guys that have gone through a lot just to participate. So I think that's going to affect us more than anything. Not having spring practice with quite a few guys that will have to have something done to them here in the next two or three weeks depending on how this game goes. Q. How impressed are you with the job Terrance Bullitt has done? COACH TUBERVILLE: He's played well. He's one of the guys I'm talking about. He's played well. He's tough. He played well on Saturday. That's probably one of his better games. He didn't have a great game against Oklahoma State. We put him in situations where he had to play man coverage against guys that were faster than not just him, but most everybody they play, and their quarterback was on. He's been pretty much the inspirational leader of our team. Our players know what he's been going through. He wears a harness on his shoulder. There are times when he has to come out after a lick like what happened on the screen pass, second or third play this past week. But he's a player. He's grown up a lot, and he understands what he's going through. He didn't have to do it. He wanted to play through it. But he hadn't missed many practices which is good. This happened very early in the season, his injury, and we have several just like him. So there are other guys we could talk about. Q. Baylor is coming off the same situation as you guys. Talk about that? COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, it's tough. It's tough number one to get it out of your mind of what just happened. We beat one of the top teams in the country on the road and broke all kinds of records and played just lights out, not just on offense, as we all know. Our quarterback played really well. But defensively, the first time we've played like that defensively was Saturday for four or five possessions, which has to happen. We hadn't played like that since. But it's hard to get through the week without people calling you, talking to you, interviews for players and all those things, students. But they've got an older team than we do. I think they might be able to handle it a little bit better. But they've got a lot to prove. It's been a while since the success against a lot of teams in this league. They've done a great job coaching. Coach Briles has done a good job recruiting in the last three or four years. He's turned it around. He's got a lot more speed on the team. When you have a quarterback like they've got, you can do a lot of different things. You can get out of a lot of situations. So there is a lot on the line for him too. I'm sure we'll get their best game. We're going to have to‑‑ we can't count on a letdown or looking past us at all. We'll get their best shot. Q. Is Griffin the most dangerous quarterback you'll face this year? COACH TUBERVILLE: Oh, yeah. I would imagine anybody faced just watching him. We faced him last year. He was just coming off that knee injury, a little skeptical about things. Didn't run it that much. And I haven't seen a lot of him this year other than a few film that's we have crossed over. That was the first time I'd seen him live on TV. He did it himself. I mean, absolutely beat one of the better teams in the country by himself, up and down the field, taking advantage, running the ball. I'm sure they kind of grimaced when he threw that ball right there at the end 50 yards down the field on the corner on a perfect strike. I know when he let it go, I'm thinking this thing could be intercepted and still have a chance for a field goal, but what a throw. He's a heck of an athlete. Talking to people that deal with him, he's as good a person as he is an athlete. Just that type of guy. Has his degree, working hard. You can tell on the sideline, I watch sidelines more than I do the game when I watch other teams play and how the people respect him and how hard he plays, and how he encourages other people. Q. Talk about the defense the whole focus was about the offense. They give up a lot of points, but they give up yards with it? COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, they've given up yards. They're somewhat like us in some areas. But if you look at every team in our league, every team gives up yards. There's not a team in this league that's probably ranked in the top 25 nationally in defense because of everybody that you have to play. Week in, week out, everybody has skilled players, fast speed receivers. But everybody spread it's out too. This is not a three‑yard and cloud‑of‑dust conference. This is one where, hey, grab ahold and hold on. It's going to be a high‑scoring game every week. Just look at Iowa State. They scored 44 points Saturday night, and they're probably one of the more conventional teams in our league and they score a lot of points. Not that they haven't against other people, but they did it against a very good football team that nobody else had beaten. So it's a lot of very good skill players in this league. Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, the two teams that were ranked the highest in our conference, both of them lose, both teams have lost several games. So it's high‑powered. If you can go through it undefeated, you've earned it because your defense gets stretched, and your offense is going to have to be on every week. Q.  What about your receiver? COACH TUBERVILLE: I thought Cornelius made us a better football team even though he's just been over there a short period of time. Just his knowledge of football. Sometimes back there in our corners, we have struggled just playing with a lot of football knowledge. Not that they haven't played hard, it's just sometimes you've got to be out there and understand really, hey, what am I doing this for? Why am I inside? Why am I outside receiver? Why is their split shorter? Then you put a guy over there that's played receiver, and he understands that a lot more. You can talk to him one time, and he's got it. He competes. He loves contact. That's what Iowa's concerned with. You move a guy from one side to the other, especially offense and defense, he's going to have to make one‑on‑one tackles, open field. Run people down. There wasn't anybody else on our defense that could have run that quarterback down and knocked that ball out. I mean, nobody. He's the only one. He had the sense about him to say I've had this done to me before. He went after the ball. He wasn't per se trying to make the tackle. He knew exactly what to do. It's good to see him smile and laugh and players encourage him. He's got a lot to learn. He's truly made us a lot better. Then on the other side Osunde, he's probably not as physical. He's given us a little more speed. He's a little older too. He played junior college. He's got to work on his tackling a little bit, not quite proficient in that area. But those two guys have helped us to this point. They'll continue to stay in that area through spring practice and next year, and I think that will help us in the long run. Q. As unsettled as those two spots are is that more because of injuries or production? COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, I think more unsettled because of speed. The guys that we played over there haven't been the speed guys that you need in this league. They'd be better corners. We played Trevonte Porter over there, who has been out for more than a month. He's more a safety for us. If you put him in the SEC, he'd probably play corner, but in this league, you better start at cornerbacks. You better have some corners with all the wide spread teams with wide receivers, you've got to be able to force the ball back inside and take it away from the wide receivers. We haven't been able to do that. For instance, Derek Mays we moved over. He hadn't nearly caught up to being an offensive guy to a defensive guy as Cornelius has if that makes sense. He hadn't made that transition, and he can run. He can run faster than anybody over there. Just the transition of changing from offense to defense has been a struggle for him. But we had to do it. We did it last year. He played pretty decent in the Weber State and Houston game, just had not made a lot of progress in understanding how to play defense. Not that he hadn't played well at times. Just the transition for him hasn't been as good. We've got a corner coming in at the semester that I think will help us. We're recruiting two junior college corners that will hopefully be here in January. We won't recruit anybody that won't come in January. So we're trying to shore that up and hopefully that will help us. With Cornelius over there, it's really helped the defense, and it showed Saturday. Q. Have all the injuries changed how you've had to attack recruiting for next year? COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah. We'll probably take another running back it's just I don't guess you can have too many of them. We thought we had too many of them at the beginning of the year. Now we're just looking to have one for Saturday. Thank goodness if we win this game it will be a month before we play, so we have a chance to get somebody back.  But we've been doing that though since looking at running backs all over the country. The type of running back we need for this offense since Eric went down. Because we don't know, and won't know until tomorrow the extent of his injury and his surgery tomorrow. We were told it could run into the season next year of how complicated it is. But I tell you, he's responded much better with the rehab before the surgery, and just listening to the doctors. I was talking to the doctors at the team hotel in Missouri about how much stronger his leg has gotten. So the upside now looks a lot better than the night he got hurt at Texas A&M. Not that it's not going to be a long, drawn out deal, it is going to be. But the prognosis of getting back by August first looks a lot better than it did a month and a half ago. Q. Would you be in favor of a Thanksgiving Day game? COACH TUBERVILLE: Oh, yeah, I'd like to play on Thanksgiving Day. I think that would be good. Then you'd have to work out the logistics where you'd play it. Is it going to be home at home? If we played it here, I'd hope that we would review our holiday dates. For instance, tomorrow we get out. If we played a game this Thursday here, we don't need to let out on Tuesday, everybody would be gone. You'd want a full house. A lot of things would need to be looked at and talked about before that could happen. I understand there is a possibility and several scenarios. But I'd be for playing it on Thursday, not Friday or Saturday. I think Thursday would be a lot better because at both campuses, if you stayed in school and had the game on Thursday, everybody could come to the game and have a few days off for Thanksgiving. Q. If you could get bowl eligible, there are nine in this league, seven bowl slots, where do you think you'd lineup? COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, that hurt with Oklahoma State losing, them not having a chance to go to the championship game. I think there are going to be other bowls this year. Just the talk that I hear, and I don't get into it a lot, but the other conferences are not going to have bowl eligible teams. So I don't think that would be a problem. I think that would work out. But, again, that is one area that we'd like to have that opportunity for somebody to say we don't have enough. But be eligible. We'll try to get to that point first. But I think there is going to be plenty. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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