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CHAMPS SPORTS BOWL: MIAMI v WISCONSIN

December 29, 2009

Randy Shannon

ORLANDO, FLORIDA

Wisconsin Â– 20
Miami - 14

COACH SHANNON: That was an exciting game tonight. I mean, that's why you come to Bowl games, opportunity to get better each year, opportunity to get another victory, and for both teams, another opportunity to get 10 wins on both sides of the football.
Give Wisconsin credit. They did a great job of ball controlling, making it tough for us on offense and making it tough for us on defense. The one thing I will say these guys kept doing is responding, stayed in the game mentally, physically.
We had an opportunity late in the game to win it. That's all you can ask for more from guys when they come out and come from behind. And, you know, getting an opportunity to kick that on-side kick, recovered it, and we thought we had a shot. We get a touchdown, we feel good about it. We just came off a two-minute drive that we moved the ball down the field.
Things just didn't happen our way. I can't explain why. Just didn't go our way tonight, so... But give them all the credit in the world for what they did over there at Wisconsin.
THE MODERATOR: We'll be joined shortly by Jacory Harris. We'll open it up for questions and answers with Coach Shannon.

Q. Obviously the trick play on the kickoff. Figure you have a lot of momentum going at that point, and then it got real stagnant real quick. What were they able to do, particularly with their defensive front seven, to keep you from consistently getting things going?
COACH SHANNON: We just couldn't get in a rhythm up front like we thought we should have and we thought we was going to be able. We had negative plays. You can't take negative plays. When we was trying to run the football, mixed cues up front. Communication factor finally got us. I thought we would finally be over that because of Orlando and Brandon played together in South Florida, and Fig and all them guys.
They made mistakes. We came in the locker room, made a couple of corrections, came out decent, but not great. Went down field, got in some third down and threes on like 30 yard line going in. Thought we had an opportunity to make it. Missed passes. The one we had that Jacory threw to J.J. on the wheel route. I mean, it was there, just didn't get it. It was a lot of those type of things tonight that got us.
Just happens like that in Bowl games. Can't tell you why, to be honest with you, it just happened.

Q. Coach, Jacory, too, did Jacory get banged up late in the first half? Did that have any effect on his play to start the second half?
COACH SHANNON: If he was banged up? I think he tough enough. You know, I mean, I can't tell you. Everybody get banged up in football, to be honest with you. Should we take him out? No. I mean, depends. If it's a serious injury, we'll take him out. But quarterbacks do get hit. Jacory got hit tonight. He stood in there. He wanted to play with his teammates.
If it was something real serious, you know, Jacory would have said, Hey, I can't go. We could have said he can't go. From the standpoint of looking at him, you ain't got no bones out or nothing, do you (laughter)? He okay.

Q. Coach, could you talk about the line of scrimmage.
COACH SHANNON: They did a good job, like I said in the first statement. They did a good job of controlling the line of scrimmage on both sides of the football. But we kept fighting. That's the one thing. We went down, called the fumble in the end zone, and give up three points. Then we come back down. It was 20-7. We go back down and score, minute and 30 a minute and 15 I guess, something like that left. We got an on-side kick, it's 20-14.
When it comes down to it, it's who can score points. They outscored us tonight, but we had a chance. That's all we can ask for.

Q. It seems like there was a lot of sand in the field, huge divots on that field. You're a speed team. How much do you think that played a role? Didn't seem like an ideal surface.
COACH SHANNON: You know what, playing on fields, two teams got to play on it. That's the way it's always been. If it's muddy, it's muddy. If it's dry, it's dry. If it's turf, it's turf. Both teams got to execute on it. I don't make excuses for it. It was a field.
I remember a couple of years ago we played Rutgers when I was at the University of Miami. Every five seconds the turf was coming up. The next thing you know, you look at the field, and it was just shredded.
The one thing I will say, being here, the Citrus Bowl, one thing about this facility, it holds a lot of high school games here. I think it's a great venue for high school and for this Bowl game being here. They try to do they best to get it back to where now we can play it. Now they got to turn it around and get it for the next two teams to play. They gonna try they best and they gonna do a good job at it.
When you have special events at a great location like Orlando is, it's hard to -- you got to do your best. That's all they can do is do they best. You can't complain about it. You can't do nothing else.

Q. How much of your game plan was focused on stopping their main tight end? Did that open things up for the other tight ends, Kendricks, No. 84, and...
COACH SHANNON: Both of those guys did a good job. We had blown coverages tonight. Those guys did a great job. That was the key to what they doing. Both of those guys do a great job of catching the football and running with the football. We knew that, and we just blowed a lot of coverages tonight.

Q. Coach, they controlled the clock so well, particularly in the second half. Does that put pressure on your offense and offensive play calling?
COACH SHANNON: Well, you know, when you get a hit, if you can snap the ball with two seconds left to go on the clock, it makes it a little bit different, things like that. Our defense has to step up, get off the field. And a couple of third down situations we didn't get off the field that I thought was valuable time. They kept the football and they drove down and kicked a couple of field goals.
I think we had two or three third down series where they could've kicked both field goals that we should have been off the field. Third down and eight, third down and ten. Usually you're off the field if you're playing good and doing those types of things.

Q. Could you speak about the injury situation, specifically Cooper with his knee.
COACH SHANNON: Don't know till I see the doctors. Can't comment until after the doctors evaluate them. Injury-wise, I can't give you nothing on that.

Q. From the first play of the game with Cooper, and then the first touchdown, 7-0, Miami looks like they're on a roll. Then Wisconsin comes out, punched them in the mouth, and really took control of the game. Kind of seemed like Wisconsin wanted it more. Would you concur with that?
COACH SHANNON: That's your opinion.

Q. Hankerson today, one big catch late in the game, but noticeably silent.
COACH SHANNON: Just wasn't there. Fellas, I got to give them credit. I said this early in the week that both teams probably equal. You know, both teams like to run the football. Both teams like the play-action pass. The first touchdown they ran the wheel route with No. 84. It was off of play-action. That's the way they get they plays.
They was able to get those things done tonight, and we wasn't. We had to go to our two-minute offense and do things to try to score points. Our reverse on the touchdown we got some points out of. It just wasn't clicking for us tonight. It happens this time of the year in Bowl games.
They did a great job of figuring out what we was doing and executing, and we blew some assignments, so...

Q. You said many times the last few weeks that your mood for the next few months would be predicated on the outcome of this game. From 5-7, 7-6, 9-4, are you seeing enough to make you somewhat happy about where this program was 24 months ago and where it is now?
COACH SHANNON: I'm proud of these guys for what we've been through for my last three years, you know, getting some guys in this program to believe that we can turn it around as a football program. The first year was difficult. The second year was a little stress because we played so many young guys, like Jacory and these young sophomores that we got.
This year, they stepped up. You know, it's going to be a learning experience for them. They learned a lot from early in the season. Jacory will probably tell you that he learned a lot. Tonight he'll probably tell you he learned some more things tonight.
So any time that you can learn and get better and you got a lot of guys coming back, which our team next year will have a lot of guys coming back. You look at the offensive line, you know, you look at the guys played tonight, we'll miss Trump, we'll miss Pipho. You got your receivers back. You got your runningbacks back, besides Javarris.
Defensively, we'll miss Joe Joseph, Randy Phillips and Darryl. Those guys next year have to take the next step as a football team that all these returning guys coming back. Now it shows you that we able to build the depth like we used to when I was here as an assistant coach and as a player. You can build guys that come in and have depth.
And now somebody get nicked, you don't have to miss a beat. You can just keep going on. I think that's going to be a big improvement. But we have to make that next step next year.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, coach.
COACH SHANNON: All right.
THE MODERATOR: We'll move on to Jacory Harris. Questions.

Q. How difficult was it? They kept coming in waves. Until the second touchdown drive you couldn't get anything consistently going. What were they throwing at you?
JACORY HARRIS: They had a good defensive line. They came with a lot of pressure. At the same time, I got to get the ball out a little bit quicker. When we ran the two-minute offense, that allowed me to make quicker reads, just get the ball out of my hands. We became successful with that.
I guess, you know, when you allow them to get their speed rushing guys up the field and then the big strong defensive tackles in the middle, you know, it's going to take effect.

Q. If you look at your season from the first game of the year against Florida State, threw for nearly 400 yards, big win, three touchdowns, then something happened after like the Oklahoma game. You kind of hit a wall. Is there something you can pinpoint what happened in your game from the beginning of the year to tonight?
JACORY HARRIS: No. Just making a lot of mental mistakes. I don't know. Going back and looking at it, as I do, I looked at all of my interceptions. I say about seven of them came on the same play. It's just a lot of things that's mental.
You know, my teammates that are around me, they support me a lot. They've been a big help this whole season, and they supported me this whole season. There's nothing I can complain about. And I know, you know, I put everything on myself.

Q. Did the hits they had have an effect on you?
JACORY HARRIS: No. You still got to play the game. If you hurt, you injured, your leg broke, just tape it up. Got to get out there and play a game. I'm not coming out for nothing.

Q. After one play you sort of like yelled at your offensive line. Were you trying to take a leadership role after that play?
JACORY HARRIS: I didn't yell. I was just telling them to come on, we got to step it up. I was asking him what happened. He told me what happened. I told him, We can't keep making these mental mistakes. You know, we corrected a little bit and got it straight.

Q. Same question I asked coach. Controlling the ball for such long stretches of time, did that put a little pressure on you mentally when you got back in the game not to make a mistake? Also, how physical were they compared to other defenses you met this year?
JACORY HARRIS: It does kind of change the game plan a little bit when you have to -- you know, you're playing against the time, because you if don't score, they're going to take about 10 minutes off of the clock. So you got to make sure you execute on all plays. You know, make sure we're doing everything correct and everything right because we got -- against this type of team, you're supposed to put up a lot of points. Put 'em up fast because they can hold the ball and they can take away a lot of the time, so...

Q. You've probably been hit more this year than maybe in your entire career up to this point. How much are you really looking forward to this off-season to heal and rest? What do you work on from now until September? What is the next level you have to get to?
JACORY HARRIS: Oh, man. Next level we got to get to is I guess finishing the season strong, just learning how to finish. That's something that we got to put into our minds during the off-season by telling ourselves, you know, in everything we do, just finish. Hopefully that will carry over into the season.
You know, everybody's looking towards the off-season. But if I could play this game again in the same state that I am, I still go out there and play, give my 110%, because I wanted to win the game. I'm sure everybody on our team wanted to win the game.
But Wisconsin came out there and played harder than us today.

Q. Just wondering if you tweaked your back toward the end of the first half. The other thing was, when you moved the ball so quickly down the field at the end of the game, was there any reason why you weren't able to do much of that throughout the first three quarters?
JACORY HARRIS: Throughout the first three quarters we weren't running a two-minute offense. We were running our basic offense. When time came down, we had to run our two-minute offense.
Like Coach Shannon said, you got to see the doctor. I don't know what's wrong with me.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Jacory.

End of FastScripts

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