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FRANKLIN AMERICAN MORTGAGE MUSIC CITY BOWL: LOUISVILLE VS MISSISSIPPI STATE

December 29, 2019

Nashville, Tennessee

RONALD ROBERTS: Now we're going to hear from the University of Louisville coordinators Dwayne Ledford and Bryan Brown. We'll let you make a few comments, then open it up for questions.

DWAYNE LEDFORD: Appreciate you guys being here. Obviously we're very excited about this. This week has been great. The city of Nashville, our kids have really enjoyed it. Coach was in here speaking about that a little earlier.

It's great for our fan base. I think it's going to be a great crowd. Most importantly, it's a great reward for our kids, for our seniors to go out, to be able to come to a great city like Nashville, to play in their final football game. Gives us an opportunity to work with these young guys for three more weeks and continue to instill and develop the culture that we're trying to get here at Louisville.

BRYAN BROWN: Like Coach Led said, we really appreciate you guys coming. We're excited. We're excited to be in a bowl game, to be able to play one more game this season, especially for these seniors. I think this is going to be a real good event.

I'm from Mississippi, played at Ole Miss. Going against these guys is something I'm used to. So I'm excited about it. My family's excited. These players are excited. Ready to get it on tomorrow.

Q. The players have had a chance to do a lot of things here in Nashville, had some fun before they got here. How important is that?
DWAYNE LEDFORD: I think the more stuff that we can do with our players outside of football, the closer we're able to become as a team. The more stuff we do away from the facility, we talk about it all the time, all we're doing is developing our relationships. This is a great opportunity for that because we're all in a new city, exploring it, doing these events for the first time.

For us it's great because it allows us to keep hammering in that culture that we're trying to continue to develop here at Louisville.

BRYAN BROWN: I think it's really great for the guys. They come from really different backgrounds. This is the next place they've been besides their hometown. To be able to come to a different city, do some fun things, different events, things like that, I think that no doubt helps those guys.

Q. Bryan, the task of trying to stop a guy like Hill.
BRYAN BROWN: It's a tough task. He's a really good runningback, very physical. Downhill runner. He's elusive. I think those guys up front do a really good job of opening up holes. Coach has done a good job opening up the holes for him.

You can't tackle him one-on-one. You have to gang tackle him. Very strong, no doubt about it. Does a really good job with a stiff arm, when he doesn't have the ball in the opposite hand. Got to do a good job of game tackling him and executing.

Q. Bryan, switching quarterbacks for Mississippi State, what have you seen in the difference in the two quarterbacks they play?
BRYAN BROWN: I think both of them are kind of similar. You have one that's a little bit taller. He's a longer strider. He can get from zero to 60 a little bit faster than Garrett.

Again, you look at Tommy, Tommy has a really strong arm. He throws the ball well at times. We'll just prepare for both of them. Don't know which one we'll see. I think our offense will kind of end up staying the same as it has been all season long.

Q. Mississippi State is missing a couple people from the secondary, chosen not to play in the game. How does that affect the way you approach or attack their defense tomorrow?
DWAYNE LEDFORD: Going into these bowl games, you see this happen a lot. A lot of times these things are really announced kind of late before the games, right before the games. We're dealing with it on offense, as well.

You are who you are going into this game. Our body of work from the first game till the last, it's not going to really change what we've been planning on trying to execute in this game. It's all going to come back to can we execute. That's first and foremost.

Mississippi State, they are very talented on defense. They have good depth. It's definitely going to be a challenge for us.

Q. You inherited players. As you bring more of your own guys into the system, do you see any significant evolution in the way you're going to play schematically or in terms of personnel?
BRYAN BROWN: I think when you look at it defensively, we lost a good bit the guys, whether it was the transfer portal, whatever the case may be. Like you say, we inherited what we inherited.

I think with what we recruited, we recruited for our scheme. I think our scheme has worked. It's continued to work in the past. What we recruited, we'll continue to run the exact same scheme offensively and defensively.

DWAYNE LEDFORD: Same thing like Coach Brown was talking about. We recruit for our scheme. The great thing about the guys that we came here and worked with this year, just their eagerness to do whatever it is that we were asking them to do.

Very simple this past spring, didn't really start installing much really until we got more into fall camp. Now this year going forward, obviously pretty much everything is in. We'll just keep expanding on that this spring.

It's like going from math one to math two now, which will be fun with the guys because they have this base underneath them now with our schemes. Spring ball is going to be a lot more advanced for the guys.

We got 18 to 19 guys coming in for spring ball this year with the early enrollees. Obviously we'll have to get those guys caught up. It gives those guys an opportunity to be with some of the older guys that have been in the system for a year.

BRYAN BROWN: I also think defensively, this will be the first time in I think maybe four or five years they've had the exact same defensive coordinator for spring ball. I think that will help, too, a little bit. Excited for the older guys, they'll have the exact same scheme going into spring ball. That will help.

Q. Coach Ledford, can you give us an example of the kind of thing you would install maybe this coming spring that they weren't perhaps ready for?
DWAYNE LEDFORD: Maybe a lot more lined up what we would say vanilla offensively formation-wise, not using a lot of motions, a lot of shifts. We call it (indiscernible) adjustments, things like that up front. Unbalanced sets, a lot of stuff that you kind of saw us do a little bit more of during the season.

This past spring, we didn't really do any of that. Our whole emphasis this past spring was just wanting our guys to learn how to strain and how to play the way we wanted them to play, how fast and how physical could they play.

Once we got into fall camp, then we really had to speed up things, throughout the summer and fall camp. Now going into it, all that stuff is taught, all of our motions, all of our shifts formationally some of the things we're doing, it's all in now. Now you can go ahead and start running those plays that we weren't running last spring now from day one in spring ball.

Q. I think they played like they had a lot to prove, a chip on their shoulder all season. After the way the season ended, do you feel this group has even a higher motivation?
BRYAN BROWN: I think so. I think our guys carried it all season long, no matter who we played. I think losing the last game the way we lost it, especially on the defensive side of the football, that chip is still there. Maybe a little bit bigger just because of the way it ended. Those guys, that's not how we prepared all season long to play that game.

They're excited to come out here and hopefully come out on the other end of the stick.

DWAYNE LEDFORD: We had great work. Going into the first bowl practice, all the way through, they're focused, they're intent. It's where you want it. You could tell the guys are very motivated. They don't want it to end the way it ended the last game of the season. It's been fun working with them during this bowl prep. It's going to be exciting to see them play on Monday.

RONALD ROBERTS: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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