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The University of Mississippi Athletics
Tommy Tuberville Press Conference
6/21/1999 | Football
Nov. 2, 1998
Opening Remarks:
Just a little bit about the game Saturday--we're still on a high. One thing you want to do as a coach is forget about the previous game and go on to the next game. You try to get your players to forget about what has happened. Yesterday I told the team we want to savor this victory for a couple of days. We're going to start back on Tuesday getting ready for the University of Arkansas. This was a big win for our overall program, our total athletic program, fans, alumni, the state of Mississippi, the football team and the coaching staff. It's the first time that we've played this well at home. It was the best three quarters of football we've played since I've been here. It might have been one of the worst fourth quarters I've been involved in also, but it was an interesting game with some great performances.
I'm really proud of the team. They really laid it on the line, and we got the job done. It wasn't pretty in the end, but I think our guys are really learning how to win, and it really showed Saturday. I'm proud of the team and the coaches and their effort. We had some good individual efforts. We had five players of the game. We normally name three, but we named two on offense, two on defense and one on special teams. One of the offensive players was L.J. Taylor. He is a walk-on and started his first game at the slot position. He made some critical catches and a touchdown catch. Matt Luke is the other offensive player of the week. He's the center and it's the best game he's played since he's been here. He played most of the game injured. He seems to play better when he's hurt. He really played well.
On defense, Tim Strickland played his best game as a corner after moving from safety this year. Kendrick Clancy on the defensive line really played well. He played well on the run and chased the quarterback, putting pressure on the quarterback. The special teams player is Carlisle McGee for his field goals and extra points but mainly for his kickoffs. He placed the ball where we wanted it placed and kicked it deep when we needed it. He really did a great job. He had one blocked. It was a little bit his fault but mostly the snap. It was a good job by LSU to get a lot of height. They did a better job executing.
It was a good team performance overall. We're really pleased with the fans. I think they were the biggest factor the whole game. We have a tendency to come out in the second half and not play as well. At the beginning of the second half, they were really into the game and got our defense going. We held LSU on the opening kickoff of the second half, and that was a big key to the game. I'm really proud that we sold the stadium out. We made progress. I understand there were a lot of people still in the Grove that couldn't get into the stadium, and that's the way we want it.
We are looking forward to having more of those down the road. No major injuries--Keydrick Vincent has an ankle injury but did practice on Sunday. Matt Luke did not practice. He was a little beat up after the game. He will be back to practicing on Tuesday. Ronnie Heard aggravated his ankle but did practice yesterday. Don Juneau will not dress again this week. He is still not 100 percent, so Carlisle McGee will continue to do our kicking. Overall, the health is good. This is a three-game stretch with Arkansas State, LSU and now Arkansas. We'll have an open date to get people healthy.
This is an important game. Arkansas is a good football team. Last year they were one of the better teams we played, especially on defense. It seemed like they just couldn't get it together. Houston Nutt has come in and done a super job bringing back the enthusiasm they had lost to the football program over the last ten years. That's how they are winning games, with a lot of emotion. They are playing hard every snap. They believe they can win. They believe in their coaches. The coaching staff has done a tremendous job with this team. It will be a tough assignment for us this week, we are playing our first top 10 team. We are going to their homecoming and playing in front of a hostile crowd like we had here last week. We have to go back to work and try to improve. We hope we will will play better on the road this week than in our last outing at Alabama.
Questions:
Q: Does the experience that the Arkansas players have factor into this game?
A: They have a lot of older players, but their younger players are playing well to. They are playing as a team. Houston really has them playing up to their potential and maybe above that. They have the entire state enthused, he did a good job last year of selling his program during the off-season. They have not looked back and have not taken any prisoners. They take one week at a time and when they didn't play to their potential, they have been able to make the plays to win the game, and that is the sign of a good football team. This we will be an interesting game for us because we will are going into a hostile enviornment. We will have to make sure we will come down from this high, go back to work, and put things into perspective.
Q: Do you see any similarities with Houston Nutt in your coaching philosophies?
A: I don't see many similarities between us other than the fact that our teams look similar on offense and defense. We actually worked together for a month at Arkansas State. He took a job there and when Jimmie Johnson went from Oklahoma State to Miami, Oklahoma State's new coach, Pat Jones, hired Houston. They do a lot of things that we will do. They try to get their players to play hard. That is what coaching is all about. Everybody knows the X and O's. You are not going to out-coach many people.
The thing that you try to do and can do is getting your players to play to their potential. Fortunately we have been able to do that the last three and a half years that they have been here. The last 13 games we will are 10-3 against some pretty good teams. Looks like Arkansas is doing the same thing. They are getting a lot out of their players. Last year you could tell when they came in, they didn't have a lot of enthusiasm when we played them on Thursday night. There was some dissention, they seemed not to play well as a team. That is not the case this year. They have played well and hard. The enthusiasm that he has brought has really spread to the team, the campus, and the state. I know from reading the newspapers that he has brought football back to the state of Arkansas.
Q: What is the strength of Arkansas' team?
A: I think it is their speed. They have good speed on both sides of the ball. They are able to run the ball better now with Madre Hill back. They have been a little nicked up recently, but if you look at every thing that they have done this year, the backbone of their football team is their quarterback. Stoner has done an excellent job of learning the offense. Joe Fergusen has done a super job with him. Last year Stoner did not throw the ball well against us. They had the ball with several chances to score in the last quarter and either a receiver would drop the ball or he wouldn't get it to them in the right place. This year he is making the right reads, he is comfortable with the offense, and he knows his receivers better. You can tell Joe Fergusen has worked with his technique. He is a much better quarterback than last year.
Q: How much of a challenge will it be to get focused on Arkansas after a big win last Saturday?
A: That is a major challenge. I think it had something to do with LSU the week before. They were totally focused in the game versus State, and they dominated that game. We were emotionally charged for LSU last week and we might have caught them by surprise and dominated most of the game. We will have to watch that going into Fayetteville this week. You can talk about it all you want, but you have to get it from your seniors, from your leadership.
The coaches can only do so much. The older players have to tell to the younger players what they should expect in Fayetteville. There are not a lot of guys that were on this team the last time we will went to Fayetteville two years ago. Most of them were still in high school. Some of our players were and they had a team meeting after I spoke with them yesterday. They talked about the LSU game and the Arkansas game and what they were going to do to get prepared. Coaches have to do their part, I will have to do my part, but senior leadership really has to step up this week if we will are going to have any kind of chance to win this game.
Q: Deuce McCallister is close to becoming a 1,000 rusher, what does that mean to the team and have you talk about it much with them?
A: We haven't talked about that much, but we will start to talk about it more and more. He has had a real good game the last three times out. He is getting better and better, stronger and stronger. The thing that Deuce can do is he can run the ball inside. We will have been fortunate that the guards and center have done a super job blocking the last few games. There is a reason he is getting those yards. He is making some of those yards after contact but the main reason he has been able to get over 700 yards is because of his offensive line.
Q: Can you address the importance of this game in relation to the SEC West standings?
A: It is real important because we still have a chance to play in Atlanta on Dec. 5. Arkansas is the front runner, and if we will don't beat them people are going to have a hard time catching them. There are going to be a lot of people pulling for us this weekend to pull this upset off. We will have not been in this situation before, to have a chance this late in the season to have a chance to be part of a championship. I do not know how our players are going to handle it. We have not really talked about it until this week with the LSU win. It is really amazing that Auburn, LSU and Alabama, the three teams that were dominating this week are at the bottom and State, Arkansas and us are on the top. Who knows why that has happened, we are just glad we are there with an opportunity this late in the season. We are glad to be 6-2, and bowl eligible. We are looking forward to each game one at a time.
Q: Can you talk about the difference between the offensive line that you had going into Arkansas two years ago and the one you have now?
A: I talked about it with Hugh Nall (Offensive line coach) this morning. He is really had to suffer since he has been here because we have not been very good on the offensive line. When we got here, we did not have the type of players that we wanted for our offense. They played hard and got a lot of things done for us. Now that we have been able to recruit, he has built the offensive line piece by piece, working around the injuries, and now this is our best offensive line since we will have been here. They get better every week, even with the loss of Terrance Metcalf.
Mitch Baker is doing some things that Terrance could not do. Mitch is stronger that Terrance, he is better with run blocking, he is coming into his own. When we went up there two years ago, I think there were two bad football teams on the field, both Arkansas and us. Neither team was very good. It was a mediocre game. It was a game that not a lot of people wanted to watch. They have done a super job of recruiting the last few years. They have a lot of speed and good players. This is the best offensive line that they have had in a long time. Last year, they came in and gave a lot of sacks to us on the ESPN game on Thursday night. They have not given up much this year and it is because most of those guys have come back with experience. We are the same way, we are more experienced. Based on offensive production, I think this week will have two of the better offensive lines in the conference competing.
Q: Can you talk about how the true freshmen on defense have influenced this team?
A: If you look at the last two plays of the game in overtime, Eddie Strong makes a tackle on Herb Tyler on third down and then Synicker Taylor knocks the ball down on fourth down to win the game. Both of them are true-freshman. I am completely against playing true freshman. I think when you do, you get beat. We were forced into it this season and these guys have played really hard. I tell them every day that they are not freshman, they have played enough that they are sophomores. They have really made an impact on our football team. They make our team speed faster, but they still make a lot of mistakes. Taylor made more mistakes Saturday than anybody else but at the same time he played 65 plays, the most he has ever played. He is getting better. The experience is not there, but the effort and the ability that they have has made up for a lot of thing that they didn't know how to handle. They are giving a great effort and getting the job done.
Q: Can you talk a little about Taylor and how he has returned from injury?
A: Syniker is probable the best athlete we will have on our football team. He is 18 years old, he is a big basketball player who will play on our basketball team next year at some point. He has tremendous jumping ability, 40 inch vertical leap. He is very quick on his feet. He is actually our back up kickoff returner. He works out with the kickoff returners every week. So we are preparing him for a possible move to the wide receiver spot later on down the line. He is that good of an athlete for this football team. He means a lot just by his awareness on the field, his work ethic in practice. Some of the upper classmen have learned from him as they have from Charles Stackhouse. We couldn't have better freshman come in and play for us, not for just what they have done on the field, but for what they have done in practice. Syniker's knee had limited his mobility up until about three weeks ago after his knee surgery in August. He is a tough young man. A lot of people would not have come back as soon as he did. He really worked his way through it.
Q: Do you think Taylor would have started earlier this season if he hadn't been injured?
A: I think so. He was working with the first team the day he was injured in two-a-days. We were still looking for a combination of safeties. We still have three pretty good ones. Kenny Woods is getting better and better every game. We felt like Syniker's range was what we will needed in the secondary and so that is the reason why he got the nod. Anthony Magee's awareness of getting people lined up correctly is one of the reasons we are using the combination of Taylor and Magee at the safeties.
Q: Do you feel as if these overtime games are giving your team confidence or do you feel you are just dodging bullets in these games?
A: I thought we were dodging bullets. You don't want to play a lot of overtimes because sooner or later it is going to catch up with you, and it did at Alabama. Our players understand it a little more. You really have to understand how to win in overtime. You have to get psyched up. There is a lot of coaching going on. Most people say they don't like it. I do because it gives both teams a chance to show what they have on offense and defense, and it doesn't allow the coin toss to dictate the game.
Our players understand that you do not hold anything back in overtime. You take chances in overtime. You do things that you probable wouldn't do in other situations. We took a chance Saturday of taking the ball first. I learned from the SMU game. We talked about it and we felt that after SMU won the toss, they should have taken the ball first because they had been on defense the whole fourth quarter. I am a pretty good learner. That was the first thing that popped into my mind. I walked over and looked at our defense and they had been out there at least 11 minutes in the fourth quarter. We needed to regroup and let them know what they had to do in the overtime. After we scored the touchdown, they knew all they had to do was hold them and it was over with. I though it might have given them a shot in the arm. It was a gamble, but we don't want to be in any more overtimes, unless we have to.
Q: Can you talk about L.J. Taylor's performance this season?
A: L.J. is an excellent athlete, he played for us last year. He did not go through spring practice because he could not financially afford to. He is not on scholarship, we just couldn't put him on scholarship. We thought he was done with football. He came to me during two-a-days and asked if he could come back. We welcomed him back out and he has been a pleasant surprise. He caught a touchdown against Alabama last year and he has great hands. The players respect him for what he does. It is amazing that the two slot receivers that we will have are walk-ons, he and Sheldon Morris. It is just another example of what this team has been made of the past three and a half years. Somebody has always got the job done to get us to 25-17, which is our record for the last three and a half years.
Q: Talk about how your coaching staff is coming along.
A: We the coaches, pride ourselves in being organized. At one point in the game, we had 12 men on the field against LSU. Fortunately, we knew to call time out. We called it when we were on defense because one of our defensive lineman did not come out when he should have. It goes back to our game preparation. We knew what to do in that situation. It showed us that the coaches really understand each other because they have been together for so long. That situation could have been a critical mistake. Taking the penalty would have put them in field goal position. It has made all of us a little grey-headed these past eight games. It seems every game we are in goes down to the last two minutes. We believe that our players can win. When you go back and look at this game, you would like to say that you won it 35-7. But I think our older players and our younger players learn more from winning a game like this than they do running away with one, but I would like to run away with one sooner then later.
