OSU-Texas Post-game quotes

Sept. 30, 2010

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Oklahoma State-Texas A&M Post-Game Quotes – Sept. 30, 2010

Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy
Opening statement
“We did ESPN some justice on the ratings. It was quite a game. I don’t know that I can remember a game that had as many turns emotionally for both teams, maybe back to the game where we played [Texas] Tech out here where [Brandon] Pettigrew made the long catch and run. I’m very, very happy with our team and the way we battled back. We played the next play. There’s areas where we have to improve in. We have to do a better job taking care of the ball. We’ve got to do a better job defending on third down and fourth down. Offensively, we started really, really slow and we put ourselves in a difficult situation. I was proud of Shaun [Lewis], a true freshman for making a big play like that, and Dan Bailey, obviously. We expected him to make it. It was a good win for us. I just told the team though, ‘Unfortunately tomorrow we have to get back to work because we have a short week next week playing on the road.’ It will be probably the most important week of practice that we’ve had. After coming off an emotional win like this, it will be very important for us to get back to work. We’ll get one day off then we’ll practice again on Sunday. Again, it was a good win for us, and we’ve got to get ready for the next one.”

On what he told Dan Bailey before his game-winning field goal attempt
“I just told him to keep his head down. When Dan keeps his head down, like you guys should when you hit a golf ball; and stay through it, he kicks the ball as good as anybody. Every once in a while he’ll peek in practice some, but if he keeps his head down – he’s a veteran and experienced – we expect him to make it, and he expects to make it.”

On what the team learned from the game
“When we got down 14, I was a little disappointed because I thought that we we’re showing signs of being weak. We had some guys that were limping and guys that had their head down. We made a big point of that on the sideline. We made a big point of that in the locker room at halftime because no matter what happens in a game, we’re not going to show signs of being fatigued or weak. So they picked it up after that. There was a time when part of our team, offensive, defense, special teams, guys were limping and acting like they were hurt, and I was disappointed with them in that area. But they cleaned it up in the second half. I thought our coaches made good adjustments of coming at them in the second half and obviously the first drive was very, very important. We have a lot of areas to improve, but for those young men to find a way to win a game was the most important part of it. I firmly believe that winning this game will do more for us than winning 65-10. It should do a lot for them and the character of the team.”

On big defensive plays
“Obviously the interceptions were big plays. Jamie Blatnick made a really good play in the open field against the quarterback. He came to balance and was able to slow him down and then forced the turnover, then JT picks it up and runs it in so that was another big play. We have to improve in those areas. We’ve got to get more pressure on the quarterback. We’ve got to do a better job of defending in third and fourth downs. Early in the game, we put the defense in a difficult situation.”

Oklahoma State defensive coordinator Bill Young
On the fumble recovery for a touchdown...
"That was a huge play, and that kind of swung things around for us.James Thomas picked it up. The ball kind of bounced around on the ground for a bit, and he picked it up and ran with it. It was a big time play by him."

On practicing turnovers...
"Every day we practice that. We don't blow our whistle until every last chance for a turnover is exhausted."

On the defense's performance...
"Obviously we have a long way to go and a lot of improving to do, but it is a win. We are going to relish it, keep working hard, move on and try to get better."

Oklahoma State offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen
On the mistakes made by the offense...
"We have to work on getting our third downs. We talked about it all week, as far as we didn't want penalties and we didn't want negative yards. And we did that. We had plays in the first half that put us at third-and-long, and we have to be better at converting those."

On if they changed anything at halftime...
"We didn't change anything. We got rid of a few of the plays that didn't work and circled the ones that did. We just went back out there and played."

On Justin Blackmon...
"At one point in the game I told the guys upstairs to circle every play that goes to 81 because he was clearly the best player on the field. They did a good job of keeping the deep ball away and hey weren't giving us the fade route to him so we had to make some adjustments to get him the ball."


Oklahoma State wide receiver Justin Blackmon
On the offense as a whole...
"We started off slow as an offense, but we came back and had a great second half."

On coming back from a 14-point deficit...
"We just stayed confident and stayed positive, and we knew that if we execute our plays, we can come back from 14 points behind. Dan made a great kick under pressure."

On winning on national television...
"It does a lot. First of all, it is a win. We are going to be excited about a win no matter how we get it. But it is also conference play so we are going into conference play 1-0. It gives us a little boost, but we have to forget about it and get onto the next team."

Oklahoma State kicker Dan Bailey
On if he was expecting to kick the winning points...
"I thought that they were going to have a chance to step up and make a game winning kick, but our defense stepped up and made it possible for us to have that opportunity. I had been warming up a little bit and trying to stay loose. We were ready to go."

On being prepared for a tough situation...
"It was intense. It is one of those moments you practice for, and you just approach it like it is any other kick and just put it through the uprights."

On knowing if it went in or not...
"I don't even remember what I was thinking while it was up. I just remember turning around and hugging my holder and then getting tackled by everyone. It went through, and I just wanted to celebrate."

Oklahoma State quarterback Brandon Weeden
On if he changed anything at halftime...
"I didn't really do anything different. I told the line, ‘We are going to win this football game, just give me time and we are going to make throws and they are going to make catches. This game isn't over, we have a lot of football left.’ No one panicked. They are high-character players and stayed the course and came out with a win."

On his turnovers...
"One of them I got popped pretty good and the ball just came out of me, but that’s called football. We need to eliminate things like that. In the second half, we had less penalties. I never panicked. There was still a lot of football to play, I wasn't worried about it”

On the fourth quarter...
"We got the momentum and the crowd got behind us and pushed us through it. We just kept getting first downs. Tonight we weren't doing the big deep balls. We were just running what he was calling, and we looked good."

On if Kendall Hunter was going to run out the clock...
"I was yelling timeout as much as I could, and I just kept thinking if he doesn't go down, that is not good. But I knew once Dan came out, I knew it was ours."

Texas A&M head coach Mike Sherman
On what he told the team after the game
“Before the game, when we were at the hotel, before we got off the bus, I told them I was proud of them. As a football team, they’ve done everything I’ve asked them to do. They’ve worked extremely hard going all the way back to January and all the way through the offseason, the spring, the summer and obviously fall camp. That doesn’t change because we lost a football game. I’m still proud of this football team. I told them I was disappointed, and I thought we could have played better in stages of the game. I take nothing away from Oklahoma State. They did a great job coming back to win the football game. My hat’s off to Coach Gundy and his staff. I told them I was proud of them, but I was disappointed. I was disappointed we didn’t win this football game. We put a lot into it and had some opportunities. I thought in the third quarter we had some lulls on defense that allowed them an opportunity to execute better than they did in the first half, and that takes nothing away from Oklahoma State. They did what they had to do and we turned the ball over too many times as well. They’re a sad group of men right now.”

On the play of Jerrod Johnson
“He made some great throws, and he missed some. On one interception, it came off our freshman tight end on the backside, and he was being hit as he let the ball go. On another one, our freshman left tackle didn’t cut the guy, didn’t get his hands down, didn’t get him to do anything, and then he tipped the ball; that was intercepted. I probably should have made some better calls along the way, but then he’s accountable for some of those as well. He came back and made some great throws for us, but it’s just unfortunate at the end, we tried to muscle one in there and we didn’t quite do that. We overthrew it, and it went into the safety’s hands.”

On what it will take to beat Oklahoma State
“I think it’s pretty evident we can’t turn the ball over.”

On moving on from the loss
“That’s the great thing about football, particularly this time of year. We’ve got to put this behind us. After we practice tomorrow and learn from our mistakes and fix what needs to get fixed, we’ll get better. We’ll get better watching this tape. We’re better because we played this ball game. I thought, except for one kickoff return that they gashed us for good yardage on and it wasn’t a very good kick, I thought our coverage units were pretty good. I thought we made some strides on special teams in some areas. I thought Kenric McNeal was aggresively catching the punts; he was pretty sure-handed back there. Offensively, we should’ve run the ball better than we did tonight. We didn’t run the ball very well. Defensively in the second half, we didn’t execute as well as we should have or could have. They got us on a couple play action passes over the middle, and we just didn’t see it the right way. So there’s a lot of things we can get better at after this game.”

Texas A&M linebacker Michael Hodges
On how frustrating a loss like this is
“It can’t be described in words. It’s extremely disheartening.”

On the third quarter struggles on defense
“There’s four quarters in the game, and we got beat in one of them, exponentially bad. It was the outcome of the game really. I can’t explain it, don’t know why it happened, they came out with more intensity. Their high-powered offense, we shut it down early, but they came fired up in the second half. Gotta give them credit for that. We just missed tackles, didn’t play the Aggie defense we’ve been playing for the first three weeks and the first half tonight. There was a lull there, and we gotta fix that because it can’t happen again. You can’t win games when that happens.”

On if OSU’s tempo in the second half was the reason for the struggles
“We expected it with the high tempo because that’s how they did well in the first half. We knew it was coming, and that was the reason why it happened. They were hitting our spots and we weren’t tackling them. It’s on us.”

On how the defense felt about their fourth quarter performance
“I have no doubt in my mind that our defense and team got better today. If we can look at anything good coming out of this, we got better as an Aggie defense, Aggie offense and Aggie special teams. It’s encouraging to see it, but it’s hard to smile about it right now.”

On how talented this team is
“We have every weapon we need to be successful. There’s no limit to what we could do and unfortunately this one got away from us, but it wasn’t because of the talent we have. Our talent is as good as it needs to be, we just gotta put all the pieces together.”

Texas A&M wide receiver Jeff Fuller
On how tough this one is to swallow
“It’s tough, we came here expecting to win. We’ve been preparing for a week and four days, came out here strong and losing at the end was rough. But it’s a learning experience. We’re going to go back next week and continue to get better.”

On what he could say to Jerrod Johnson after a game like this
“We just have to keep our heads up. We have a big turnaround game against Arkansas next Saturday. It’s a big-time game, we just have to step up next week too.”

On how it felt to get the A&M record for career touchdowns
“It’s nice to have the record in the books, but it would’ve been better to get the win.”

Texas A&M quarterback Jerrod Johnson
On what his struggles were tonight
"Early on they got some pressure on me and got some tipped balls. Towards the end I was trying to do too much. On the two-minute drive they dropped everyone, had eight back in coverage and I tried to force the ball in there. I made a couple mistakes with where I tried to put the ball, tried to do too much and it got away from me.”

On how tough this game is to swallow
“It’s extremely tough. At the beginning of the year I circled this on the calendar. We talked about it as a team a lot. It was our first chance to showcase our talent on national television and get Aggie football to where it needs to be. We came out, fought hard, showed our talent and how we’re a pretty good team, but at the same time we gotta find a way to win these kind of games. I have to play better and not make so many mental mistakes, gotta find a way to win these games.”

On what he’s going to try to get done between now and the Arkansas game
“I’ll watch film and figure out what to do in certain situations. I think Coach Sherman has put us through tons of situations. We’ve been through this one before. We just didn’t execute it tonight. Gotta figure it out and be able to get the ball down the field so we can score.”

On what it was like on the sideline with the game going back and forth
“The sideline wasn’t too worried about it emotionally. Coach talked about how they were a good football team and were going to come back strong, toughen up for us. They drove the ball well, but that’s just the nature of the game. It’s going to be up and down, but you have to find a way to win.”







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