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PINSTRIPES BOWL: KANSAS STATE v SYRACUSE

December 30, 2010

Bill Snyder

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

KANSAS STATE Â– 34
SYRACUSE - 36

Q. Coach Snyder, it was a great football game that came down to what would have been a terrific ending. Is there any feeling that the referees with that call took it away from the kids?
COACH SNYDER: I have no --

Q. Coach can you tell us what explanation you got, if any?
COACH SNYDER: I really can't. Define explanation. I'm having a hard time avoiding this issue, I can see that.
Well, yes, he gave me an explanation. The young man did something to call attention to himself.

Q. What was the team's emotions after they lose a game like that?
COACH SNYDER: Well, I think you know the vast majority of them were dramatically pained, which you would anticipate.

Q. Without getting into the specifics of that particular situation, what's your feeling about the rule in general for excessive celebration, and how it relates to the game itself?
COACH SNYDER: Well, I concur with the rule in regards to the intent of the rule. I concur with that.

Q. Could you please talk about how your team persevered, never gave up, especially down the stretch to get to that point?
COACH SNYDER: Well, you know, we did some favorable things. I always appreciate young guys that compete that don't give up, you know that, have the quality of character and intrinsic values to do exactly that.
I wasn't unhappy with their competitive spirit towards -- well, at any time during the course of the ballgame because they had to come back on numerous occasions and do d so. I thought offensively we played reasonably well until we couldn't convert the next to last drive that we hit, which certainly it ended the wrong way and it was my fault. I went for the big field goal, which in hindsight was not -- wasn't a good call. That wasn't our players fault. That was mine. But yes, I appreciate the competitive spirit.

Q. If you had to point out one area of improvement coming off this game what would you have had to have improved with your team's play?
COACH SNYDER: Well, you know, I probably have to sit down and look at the videotape. I thought basically we -- and it's hard to say, improvement. I think the numbers probably say that we threw the ball okay, and yet, I'm not sure that we made improvement there. I just think the numbers kind of would indicate that, although I haven't seen the numbers but that would probably be the case.
I don't know that it improved a great deal. Just the fact that the offense continued to battle back and score when we were down. I don't know if that's really improvement necessarily, but I was proud of the fact that they did that.
You know, when I look at tape and just based on my recollection of the ballgame, you know, I'm not sure that we made any substantial improvement. But I also think in many facets of the game, we probably played as well as we would expect.

Q. You mentioned the big field goal; what kind of momentum shift did you see when your team stopped that play and broke the big run?
COACH SNYDER: Well, you know, I don't know if momentum shift -- a let down, certainly but you look back and see that our defense stopped them and we got the ball back and moved the ball back down the field so. I don't know if that was a momentum shift.
I think we went down and scored. You know, we got good play out of our defense. They stopped them, forced a field goal. And that field goal, I don't know how close it was but it almost -- just our offense taking it back down the field, I don't know if that was a great shift in momentum, but I think it's a letdown feeling.
Once again, I'm proud of our players, and they didn't just die on the vine.

Q. Coach, both teams had to deal with it but the impact, of any, of the footing and surface had on the game?
COACH SNYDER: Well, I think the thing about whatever the field condition happened to be, there's balance in it because it affects virtually the same -- both teams the same way. It was slippery of course, but it was slippery for them just like it was slippery for us.
You know, would it have impacted the outcome of the ballgame? I don't know that.

Q. After the big 50-yard run by Thomas in the first quarter he seemed to disappear the rest of the game and not building on that; what sort of happened to him in the running game?
COACH SNYDER: Well, it takes more than one guy. Football is a game made up of 11 people on both sides of the ball and their 11 played awfully well on defense, and Daniel is the same guy he's always been. You know, he has great success when we do well up front, and we struggled up front and he struggled, too.
It wasn't Daniel. Does that mean he couldn't have played better he probably could have played better, but by and large he was reflecting the entirety of our offense, as it always is.

Q. Was Syracuse's defense coming in, so highly-ranked, what did you do to make this such a high-scoring game?
COACH SNYDER: Well, I think No. 1, we converted some third down attempts. I don't know exactly what the numbers are there, but I think we had some success in that regard.
We sustained drives a little bit better. Had repetitive first downs. I thought we had some consistency in regards to, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, throwing the football.
We had some field position based on -- and that probably has a lot to do -- both teams did offensively, on the kicking game and part of that probably because of the footing, and you get shorter kicks that way. And we have been a pretty good kickoff return unit through the course of the year and we got a couple of returns early.
So we got shorter kicks and the bottom line was, that we normally hit good field position. And there's good and bad with that; the bad part of that is we are returning kicks when you would hope that we wouldn't have to. But short field I think helps us a great deal, too.

End of FastScripts

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