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AT&T COTTON BOWL CLASSIC: OKLAHOMA STATE v OLE MISSJanuary 2, 2010Donald BookerUgo ChinasaMike GundyAndre SextonARLINGTON, TEXAS Ole Miss – 21 THE MODERATOR: The MVP for the offensive player is Dexter McCluster of Ole Miss, and the MVP for defense is Andre Sexton of Oklahoma State. Dexter was a unanimous pick for MVP. Coach Gundy has now joined us. Would you like to make some opening comments about the game. COACH GUNDY: First off, I'd like to thank Rick Baker and everybody from the Cotton Bowl. We've had a tremendous week. I don't know that we've ever been treated any better. The hospitality for the players, the coaches, the families, has been tremendous, facilities, everybody involved. I want to congratulate Coach Nutt and Ole Miss on the win. Hate to give a football game away, but I just felt like that we gave the game away. You know, my opening comment would be that anybody that's followed Oklahoma State football for the last five years realizes in postgame I'm always going to shoot everybody straight. There's been games in the past when, as a coach, I said we didn't do a good job, and we took the hit. But in this game, it's hard to overcome giving one away. And at some point we got to make some plays. We've got to step up. I told the team the same thing. In order to win on a big stage against a football team that comes from a great football league and has got good players, and they're a good football team, very good team, you've got to step up and make plays. And we didn't do that today. I have never divided offense, defense and special teams, other than the long return for them, I thought special teams played very well today. I thought the plan was good. I thought it was executed. I thought they played well. Kendall filled in some in the return game for us. I thought Cooper did a good job returning punts. Then, obviously, defensively, guys played tremendous. Didn't give 'em a chance. They continued to make plays and plays and plays. But you got to call it like it is: didn't give 'em a chance. In offense, played sloppy. Put the ball on the ground with snaps. Unforced errors, if you use a term from another sport, just unforced errors. And then we threw the ball very average. We dropped too many. Then when we did catch it, we put it back on the ground and gave it to them. For the most part that's the way I see it. THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions, please. Q. Zac Robinson, was he healthy in the last month of the season or did he just play poorly the last part of the season or both? COACH GUNDY: He's healthy. Q. How about his game today, then? COACH GUNDY: I thought at times he threw the ball very inconsistent. But at other times he hit them right in the chest and we dropped it, or they caught it and we put it on the ground. That combination is not good. But his health is not a factor. Q. You said you gave the game away. What bothers you more, the team's bad performance or coming up short when the team plays great? COACH GUNDY: Well, anytime you lose a football game, I think it's tough to swallow. But, you know, we talked as a group in there. I'm not taking anything away from Ole Miss. Every time that they made a mistake, we didn't capitalize on it and take advantage of it. That's what really bothers us. Q. Your thought process on going for it on fourth and goal there? COACH GUNDY: I feel like that you got to score touchdowns to win the game. They had moved the ball more consistently throughout the game than we had. We've gone for fourth downs, whatever it was, five, six, seven inches throughout the year. Got in the huddle. The linemen up front, Toston, those guys said they wanted to get it done. They've done it for a number of years here. When they've asked to do that, we've converted and scored. We felt like that we had a chance to get six inches, seven inches. We missed a back block. We got somebody from the backside that hit us in the backfield or we probably would have had a good chance of pushing it in. Just feel like in a game like this, in order to win, you got to get six inches. THE MODERATOR: Coach, would you identify the players up here with us. COACH GUNDY: Zac, Andre, Ugo, and Booker. THE MODERATOR: We'll take more questions. Q. Coach, tell us your impressions of Dexter McCluster now that you've faced him. COACH GUNDY: I think that he played exactly the way that we felt like he would. I thought our defense did a good job of containing him. In our opinion, where he's dangerous is where he puts up in there, you stuff it, he jumps outside. I think our defense understood that taking a good angle on him is important because even though everybody knows how fast he is, it's still somewhat deceiving. I think there were a couple times on third downs, third and threes, third and fours, we really fit up in the gaps. He jumps outside. We should have stopped him. He's got such great speed that he's able to overcome that. He hit us with a big run. But for the most part I thought our guys contained him very well. He's a good player now. Guy that's got that much speed, he seems to be very durable and very tough. After the game, mentioned to him that I really enjoyed watching him play because I appreciate guys that are tough football players, and I think he's a tough football player. Q. Zac on the interception in the end zone, did you think you had a free play? What was the ruling, coach, after the replay? COACH GUNDY: Well, I'll go first. I never got a ruling on that. I didn't understand what happened. That play is designed for the free play. Go ahead, Zac. ZAC ROBINSON: Yeah, just, you know, kind of a gimmick deal, try to get them to jump off-sides, maybe catch a cheap one. You know, it looked like usually Lewis makes great decisions when he does that. Looked like the guy was almost in the backfield. He snapped it. We kind of just, you know -- you throw one up, they didn't give the call, I guess. Q. On the same play we're talking about, up until then, it seemed like all the momentum was with you. After that, withered away. Can you talk about why the momentum went away from that point on? COACH GUNDY: I agree with you. In the first half, they had momentum 'cause we could not move the football. But then in the third quarter, we made some plays and were able to hit some throws and then stop them. We were gaining that momentum. It seemed like that kind of took the life out of us. Even though it went on after that, there were still mistakes that cost us the football game. But I agree with what you're saying. ZAC ROBINSON: Yeah, there's no question. Kind of took the air out of some of the guys. We work on that play so much during the week. When we get it executed like that, try to catch a cheap one, you know, it was frustrating. I think, you know, we didn't quit by any means, but it definitely kind of took something out of us. Q. Coach and Andre, the improvement of this football team defensively, the defensive effort today, and Andre, your MVP award. COACH GUNDY: I'm very proud of the team. I mentioned to them in the locker room, at this time last year we felt like Oregon was more physical than us and hit us in the mouth. We practiced longer for this Bowl game and we practiced with more contact. I feel like Ole Miss is a physical football team, running the football, and defensively their front seven, they're physical. I felt like that our players accepted that challenge, which was really good. Andre, go ahead. ANDRE SEXTON: No, it's a great award. But it doesn't really mean that much, we don't come away with the win. Pretty much as a whole defensive effort, we put in so much this week, the couple of weeks that we've been practicing. Everybody did a great job out there, you know, fitting their gaps, being unselfish, doing what they're supposed to do, and not being greedy. We try to put ourself in a chance to win on defense. We just fell up short. But, you know, it was a great effort by everybody on defense. I mean, so many seniors on this team. We're going to miss 'em all. Q. Andre, earlier this week you talked about how this game would go a long way determining the legacy for you seniors. What is your reaction to that after this game? Coach Gundy, can you also comment on the seniors? ANDRE SEXTON: Yeah, well, you know, that's how I felt at the time. But now I feel like we shouldn't be judged by one game at the end of the season. We put in so much work, sweat, blood, and tears, trying to turn this program around. We gave it our all out there. That's all you can ask. Nobody hung it up. We went out there, gave all our effort, tried to put ourself in the best position to win at the end of the game. It just slipped away from us at the end. At the same time we're going to hold our heads high because we left it all out on the field. That's why you see people in the locker room so emotional. It means that much to them. You try to do it for the person next to you. COACH GUNDY: We very badly wanted to win 10. We wanted these seniors to go out with a victory. But it didn't happen. And our glass will always be half full. It's very frustrating, but we have a number of young players in our program that have learned from these guys, and we'll be back. We'll get those young guys ready in the off-season. We'll grind it. We're gonna get tougher. We're gonna continue to develop this program. We'll be back. Q. Mike, when you opened up talking about the game, you talked about offense, just making plays. As you go forward with the program for the next year, years on from there, just offensive philosophy? Do you look to change stuff? Do you think you have the good plan and keep getting good players or what? COACH GUNDY: We're very comfortable with our system. I think it allows us flexibility. We can run and throw depending on what they do. We didn't perform very well today. I don't think it has anything to do with the system. The system's been in place for a number of years. We've scored some points. We've been able to rush the football, been able to throw the football, and had success. The system is okay. Will it stay the same every year? No, we'll change it somewhat. The important thing is to continue to develop, bring young players in here, and develop them like these guys. We'll be a little different next year. We're going to have four new linemen. Obviously we'll have a quarterback that hasn't played, doesn't have the experience that Zac does. Number of receivers coming back. Have Kendall coming back. For the most part, you know, you're looking at our offensive scheme. We just need to continue to work and get better at it. Q. We were talking about the offense. We saw a little bit of the wildcat [] with Keith throwing the touchdown pass. Is that something you might build on? Why did you use that today? COACH GUNDY: Well, we had a month to prepare for the game. And we had a number of plays that we felt like could help us in this game. Unfortunately because we didn't have that many offensive plays, some of them we didn't get called. We were in too many third-and-longs today. That's something we put in for the game, felt like it gave us a chance for success. Felt like it worked out for us. Q. Ugo, what did you do to get in Jevan's head today? What were you doing to maintain that steady pass-rush? UGO CHINASA: We just really worked on pass-rush the whole Bowl week. Put pressure on him. Got to the quarterback. Put relentless pressure. That's basically it. Q. Andre, the interceptions after the first one, big hit, what did you see from Snead? Did he begin to look nervous? Did his style of play change? ANDRE SEXTON: We were trying to move around a little bit. We were playing our base coverage the whole game. We were doing a great job at lining up, being physical with them. The few times they threw the ball, our defensive line did a great job of putting pressure. They were in his face the whole time. People in the back end, they stepped up. After the big hit, he really seemed dazed a little bit. They kept rotating quarterbacks in and out. I guess neither of them to really get a drift. We just kept trying to stop it, no matter who it was in there in the backfield. Q. Mike and Zac, against the better defenses here late in the season, it seemed like you lost a little bit of your offensive identity. Lack of a big-play wide receiver? Is that accurate? What was it? COACH GUNDY: I don't think there's any question, you're refer to Dez. Dez makes a difference. There's no question. The guys that go out there and have played for us have given us everything. But it would be unfair for me to say if you take an All-American out of the game, that you're the same on offense. It affects us some. It affects this guy, okay. I've been under the center, I understand what he goes through. It changes his thought process in a game. But we've worked with those other receivers throughout the year. Done a good job. He's done a great job working with them, trying to get a feel for them. But it affected us. For us to sit up there and say you take a receiver that arguably might be the best in the country, take him off the field, have a defense game plan that offense, it changes you. But that's not the reason we lost the game today. I'm not saying you're saying that. We didn't make enough plays today. ZAC ROBINSON: Like coach said, anytime you lose a guy like Dez, you know, it does take a little bit out of the offense. Just his ability to do anything, go up and catch a football, take a screen 75 yards. I mean, it takes a little bit away. But, I mean, I'm still proud of the receivers we do have. They're gonna continue to get better. I know they're young. They're just going to continue to grow. Guys like Josh Cooper, Blackmon, Hubbard, they're going to be relied on next year to make plays. I'm excited to see those guys progress. I know they're gonna have a great career and just keep getting better. Q. Donald, have you ever tackled a 330-pounder before? What did that hit feel like? What did that goal line stand do for the defense the rest of the day? DONALD BOOKER: I can honestly say I never tackled nobody that heavy. Had to go in and throw my body for my team. Let them know we were going to be there all day, play hard. Just got the whole team pumped up. I had a lot of help from my D-line getting the push. Patrick Lavine helped me getting the second one. Trying to get the team pumped up, go out there, try our best to get a win. COACH GUNDY: That was a huge point in the game, no question, that early. Good scheme they had. A guy that athletic, to be able to put him in, run the ball. That's an example of what was mentioned earlier, the defense being 90th and down to 33rd or whatever. That's an example. I think the schemes, philosophies, the heart of those guys made a big difference. That's who we are, that's where we're going. That's the direction we're going with this team, so... THE MODERATOR: Coach, congratulations. End of FastScripts |
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