TicketsOct. 16, 2007
About PITTSBURGH:
"Well, getting ready for another week in the BIG EAST, obviously it's a great challenge. Especially after playing a very good Rutgers football team on the road, and coming back and playing a very good Louisville team, we've got to go back on the road against Pittsburgh.
We're coming off a disappointing loss, so it's about the challenge in front of us to play better football. We had some very good individual performances, but as a team we didn't make the key plays, and take care of the football, or keep the ball in front of us when we needed to.
I'm not here to rehash what happened last week as much as talk about Pittsburgh and what we have to do. Clearly, what we have to do is take care of the football, minimize the mistakes on offense and keep the ball in front of us on defense. "
ABOUT THE LOUISVILLE GAME:
I think last week we talked about doing a better job defensively of corralling the football. I think we did better underneath, we really forced Brohm to earn all of his throws, we contested all of his throws but they beat us on a couple of deep throws. We were in cover three one time, where they just made an individual play over one of our corners and then a double move. Again, we improved on some of the things I was asking our defense to improve on.
Offensively, we can't turn the ball over and we had two opportunities and then a situation on the goal line where we couldn't get it in, which proved to be the difference in the ball game. So moving forward, our kids know where we are. We're 6-1 and Number 23 in the country, for the fourth week in a row.
They are proud of that distinction, but know this is a huge game going for us going in to Pittsburgh, getting to 7-7 and then having a bye week to get us ready for the last month of the season. "
ON LOSING THE TURNOVER BATTLE AGAINST LOUISVILLE:
"Nobody wants to put the ball on the ground but can you look at Butler Benton and see anything else but determination and fighting for more yards. How do you get to practice and say, `Hey, Butler, let's be careful with the football when you're fighting for three extra yards,' or `Hey, Marcus Barnett, when you're leaping over two defenders and you're helmet pops off, let's try to do a better job holding onto the ball.'
They were great effort plays and it's unfortunate that ball turned over. The things that I'm looking at are we had a couple of penalties that were crucial, penalties that influenced the football game.