|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCETDecember 7, 2013Kyle FloodSOUTH FLORIDA – 6 COACH FLOOD: Really excited as a program to be 1‑0 again. Really pleased with the effort the team put forth this evening. Probably the most complete game we've played all year, offense, defense and special teams. Really happy for this group of seniors, that they get an opportunity, first to continue, not a streak, but a tradition of sorts, the eighth Bowl game in nine years that we'll be able to participate in. You look around the country after this weekend and there's a lot of teams that started the season wanting to compete in a Bowl game and won't have the opportunity to do that, and we'll be one of the teams that will. All that culminated with a call from the Yankees that we're really excited about, to play in the Pinstripe Bowl this year against a really fine program in NotreDame. But before I open up for questions, let me just, one more time, complement Coach Taggart and his staff. I know that their record is not what they want it to be, but you can certainly see as they have gone through their season how he is trying to instill what his program will be down there at South Florida, and I have no doubt that they will have success as he continues to do that. I think he's done an excellent job down there. Q. Have you told the team beforehand about the possibility of the Pinstripe Bowl and NotreDame was out there or is that something you safe for after? COACH FLOOD: They know what the possibilities are. I don't know if you can keep yourself from knowing that. It's really not something that I talk to the team about. Q. Who called you, which representative from the team called you tonight? COACH FLOOD: I'll leave that, you know, up to them to talk about. I don't want to break any of their chain of command in terms of how we found out but we are really excited to go back to Yankee Stadium again and play. Q. Your thoughts on that? Obviously NotreDame is a brand name, you guys around here are a big brand name. Just the thoughts on the attractiveness of that match up? COACH FLOOD: I think it's a really attractive match up. It's a really attractive match up for our fan base. It will certainly be an attractive matchup for their fan base and I think it will attractive to just the casual college sports fan that wants to see an event and to get an opportunity to go watch a football game in Yankee Stadium, one of the premiere venues in the world, I think it will be a really, really excited crowd on the 28th of December. Q. Given the way the team has struggled so much recently, was it relief as well as satisfaction? COACH FLOOD: I think for the players it's always about satisfaction and jubilation, excitement. I think for coaches, wins are always more relief than they are excitement. You know, for us as coaches, we always move on to the next game. It's always about moving on to the next game. For us with the win, there's a next game, so now we move on to that. You know, we are going to enjoy it tonight as a program and then tomorrow, we'll get back to work because we have players that have got to get ready for final exams and we have a Bowl schedule we have to put into place and we have recruiting that needs to be done. Q. How emotional was this game for you before and afterward? COACH FLOOD: I'm pretty good at avoiding the emotion beforehand. Now I've done this twice where you stand out there and you watch the seniors run out to you and shake your hand and hug you. And to see a guy like Isaac Holmes is probably a great example, because I was Isaac's recruiter when he was at Hoboken high school and I remember going to the school to see him and sitting in his house and talking to his dad. That brings up‑‑ you watch him run out of the tunnel for the last time that, brings a lot of thoughts into your head, but you have to put the emotion aside until after the game, because ultimately, you're out there to be 1‑0 and to win a football game. But I did get a chance to see Ike afterwards, and that becomes a very emotional moment. Q. Did the quick start settle the team down? Was that needed? COACH FLOOD: I think any time you can start well, it helps you. I don't know that there's a team in the country that wouldn't rather play from the lead. Q. Why do you think things clicked defensively tonight? COACH FLOOD: We knew they were going to try and run the football, and they were determined to do that. You know, 20 rushes, ten yards, some of that is the negative yards in college football that come off for things like sacks. But I mean, I'm looking at it here and it looks like they only gained 23 yards with Shaw and Tice. So I think it's a tremendous effort. Any time we can stop the run like that, it always gives you a chance to play great defense. Now, we've had other games this year where we've done that and we've struggled a little bit more than we did today in pass defense. So, you know, we were fortunate, even the couple sustained drives that they had, we were able to hold them to field goals in the red zone. Q. A lot of talk about your job security going into the game; any concern right now? COACH FLOOD: It's really not something that I even think about. For me, right now, we've concluded our second season. We're going to our second straight Bowl. We've got a very young football team. It's an exciting team to watch, even though the results are not always‑‑ results to be excited about. It's really not anything that anybody's ever spoken to me about, so it's not really anything I even think about. Q. With P.J.'s injury concerns the past couple days, what made you confident, giving him the amount of carries he had today? COACH FLOOD: Just watching him run. I thought as the week went on, he got stronger, and it's a little bit of an advantage to have a few more hours to get ready for the game, maybe being that it was a 7:30 PM game and you watch him early in the game. And as good as a player looks in practice, it's been my experience, they always look better on game day because of the adrenaline factor. And I thought that that would be a factor tonight and I was excited that pj was able to come through the game. I think he came through the game pretty healthy. Q. Talk about Chase's performance? COACH FLOOD: I think Chase, 19 of 24 in the game‑‑ make sure I got that accurate. Yeah, 19 of 24, two touchdowns, I thought he made some good decisions. I thought there were a couple of read plays and the run game, I don't know if he made great decisions on. But there were others that he did, and they produced some big plays for us. That's a part of the offense I think that now we have some more practice time to hopefully get a little bit better at. I. Thought he made good decisions. He threw the one interception that kind of got taken away because of the roughing the passer penalty, so we'll have to look at that and see why he did what he did, or if maybe the roughing the passer had an effect on the throw itself, I'm not sure, I didn't have a great look at it. I think overall, I thought he made good decisions, his completion percentage is high, and he did a pretty good job protecting the ball. Q. In the past with Chase and also last week, he sometimes held on to the ball a little too long, and with this game, him completing all these quick, short passes, what kind of progress have you seen in his decision making? COACH FLOOD: I think he's been a good decision maker in the last two games. I think he's triggering the ball for the most part on time. They did sack us twice. This is one of the more talented fronts we saw all year, there's no doubt about that. They have got some very good people on that front seven that are not easy to block. But I do think overall, he's done a good job of triggering the ball on time to the right people. Q. I know you don't believe in week‑to‑week momentum in football, but you've said the last couple of weeks that the team was frustrated. Do you hope that this result and attractive Bowl matchup takes away some of the frustrations for the team and the fan? COACH FLOOD: Well, I can't speak for the fans. I hope the fans enjoyed the game tonight. You know, that's what I hope. I would be remiss if I didn't compliment our band. I looked up, I think it was the middle of third quarter, and our band was playing and moving back and forth, and dancing and all that, and it just kind of caught my eye. I said, wow, that's great. They had so much energy. And to the students and the fans that came today, I thank them. I thank them for coming. I appreciate the fact that they came out to send this senior class off the right way, and I hope they enjoyed it. I hope all the fans, whether they were in the stadium or not, enjoyed the game today, because it was a great effort by our football team. Q. How important is it to be Bowl eligible from a developmental standpoint? COACH FLOOD: I think it's an advantage. I think it's an advantage. It would be hard‑‑ if we weren't, you would never say that it's going to‑‑ you have to find a way to make that schedule work for you. But I think there's an advantage to being Bowl eligible. It gives us an opportunity now, even though we'll have one less week of it because we played this weekend, whereas most teams didn't, unless they were in a conference Championship Game, but it will give us an opportunity to go out there and practice more and give us a chance to heal up some of our older players, and some of our younger players, give them a chance to play within our system and give them a little bit of a jump start on the spring. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|