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BIG 12 CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIP GAMEDecember 5, 2009Mack BrownSergio KindleHunter LawrenceColt McCoyJordan ShipleyEarl ThomasARLINGTON, TEXAS PETER IRWIN: We're now joined by Coach Mack Brown. Congratulations on a big win. Coach, you want to make an opening comment or two? COACH BROWN: Yes, I'd like to congratulate Nebraska on a great effort. Bo had them ready. I think we can all say that Nebraska's back. They've got really good football players. To start the season four-three like they did and end up playing as hard as they have the remainder of the year, and come out playing like they did tonight is a great credit to them. Also like to credit our guys. I think 25 out of 26 wins, I think it's like 19 and four with three points or less at the end of ballgames, and these guys know how to win. They've got tremendous character. They never give up. They're as good as one-minute offense at the end of the game as anybody in the country. And we were disappointed offensively that Nebraska handled us a lot of the game, but we handled them. So it was a defensive football game. They made a couple of plays in the kicking game. We were lucky when they kicked the ball out of bounds at the end on the kickoff. And our guys took it the length of the field, and Hunter hadn't missed a kick all year. He had one blocked. He had a 50-something yarder hit the goal post, so we knew we had a chance to make it. So I'm really proud of the guys and excited about playing Alabama for the national championship. PETER IRWIN: Questions, please. Q. Hunter, this is the first time you've won a game with a kick at the last second. How did you stay calm with everybody else just going berserk around you? HUNTER LAWRENCE: Jordan helped out a lot. He always talked to me when I'm out in and kind of calms me down. And everybody on on the team was really confident. We went out there and knew I had to make it, because their defense was playing so well, and our offense did amazing the last minute to get us a chance. And I just had to make it for them. Q. I guess can you talk about what you said to Hunter right before that, because obviously you don't get a scene like that very often where the other team's out on the field thinking they've won the game and all the craziness that was going on out there. What was going through your minds in addition with that? JORDAN SHIPLEY: Mostly I gave them a Bible verse. We've kind of been doing that before practice and every time we warm up. I think that's just kind of been something we shared over the last couple of weeks. So I gave them Jeremiah 17:7, "blessed is a man who trusts in the Lord whose confidence is in him." I think we all had faith in Hunter and his ability, and I think everybody on our sideline was full of faith and confidence that he was going to make that kick. Q. How would you characterize the change Colt played tonight? COACH BROWN: I think Colt played great. We didn't help him at times. We didn't give him enough protection. He was tough, and he never got frustrated with a tremendous amount of pressure on him. He led us to the drive to win the game. We dropped a touchdown pass. We did not help him. Offensively we'll be excited to get back in the film room. It's really funny when you play as good as we did offensively last week and struggled as much as we did defensively, the defense came in here excited about proving last week was an aberration, and the offense probably felt like they were going to run them down the field. Nebraska has a great defense. Probably took some things for granted tonight. That's why you went as a team. Last week we needed the offense to win, this week the defense hung in there, and the kicking game ended up helping us win. Q. What was going through your minds when the play clock ran out and went down to zero and they had to put a second back on? COACH BROWN: I'll speak first. I knew there was a second left. I was trying to get timeout with the official, and he couldn't hear me, and it was loud. And Colt snapped the ball, and Colt knows what he's doing. He said, "Coach, I threw it away. I looked at the end zone, we were trying to get five yards and get out of bounds. But I saw the clock was down enough so I threw it out of bounds." He thought there were two seconds left instead of one. So I never felt there wasn't any chance there's been time left on the clock. He's been around too long to do that. Q. I wonder if you could talk about those last two drives in the fourth quarter. Maybe they'll be Colt's legacy as far as playing at Texas the way he was able to come back and play? COACH BROWN: I think so. Everybody wants a Heisman moment, and I thought that was it. He has 45 wins. He did the same thing against Tech last year when he brought us down to win, and they scored with seconds left. But I think that's his 12th fourth-quarter comeback. And honestly, what Jordan said is so true about our entire sideline. We saw there was 1:49 left, and we were glad they had to kick the field goal. That's plenty of time for our offense to score. It's just so many times before the half or at the end of the game, we've driven down to score and win a ballgame. Q. Sergio and Earl, coming into this game you were kind of maligned a little bit. Last week there was a turn around, you guys played great this week, and you guys had to hold it down until the offense could get it together so you could win the game. Talk about the mindset on the sidelines as you had to keep going out there and making stops? EARL THOMAS: We knew once Colt gets rolling, he's hard to stop. We only can do what we can control as coach kept telling us. I think we did a good job, just holding the field goals and just finding it. It was a really good game on both sides of the ball, and I'm just glad we got the win. SERGIO KINDLE: Just going back from last week, you know, looking at our game from last week, that wasn't our standard not taking anything from A & M. But, you know, out here we played pretty good on defense. So first of all we had to get back in the film room. We got back to our standards and we came out and practice pays off, as you can see. Q. When you guys were backed up on the one, and they've been killing you all night, what is the mood like in the huddle? Did Colt say anything to calm him down? JORDAN SHIPLEY: I think Colt's always good about keeping everybody calm and focused and he doesn't get rattled by anything bad that happens. And I think that's, you know, a big testament to why he's probably the best quarterback that's playing the game right now. He's so poised under pressure, and he always seems to -- like coach said, he's had more fourth-quarter comebacks than anybody. So I think he keeps everybody calm. Q. Can you talk about the huge swing of emotions that you guys have going from watching them celebrate to you guys getting the opportunity and them making the field goal? HUNTER LAWRENCE: When we saw Colt talking about it, we saw time left, it's never good when you have something in somebody other than the team's hands. So hopefully we were thinking that the Lord saw the clock on one, and that the ref was going to stay true to his morals and give us our second (laughing). Then since we got it, after that, I got confidence in all our guys. From big toe here to big arm in Colt. Once those guys get out there, we called the team automatic, and that's what they were today . Q. Can you talk about the play of Ndamukong, and when is the last time you saw a defensive player with a performance like that on a stage like this? COACH BROWN: We thought (Gerald) McCoy at Oklahoma was as good as we've seen in years. And Ndamukong did the same tonight. He was all over the place. And we just couldn't handle him. I tried to find him after the game to wish him good luck in the NFL, because I don't want to see him again (smiling). He is really, really good, and played hard all night. Thought their entire defense played well and played hard. He is a senior. I thought he was (smiling) if he's a junior, I wasn't trying to make fun and get him out of here early, so don't get me in trouble. Q. After coming up short last year, what's it mean to get back to the BCS National Championship? COACH BROWN: One of the young guys said it in the dressing room which was so correct, that we could quit talking about 0.128 now because it's gone. And the guys a year and six days ago committed to come to this game and win, and be undefeated and they've done that. And now they're really excited about playing a great Alabama team. This bunch, the five-year seniors were at the Rose Bowl with the National Championship in 2005, so it's only fitting that they're going back to try to win again. Q. Give us some thoughts on what you faced tonight on the offensive side. How it was different from the last time you played A & M? COLT MCCOY: You got to give them credit. Those guys are really tough. They had a great game plan. They really came after us, and they matched it up to our receivers really well. They put a lot of pressure on us in the back field. Our team found a way to win. And that's the most important thing. Q. Can you guys just talk a little bit -- you've said all year long, one second better, be one second better. And your season came down to being one second better. And just how that played out tonight? COLT MCCOY: Hunter always wanted to be on that stage. He's been asking me all year to get there. You know, I'm glad I'm sitting up here because I'm not getting hit. It was one of those nights. Those guys played really tough defense all night long. It came down to one second. Hunter is clutch. He works on that in practice all the time. You know, we're a team. Our defense played great, too. You've got to give them credit. We knew it was going to be tough coming in. We didn't want it to come down to the wire like that, but we were able to pull through. COACH BROWN: We constantly talk to our guys about close games and being able to win close games. They've been in that position a bunch. They've won all of them since they've been here except the one at tech. And that was a very difficult one. And I think that probably helped them keep their patience and understand what they had to do to win tonight. Q. Coach Brown was telling us about that he knew you would throw it away with a second left. Could you talk us through that play and exactly what you saw as it was going on? COLT MCCOY: When we got the play call in there it was 15 seconds left. So I wasn't worried about it. If I would have gotten the edge, I would have ran for a couple, got Hunter in the middle and called timeout. You know, we ran an out-and-up with Shipley, and obviously they had safety over the top D, and I just threw it away. I wasn't worried about the clock. I figured we'd have one or two seconds left. When I saw everybody rushing the field I thought, there's no way. We've got one or two seconds left. It was close, but at same time I was just trying to get Hunter back in the middle. Q. Can you talk about your impressions of Suh? He seemed like he was on you all night tonight? COLT MCCOY: Yeah, we're best friends (laughing). No, the guy's a playmaker. It's not just Suh. I thought their whole defensive line played lights out. They were really tough. You know, we were able to run the ball a little bit. That helped in that last drive. We got Shipley the ball and we were able to make it work. All night long Suh played tremendous. You've got to give their defense a whole lot of credit. We knew coming into the game they were tough. They were going to bring pressure on third downs, and they stayed exactly true to what we thought. They're tough. COACH BROWN: To be an undefeated team at 13-0 you have to win in different ways. You've seen Alabama block field goals in the last second. You saw this offense run up-and-down the field last week, and the defense struggled. You saw the offense do enough to win tonight. The defense did enough to win last week. The defense played great tonight. And then we won by forcing a poor field goal last week and making a field goal this week and having a kickoff return last week. So this team has been one of those that they just figure out a way to win. They trust each other. They're very patient. We don't have any finger pointing. It's been one of the real rewarding things about this had year. They know they're going to win and it's usually somebody different that steps up and it's fun for them. Q. Talk a little about playing Alabama, and what it means to you and this program to play Alabama with the history between Texas and the National Championship, Alabama's National Championship? COACH BROWN: I know that I was excited when I got to the University of Texas to go back and study the years that Coach Royal and Coach Bryant played each other and, the unbelievable game for guys my age at the Orange Bowl where Joe Namath had the quarterback sneak and Tommy Nobis knocked him out on the goal line. They always say now that the officials say he missed it by this far, and it was something that they told me the day I got here. I've seen Tommy Nobis tell other people that story. So I don't think there could be a better match-up than Texas and Alabama. Q. The only stat that really matters to you is the wins. You got that. Talk about the difference between winning a big time game, but winning a game like and finally resolving yourself to keep going after you get hit so much and still finding a way to eek it out. COLT MCCOY: Sometimes there are going to be awesome and you're going to put up great stats and throw touchdowns and run. Sometimes you have to dig way deep down as a team and find a way to win. You know, those are the ones that mean the most like tonight. In a big game like this where we couldn't get anything really flowing. They put the ball in our hands with one minute left and we made it work. Q. Obviously, your offense struggled for a lot of the night. But just talk to us about what you thought was going through your mind with the drive at the end of the game, and then also the drive before that from the one-yard line as well? COLT MCCOY: Yeah, we just had some poor luck. We were really rolling when we came off the one-yard line. And I thought No. 7 made a great play on Dan. He replayed. And that's where the ball was going and I was confused. That was a great drive coming on off the goal line. At the end of the game, you just have to keep your cool. I walked in the huddle and told the offensive line it's one at a time. I love each and every one of you. Let's make it happen. Let's find a way. You can tell the receivers the same thing, the defense, they played lights out. They held they will to 12 points going into a game if your offense can't score more than 12 points, proudly don't deserve to win. Today we found a way to win, and we were truly a team. Q. You said earlier that your team has yet to play its best football. Defense was terrific tonight. Are you just excited about what would happen with this team if they are able to put it all together? COACH BROWN: I really am. It's the exciting thing to sit here at 13-0 and be disappointed in some phases each week. And we still sounds like Alabama put a full game together and we still haven't put that together, and we'll have to in that game, because Alabama's such a great team. But the good thing for us is we're 13-0, and we haven't played together for a full game since we got here. You go back and look at even tonight, there was a tipped ball early that was intercepted and gave them three points. It was just rotten luck. The interception at the end, Dan had it, and they took it out of his hands. They had an all-out blitz on us, and so we gave them the ability with the turnover to get three points and we lost six right there. So there are so many more good things we can do as coaches to help these kids, because the kids are doing everything they can do. I think the offense will be back in the staff room either tonight or late in the morning early. Q. Just wanted to know how you think this team would come back with the clock, just your thoughts? COACH BROWN: I think in Lincoln it will be the clock, and in Austin it will be the comeback, that's about the way it happens in sports. We all like our team. It's a great championship game. It will be remembered as a classic like Texas and Nebraska seemed to play each time we get together. And that's only fitting for two of the winningest programs in the history of college football. I think it will be the beginning of what Bo's going to do at Nebraska. I think this is a turning point for them because they beat Clemson, I think in the Gator Bowl last year right in the end. They had a chance to win this one throughout the game tonight and played it down to the end. And we've got to go to Lincoln next year. There are so many good things that Nebraska can take out of tonight. One of the toughest things about sports is it can be really lose, but their offense didn't move it either. In fact, they had a lot less yards than we did. It was a night about defense, and once again if this had been the SEC, we would have called it a beautiful game. That's what happens. You get in the Big 12, and we expect offense to run down the field and those two defenses played great. End of FastScripts |
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