Quotes From Monday's Football Press Conference
November 29, 2004 | Football
Nov. 29, 2004
Audio Clips
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Head coach Bobby Petrino and selected players made themselves available to the media for the weekly football press conference on Monday at Papa John's Cardinal Stadium. They discussed U of L's 70-7 home win over Cincinnati last Saturday and the No. 7-ranked Cards' upcoming regular-season finale at Conference USA foe Tulane. Kick-off between the Cardinals and Green Wave is set for 2:30 p.m. ET at the Louisiana Superdome.
Following the Tulane game, the Cardinals are set to compete at the AutoZone Liberty Bowl on Friday, Dec. 31 at 3:30 p.m. ET in Memphis, Tenn., against an opponent that is still to be determined.
NOTE: The Cardinals (9-1, 7-0 C-USA) moved up to the No. 9 position in the latest Bowl Championship Series Standings released on Monday afternoon. U of L is ranked No. 7 in this week's Associated Press Top 25 Poll and eighth in the ESPN/USAToday Coaches Poll. With last week's win against Cincinnati, the Cards clinched the 2004 C-USA title outright.
Head Coach Bobby Petrino
On the preparation for the Tulane game:
"We have to prepare like we always do. We have to do a real good job mentally, in the classroom and understanding what they're going to try to do to us. Then we have to get ourselves physically ready to go. It's going to be hard to have the same emotional peak that we had last Saturday, but we've faced that a couple of times this year and that's where the maturity has to kick in."
On how the postponement of the Tulane game has helped or hurt preparation:
"There's really not a whole lot you can do. You have to play it when you play it. I thought at the time when they cancelled the game, we would have like to played it then, because they had a young inexperienced quarterback. It did help us in our preparation for the next game because we were able to go back to some fundamentals and some techniques and work our younger guys, so we just have to down and play well and win the game."
On whether there should be a playoff in college football:
"I actually don't (think there should be a playoff). The season is really long. I think it just puts a tremendous amount of stress mentally on our players. Everybody just needs to relax a little bit and understand the players are here to get their education and to get their degree. Let's make the conference championships a big deal and the bowl games a reward. I hope that we never do see a playoff myself. There's certainly things that aren't working out with it (the BCS). Personally, I always feel like when coaches complain about it, they're wrong. I think if you're teaching your players to follow the rules in football and play by the rules and give all the effort on the field, when the rules are set for the BCS, you should live by them and go with what they say. And then if you want to change them the next year, change them, but it doesn't do any good to complain about it now."
On the feeling of the players about going to the Liberty Bowl:
"I felt like we took the bid and went to the Liberty bowl, but our players still had that thought in their mind that hey, we're a darn good football team. A lot of our coaches were exactly the same way."
On a championship in the Big East meaning a BCS bowl berth:
"Were real excited about the move and the fact that if we can go win our conference next year then we're in a BCS bowl game and have an opportunity to win that and take care of all your business and go play for a chance to win the national championship. It certainly makes it a lot more exciting for our recruits we have coming in."
On whether he talked to the players about going undefeated in the conference:
"No we didn't talk about undefeated. We just wanted to win the conference. But now we do, we want to go undefeated."
On why Lionel Gates did not play vs. Cincinnati:
"Lionel hurt his knee in the previous game, and he sat out Tuesday and Wednesday's practice, came out Thursday and tried to work and couldn't get to full speed. We're being pretty cautious on it. But hopefully he'll be ready to go (next game). He also found out right after the game that he had a death in the family and so he's struggling with that too."
On the positive talk nationally about his team has helped in recruiting:
"It's been good. We played all the ESPN games...our players performed. That's the thing that was really good is the performances (by the players)...all the recruits are well aware of what we have in front of us."
On how his team has been able to perform so well all year:
"I don't know. We just try and prepare hard. I think the big thing is that a lot of the guys playing for us played a year ago and were very motivated after the bowl game to come back and work extremely hard, and get in good condition. They've been able to focus...we have a lot of depth and a lot of different guys making plays..."
On the difference in the offense this year:
"I thin we're a little better (than last year). I think we're better because we can run the ball better and we're more physical. When you can do that you can control the game in the fourth quarter. When I was here as the offensive coordinator, we ran the ball pretty well with Leroy, but it all had to go through the passing game first. Now we kind of can throw the ball or run it and we mix it up and attack the defenses, but also take what they're giving us."
On how he scripts the game:
"When we're scripting a game, we always look at getting the ball to different guys in the first 8-10 plays...we try to utilize all our formations...so as the game goes on we want to make sure we're in the best formations to run the ball. That's really what we look at are far as the formations go."
