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MOTEL 6 CACTUS BOWL: WEST VIRGINIA VS ARIZONA STATEJanuary 2, 2016Mike BercoviciTodd GrahamTim WhitePhoenix, Arizona West Virginia 43, Arizona State 42 THE MODERATOR: We'll begin with opening comments from Coach Graham. COACH GRAHAM: Well, I want to congratulate West Virginia. That was a heck of a ballgame. They were just a tremendous team. I want to congratulate them, give them credit today. More than anything, I want to talk about my seniors. Proud of our football team. They played hard. I'm really, really proud of what our seniors have accomplished here in the last four years. I told them in the locker room we let them down today. Had some coaching change stuff. Supposed to go for a two-point play and don't do it. That's my responsibility. I told our players, doesn't take away from how hard they played. I'm really proud of these guys. Like I said before, the four best years academically on the football field maybe in history and you can go back to 1970 before we won more games. Told these guys we're committed to go to work and get better. We made some really bad mistakes, management there, to let that happen. That was very disappointing. Obviously the story of the game, the toughest thing of the game is we couldn't contain the vertical pass. We blew some coverages early. I'm proud of my football team. I'm proud of these seniors. I'm proud of this guy sitting next to me and that senior bunch. Tim White is unbelievable, phenomenal. A warrior today. I thought he definitely stood out on the football field, proud of our football team, proud of these guys. Can't say enough about our seniors. THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions. Q. Todd, what was the issue on the two-point conversion? COACH GRAHAM: It's my fault. In the fourth quarter we have a chart in the box that we go by. We're supposed to be going for two. We didn't. Mismanagement on our part. That's my responsibility. It was obviously difficult. I mean, just the communication stuff. Mike did a tremendous job. Mike was pretty much the offensive coordinator, did just a phenomenal job. Mike will be the first to tell you we're so grateful to Coach Lindsey for coming in here in a couple of weeks and doing what he did. He actually, with Mike here, called the plays today. I'm really proud of him. Talk about a difficult situation. We have a game management meeting, have a chart, go for two. Ball was snapped, kicked the extra point, tried to call a timeout. We had several things like that today. It was my fault. Should have made sure it happened. Not much to say about that. Just mismanagement. Q. Todd, you lost five games in which you had a lead in the fourth quarter in the second half of the season. Prior to that, only one in your time here. COACH GRAHAM: I look no further than me. It's leadership. You win close games, why you lose close games. We're the same group of guys. I told these guys, these guys have taken the program to the PAC-12 championship in '13. These seniors have been a part of that. We just didn't finish. Too many mistakes. You can make all the excuses you want about injuries, things like that. And it was tough. These guys will tell you. It was very, very difficult. I know it was a challenge for Coach Lindsey to come in here. Mike was phenomenal. He had a lot to do with putting the game plan together. But there were some obstacles. But, you know, we've always won those games in the past. We just didn't finish. Most of those wins are self-destruction. We got to do a better job. I look to the games that we lost, especially the three, basically last play or series of the game. We got some things in there we definitely could have done from a management standpoint to do a better job. I can tell you this. These players have given us everything they've got. We've had some challenges. We just lost a lot of close games. These kids have left a great legacy and foundation. We got to go to work. This should make us extremely hungry because it's extremely frustrating. I can tell you it's frustrating for fans, frustrating for us. Today was one heck of a football game. We played one heck of an opponent. They did a tremendous job. I felt like our guys played really well enough to win the game. We made too many mistakes. Third and 17, we're in a basic call, we don't get it communicated. Gave up a run. Just some critical downs making some critical mistakes. That's the difference between losing is that much. We got to go to work. We've learned from these seniors. We have to be hungry moving forward because we're not far off. A lot of close games. They go down as Ls. It's frustrating. But I'm proud of our team, proud of our guys and we're on a solid foundation. Q. Todd, you said their vertical passing game was the story of the game. What gave you so many fits about that? COACH GRAHAM: Them throwing over the top, throwing touchdowns on us. That was the biggest thing. We blew a coverage the first series. In the game we tried to do less six-man pressure. We lost our strong safety. A lot of our pressures we would normally run were not very effective. We tried to roll to cover three, stuff we don't do that much. We blew the coverage. We blew a couple of coverages. He ran by Kweishi several times. We tried putting Solomon in there. Gump did a great job. Gump went in there and did some good things. It was difficult because it was really their speed, our inability to get pressure on the quarterback. Q. Tim, what was clicking for you in the return game today? TIM WHITE: Just my blockers. They do all the hard work. I just have the easy job, see the hole and hit it. Q. Coach, Devin Lucian went over a thousand yards for the season. He was only here for a year. How do you think fans should remember him? COACH GRAHAM: I think he did a great job. He and Mike had a history going back. Mike came to me when he wanted to come here. I think it was a good decision. I think he did a great job. I think later in the year, we were able to start getting our rhythm a little bit. I think it had a lot to do with the development of those receivers. Tim and Devin, they've only been here one year. That development, as they got better and developed, the rhythm and timing, that's why we had so much more productivity down the stretch. I'm really proud. I'm really proud of Mike, what he did today. He played outstanding. He's like a coach on the field, coaching those guys, developing those guys. We got great young men that do a tremendous job. But I'm really proud of Devin, what he was able to come in here and do. He did a great job for us, was a productive receiver for us. I think he learned a lot about the Sun Devil way. Really has grown as a person. I'm proud he came here. Q. Coach, burned your first timeout on a kickoff. COACH GRAHAM: We were fixing to do an on-side kick and we didn't have the right personnel on the field. Another mismanagement deal. We recognized kind of a flaw in what they were doing, where we thought we could get an advantage. Kicked a field goal, made it a one-point game. We were fixing to on-side kick it. We have a Launchpad over there that everybody is supposed to be on. We didn't have the right personnel to run it. It was mismanagement. Q. Mike, with Coach Lindsey assisting with the play calling, what was that adjustment like for you out there? MIKE BERCOVICI: When you have a coach like Coach Graham, you know you're going to hire somebody, you know immediately you're going to get somebody that is going to bring class and character to this football team. From the second that coach came on campus, it was exactly that. Immediately built a relationship with him. He gave me a lot of freedom, allowed me to be comfortable out there on the field, to see checks, make those checks. He did an outstanding job tonight. It's a testament to our players being able to welcome somebody with open arms. It's not easy to come in here for two and a half, three weeks, put together a ballgame like that. For this senior group, it's been an incredible run. On the scoreboard, it doesn't look like we want it to, but I couldn't be more proud to be the captain of this football team and have a coach like Coach Graham. Q. Todd, you said a few weeks back you believe in momentum from one season to the next. How do you overcome this? COACH GRAHAM: I think you use it as motivation. That was another game where we had every opportunity to win. Give them credit, too. Pretty good players. Their receiver, we struggled covering them. Their No. 1 was special. He played really well. They did some things, nothing we didn't work on. They were a really good team. I mean, if you're around our building, around our program, the culture that we have is not one that just blows with the wind. We say we're a program about character, then how in the world can that not be something? What are we going to do fall apart because we lose five close games? No. You go back to work. Sometimes things don't come easy. Sometimes things are hard. It's frustrating. It's really frustrating because we've lost five games that we were right in the cusp of winning, two on the final play. We'll use this as motivation. I tell you, the biggest motivation we have, Mike will tell you, man, when you do this, that's one of the reasons we do it the way we do it, the reward and gift for these guys at the end of this thing is the relationships we have. We're going to be motivated to go. These guys have laid a great foundation. Our goal and our purpose of our program is to teach men to live championship lives and win championships. I said that the first day I came here. We're going to go to work, use this as motivation. Sometimes when you win 20 games, back-to-back 10-win seasons, sometimes you maybe take those things for granted. I'm talking about it's hard. Winning college football games at this level is extremely hard. But there's a lot of mistakes that are made that we can correct. Our players don't have anything to hang their head about because they gave us everything they had this year. We faced some adversity. So does every team. Every team has injuries, every team has challenges. I tell you this, this program is on strong foundation because of the relationships, how our players feel about each other, because of the values that we stand for. I'm really proud of that. We're not immune to people getting in trouble. I guarantee you, they know exactly what's going to happen when they do. It creates this culture we have. How we're going to respond to this is like a champion. We're going to be motivated. If we won today, it would have been a heck of a lot nicer. That doesn't take away from who we are, what we're about. I for one am extremely motivated because it's really frustrating. In all my years of coaching, this is the most special group I've ever had. They have done more, sacrificed more, made more changes, been open to so many changes and how we do all the little things. We were talking about that last night. Every senior gets a chance to talk. I'm proud of where we're at. It's just one of those things. We came in. We wanted to win the PAC-12 championship. We've been right on the cusp of it. We won our fair share of games. We didn't this year. What you do is you use this as motivation. You go back to work, you get hungry, you work harder, you push harder, you don't make those mistakes. We made too many mistakes today. The mistakes is what beat us today. It wasn't our effort. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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