University of Louisville Football Post-Game Quotes
September 07, 2007 | Football
Sept. 7, 2007
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Louisville Head Coach Steve Kragthorpe
"It's good to get a win. It's not exactly the way we wanted to play in every phase, but the bottom line is winning. There are certainly some things we need to improve upon, but when we take the field, the ultimate goal is to win the football game."
"Obviously, we wanted to play better than we did tonight. I think we learned a lot of lessons. Certainly, we did some good things tonight. Our defense played much better in the second half and we did some good things offensively in the third and fourth quarter with sustained drives to keep (Middle Tennessee) off the field."
(On Anthony Allen) "He played really well for us tonight and I thought he was strong between the tackles. He did a good job of getting the ball outside when we had the edges. He really played as good as I've seen him play from the standpoint of running behind his pads and coming out of the back of some of those piles. And he had some big carries on third downs."
"I thought we did a good job pounding the ball between the tackles. I thought (Offensive coordinator) Charlie Stubbs did a nice job of mixing in the run, mixing in the passes and the play-actions off of the runs. He kept them off balance and did a lot of things with the formations. Brian did a good job of managing the football game and getting us in and out of plays."
"I'm involved in all three phases of the game. We didn't play as well as we wanted to in the first half on defense and you have to give them some credit for getting the ball out. You see more of that where teams will spread you out defensively and make it tough to get to the quarterback. I thought we did a good job of adjusting as the game played and we had some big plays in the second half."
(On the possibility of the upcoming game at Kentucky being a distraction) "It's always tough with a game like that looming and we talked a lot about staying focused on this week's game. It can certainly be a distraction because everybody is talking about it, but you have to give (Middle Tennessee) a lot of credit."
(On the mistakes on third down by the defense) "You have got to get off the field on third downs and those hurt us. We've got to be smarter. We want to be aggressive, but we have to be smarter when we got those stops."
(On the defense) "We weren't getting lined up quickly enough and they weren't ready to make plays. Sometimes it's tougher to play defense at home because it's louder, but we just weren't getting lined up and in position to make plays."
"We knew this was a trap game because of the game next week (at Kentucky). You have to stay focused on the task at hand. You can look last week at Michigan and Texas, and we know we've got to be ready to every game, no matter who the opponent is."
Louisville Senior QB Brian Brohm
"That's how it turned out to be that's how we go into a game anticipating as an offense every game. We can't really worry about what is going on, we need to score when we have the ball and take care of our business."
(on Anthony Allen) "He is tough, he is tough to bring down. He was wearing them down and I think by the fourth quarter they were tired of tackling him. He is a big back and he wears on you throughout the game. And in the fourth quarter he is going to pound them."
"We just have to keep playing. Don't let things get you down. As an offense we have to expect to score every time we are on the field. That is our motto, that's what we are all about. We just try to shut the other team out and score a lot of points."
(on 401 Yard game) "I thought we did well on offense as a whole group. We executed our game plan well. We came in and did what we thought we were going to do. We got the right checks and the line did a good job of blocking and receivers did a good job of making plays. Overall, offensively we did a good job."
(On Kentucky) "We've known that that game would be out there. Coach anticipated it and he put a lot of mouse traps in the lockerroom this week because we can't get trapped in this game. We go one game at a time. This game teaches you to go one game at a time. There were literally mousetraps in the lockerroom. If you didn't look down you were going to get trapped."
(On the defense) "I have faith that they will get the job done. Those guys feel bad they gave up those points. They are going to be working hard to do what they have to do to get ready for Kentucky. They will get the job done."
(On Andre Woodson) "He is a good quarterback. Everybody wants it to be me versus him but I am looking at it like it's our offense against their offense."
Louisville Junior DT Earl Heyman
"You have to give Middle Tennessee credit, they have a great football team. We watched them on film and they were impressed with their speed. We came in at halftime and made some adjustments. It was a problem for us, obviously we have to get better. Thank good for our offense and that we are an offensive team."
(on what went wrong tonight) "We need to change our whole attitude. We have to get better. We came out in the second half with a different type of mentality. We weren't looking ahead to the UK . MTSU has a really talented team. We just need to come out stronger in the second half.
(What was wrong tonight?) "We felt like our fundamentals were off tonight. We have to get better with the little things that make you a great team. Those things will help you get better. Fundamentals make a big difference on a game like this."
(On the Kentucky Game) "I can't wait. Big rivalry, big game, I can't wait. We get to go in there with a 2-0 record.
Louisville Sophomore RB Anthony Allen
"Of course I am tired and sore."
(on his mindset) "In practice we have to be in good condition. In case it were to happen again we can come in and carry the load."
(on setting the school record) "It hasn't sunk in yet."
(lessons learned tonight) "We have to fight through to win. We need to finish. We just have to finish."
Middle Tennessee Head Coach Rick Stockstill
"I told the team I couldn't be prouder of you. The way you fought your effort, how hard you played. You went toe to toe with the eighth ranked team in the country. Had we played a little bit smarter, had we not turned the ball over a couple of times, the fumble on the kickoff return, and the interception at the end of the game. We might have had chance had we not given up the big plays, the long plays. We knew they were an explosive team. We did a better job in the second half of keeping the ball in front of us, though we didn't tackle very well. As far as their effort, their fight, the way they came and competed, they did everything we asked them to do, other than protect the ball a little better and not give up big plays. I guess we could have tackled better."
"To me it never got away. They scored on their first play. We scored on our possession, 7-7. They cam back down and scored; we came back down and scored. We are going to be a resilient team. We are going to fight and never give up. That's all I ask them to do is play it one play at a time, go as hard as you can, compete as hard as you can on every play. We did that. We don't spend a lot of time looking at the scoreboard. We just go out there and fight and play as hard as we can. I never though the game was away from us. They scored on their first play. It could be easy, maybe to hang our head, but we're not going to do that.
"We played better this game than we did the last game against them obviously. We scored 17 points and 7 of them were on special teams, last year. So we scored 10 points. Today we scored 40 something so I think we played better than last year. But still we didn't play good enough. We could have played better and had a chance to win the game.
"I thought they showed up today. I thought DeMarck ran exceptionally well. Phillip (Tanner) got outside, he's a fasy guy. Their speed showed. We really limited our offense in our running game. Today we ran basically three plays because we had such a new offensive line, we couldn't teach them everything in such a short period of time. I thought our line did an excellent job. I thought they protected great. I thought we made some plays.
MTSU Senior TB Phillip Tanner
(On whether the team showed same promise during preseason) "This is something we were working for throughout the whole summer. When coach first came in he said, we were going to focus on speed and that's exactly what we focused on. I feel like everybody got faster. It showed a lot tonight more so than speed it was our conditioning."
(Comparison between last week's team and this week's team) "Last week was our awakening every team has an awakening, it's like we're up now. We're hungry now. Last week we went into the game not hungry, we were a little flat. The offense wasn't clicking on all cylinders, like I said it takes time."
MTSU Junior QB Joe Craddock
(On putting up good numbers and a positive spin on a loss) "It was nothing I did, DeMarco made a great catch on a long. I guess all the numbers really came from short passes, that went a long way. We can take some positives from this game, offensive line played great. Hopefully, a few things will go our way and we will come out with a W."
(On his maturity as a quarterback in tonights game) "I don't think I played real well at all. I didn't do anything special, all the guys I threw the ball to did all the work . I didn't do anything worth talking about, you take the three turnovers I had, if can eliminate those, it might have been different."
(On the last interception) "On that last one I should have just ate it, they always tell me to play till the fourth down, play till your last strike in baseball, play to your last down in football. It was third down, and DeMarco was open but the pressure caused me to wait for a second. It was too late to throw and I shouldn't have made that."
(Comparison to last week's team and this week's team) "This is the team right here. We were this good last week we just didn't show anybody that. It was unfortunate we had to play a Sun Belt team first game. We have one loss in the Sun Belt, but we can come back and win all the games from here on out and be Sun Belt champions."
