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ALLSTATE SUGAR BOWL

January 1, 2008

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

CHARLES BLOOM: We'll be joined by University of Hawai'i head coach June Jones, quarterback Colt Brennan and linebacker Solomon Elimimian. We'll have an opening statement from Coach Jones and then questions for our student athletes. We'll dismiss the student athletes, go back to the locker room and we'll keep with Coach Jones up on the podium.
We're ready to start. Coach, if you could just give us an opening statement about the game tonight.
COACH JUNE JONES: Yeah, we started off like we did against Alabama, didn't play very well. Obviously we needed to play our best game to compete. We thought we just couldn't get in the rhythm. We couldn't get anything going. But it's probably the guys that didn't quit. They had a goal line stand there, when nothing really to play for. It says a lot about their character. And Georgia has a lot of good players. When you do that, you can't miss a beat. You gotta keep pace with them.
We didn't play our type of game we needed to play tonight.
CHARLES BLOOM: Questions for the student athletes.

Q. Colt, can you talk about Georgia's defense and how difficult it was to face them, especially the pass rush?
COLT BRENNAN: We knew coming into this game this would be the best probably one of the best if not the best defense we've ever seen.
You know, we just -- like Coach said, we just couldn't get going. We couldn't get any momentum to build on. We kept having drives that just wouldn't go anywhere. And it was extremely frustrating, and obviously they played to their momentum.
They're very fast. They're very physical. It wasn't that -- the Xs and Os, they were winning in that side. They were just winning their battles. And it was just not our night.

Q. Colt, the first series you have two penalties before you can get a snap off, can you talk about how that typified how things went? You saw a lot of 2nd and longs, 3rd and longs all night?
COLT BRENNAN: Yeah, I'm not one to make excuses, but we obviously had to come in here and get used to something that was different.
I walked out to the field and for the huddle and before I even stepped on the field the play clock was rolling. There's little things like that. Obviously our warmups. Everything was different.
And, obviously, we needed to adjust and figure it out. And Georgia plays in this environment every week all the time. Obviously you could see that.
We needed our time to kind of regroup and gather ourselves and never really happened. We never could get that momentum going to get things going. It was tough.

Q. Colt, you were sacked eight times, you were pounded on several other plays. Did Georgia do something different or surprise you with anything that you didn't expect?
COLT BRENNAN: I mean, we knew they were going to bring pressure. It wasn't that they did anything -- it wasn't that they -- it's a game of inches, and God, how many times, if the ball went this way, if a guy kept his foot in bound and if I made the right read and all these little things. That's what matters in football. Coach stresses it's the little things. We were having trouble with the little things tonight. It's just disappointing. We could not get things going. It's not a discredit to Georgia because obviously there's a reason that they were up for the national championship football game.
We had trouble adjusting to the environment and that was it.

Q. Colt, this game was a chance for Hawai'i in a nontraditional BCS conference team and on the big stage, yourself on the big stage, after the Heisman Trophy race. First, I guess how do you feel about that? Did you feel that was a chance for vindication on both parts? And how do you feel after that and was this a missed opportunity? I'm not trying to put words in your mouth.
COLT BRENNAN: Going into the game, this was the most calm, the most confident I've ever been. I mean, knowing it was my last game. Knowing that this was it, and I was so excited to get out there and everything went south. And obviously, for me, it's a gigantic disappointment. I'm sure now it's going to leave me up for all the analysts and everybody to take their shots on me.
And that's life. And luckily I've been through a lot tougher things in life. I'm just glad that I got to experience this with all my teammates. You know what, I took one right in the mouth today.
And luckily there's always tomorrow and days to come for me to get some more redemption.

Q. Colt, that said, though, the Hawai'i fans, they came out, they showed their support even down to the last minute. Can you talk about the support you saw with all the green and white?
COLT BRENNAN: There's no doubt. I mean, you saw it all week long. You saw the build-up. This was in a lot of a ways a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. That's why it's so disappointing that it ended the way that it did.
But you can't thank the fans enough for the way they were. I don't know what the numbers were. But it seemed like it was just as loud when Hawai'i was on defense than when Georgia was on defense. It really did. I think it goes to show the enthusiasm. They didn't boo us, didn't get upset with us, they supported us the whole time. That's the Hawai'i culture, and that's the special thing about Hawai'i.

Q. Solomon, can you add to that?
SOLOMON ELIMIMIAN: The fans' support, just showing us a lot of love out there. It didn't seem like that because all the analysts said we couldn't fill stadiums and coming to bowl games Hawai'i fans wouldn't travel. So just to see them out there it gave us a lot of confidence going in that they had our backs. All week when we were pulling out to practice they would be there, asking for autographs and showing a lot of support, it seemed like.

Q. Solomon, I know the offense took a little while to get going, seemed like you were a little out of synch in the early going too, but did adjust as the game went along. Can you talk about that?
SOLOMON ELIMIMIAN: Georgia did a great job just keeping us off balance in the first quarter. Any time it looked like they were going to blitz they audibled and did a lot of screens and a lot of quick passes to slow us down. Once we adjusted that I think you guys seen what happened. So they made a lot of adjustments but we made adjustments, too, so...

Q. Colt, could you talk about the speed of Georgia's front four, front seven, how difficult they were to deal with and how to prepare for something like that?
COLT BRENNAN: That's the thing, unfortunately, we really can't, because we don't have that speed or that -- we don't have that look on scout team.
So obviously this was our first hand at it and the SEC is probably the fastest in college football, and we got a firsthand taste of that tonight. And they were tough. They were a great football team. And I'm just -- I'm just really disappointed that we didn't show up and at least play our type of football. It's disappointing, because we're such a better football team than what we showed tonight.

Q. You guys probably know this. A little WAC history. Boise State goes to Georgia, gets embarrassed, comes back, does real well. Is a game like this or a regular-season game against an opponent like this good for you down the line?
COLT BRENNAN: If I -- the only way -- for him, maybe. For me, I'm done, so it's not how I wanted to end my career. And I was saying earlier this week, life's not fair and I get a chance to get a taste of life's not fair. But he might have a different look.
SOLOMON ELIMIMIAN: It's a blessing just to be here, to play against Georgia, great football team. I feel like coming into this game, you know, a lot of guys didn't know what to expect. You heard the rumors and the analysts saying how fast they were, how physical they were. But just to experience that for ourselves, I think it will take us a long way in the future. We're a young team. It's going to help us down the line when we play Florida next year.
So we got a glimpse of SEC football, and I feel like we could have played a lot better than what we showed out here tonight. That was what was disappointing about it. But we stayed in there and we never gave up, never quit.

Q. Colt, in the second half looked like you were favoring your hand a little bit. Did you injure it during any of those sacks?
COLT BRENNAN: On that play, I got my hand caught between the helmet or something. I got my hand hit. And it's just black and blue, whatever, but it wasn't like anything serious. I just got it hit real well. When I fumbled, they got a touchdown. It wasn't any serious injury. Just a number of bangs and bruises. That's the way football is.
CHARLES BLOOM: Gentlemen, thank you. We'll start taking questions for Coach Jones.

Q. Coach, what can you take from this as a program? It's something that the guys kind of addressed. Where can you go from here? You can build on this, I would assume.
COACH JUNE JONES: You have to learn from it. We knew we had to play our best game to come down here. And whenever you get into these environments, you kind of learn from them. We were here last time against Alabama down this way, and we actually played a little bit better than tonight.
But Georgia has a lot to do with that, too. I mean, we turned the ball over I think six times. You can't do that against a team that really is probably one of the better teams in the country, maybe the best team.
Their team speed on defense, you know, you kind of realize how the game is. We've got a few players with that kind of speed, but not 11 on the field.

Q. In that line, you saw USC I believe in your opener two years ago when they had Leinart and Bush and all those guys. Can you give us a comparison of how good--
COACH JUNE JONES: It's hard to compare, because we played them at home. And there was a lot of things, that crowd noise, the silent count, a lot of different things that we didn't have.
I mean, USC had a lot of talent. I don't know that they had as much team speed on defense as this team has. But they had some guys that certainly were.
Like I said, other than the first quarter, we started to play defense a little bit better against them. Just offensively we couldn't get in synch until the end of the game when it was all for naught.

Q. Now that Colt's played his last game, could you put his career into perspective and what's his legacy going to be for the program?
COACH JUNE JONES: You know, that's hard to say. I think that I'm proud of him and the career he had, certainly. I wish he could have finished, obviously, better than he did tonight.
But I think that was a lot to do with Georgia and not so much all him. We needed to play as good a game as we could play. And all our guys, we didn't get that done. We don't take a lot of sacks. And we had eight sacks tonight. That's kind of unheard of. And we just completely didn't touch a couple guys a couple times in the last few minutes we threw the ball. That's not normal for us.
And obviously if you're going to play in this arena, this type of game, you gotta be able to do that, and you do it by experience, you know?
CHARLES BLOOM: Coach, thank you.

End of FastScripts

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