Texas Tech at Ole Miss Postgame Quotes

Sept. 27, 2003

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Automatic: Nichols kicks his way into the Ole Miss record book

TEXAS TECH POSTGAME QUOTES
HEAD COACH MIKE LEACH
"Tonight we made some mistakes on special teams, defense and offense. I am not surprised (at the stats), but I certainly did not expect us to have those numbers. To do that, you have to have enough plays and enough long plays from bad field position."

"I am disappointed with the turnovers. But, you have to overcome that and we did that. Ole Miss is a quality program, and you have to give them credit for creating the turnovers. I thought our players stayed pretty focused. We knew we could still make things happen and that we would have some more opportunities. We kept moving the ball well and we felt that we could continue to do that and create those opportunities."

"You want to have all your non-conference games at home and get young kids in the game. Three of our four non-conference games were against teams that were bowl teams last year and will be this year. Any time you get a win like this, when you have the opportunity to win at a place like this, it is a good learning experience. Ole Miss is a nice place and I'd like to vacation here. But I did not like having to play here. But it was a good win for our team."

B.J. SYMONS (Sr., QB)
(On breaking his passing record set last week against N.C. State) "It feels really good. Last week it was a record in a loss, so for it to happen in a win makes me feel like I actually contributed something. This is the best day of my life by far."

(On if he felt a momentum change in the third quarter) "I was never worried because our offense was just hurting ourselves. We had only punted two times I believe, but the turnovers had killed us. I just tried to stay focused and confident and hoped it would rub off on my team. We were stopping ourselves."

(On if he thought he would throw for more than 660 yards) "Probably not. It doesn't surprise me that we did with the receiving corps and offensive line that we have. I guess it's not surprising that we were able to come in and throw for 660 yards, but it wasn't something I expected."

(On remaining confident) "I just try to remain confident and hope that it rubs off on my teammates. It did tonight. I was always confident, and I felt very comfortable throwing the ball out there."

ADELL DUCKETT (Jr., DE)
(On facing Ole Miss and Eli Manning) "They had a good scheme and a good quarterback. He hit us for several big plays. He really picked on our corners tonight. It just came down to who made the plays in the fourth quarter."

(On momentum shifts in the game)
"Turnovers shift the momentum. It felt like Ole Miss had the momentum the whole game. It took 60 minutes to win the game tonight. I feel good to have been a part of this game. They had the crowd and the noise. They played good football, and we played good football. We had to play four quarters to win."

(On getting the win in the fourth quarter with defense)
"You just have to believe. It's a four-quarter game, and we have been struggling to put our defense together for four quarters. We made the stops when it counted. We have all the faith in the world in our offense."

OLE MISS POSTGAME QUOTES

HEAD COACH David Cutcliffe
"I've never been involved in something quite like that. I've been involved in some wild games, but this was certainly a game with wild and significant plays. One thing I can point out as to why we didn't come out a winner, obviously we didn't make the plays in critical situations. You can't point to anything other than that. We played extremely hard, and all the players competed from start to finish. We just didn't make the plays we needed to make to win."

On Manning's final interception:
"He just underthrew the ball. I don't know if he had pressure. I was watching the coverage. I just know he underthrew the ball."

On struggling in the red zone:
"You never expect difficulty. Football does get harder down there. Coverage gets tighter. Tonight was just a combination of things. We had a touchdown called back. We had little plays where penetration suddenly occurred and hurt us. There isn't any one thing I can point to."

On the six field goals:
"Most of the time I believe in putting points on the board. In some situations, when the other team's offense is playing as well as theirs, sometime you consider going for it on fourth down. But tonight it never felt right. There was no one particular reason to do it tonight. You can always look back and second guess yourself, but I don't tend to do that."

On stopping the Texas Tech offense:
"We knew it was going to be extremely important to tackle them and prevent yards after catch. We didn't do that as well as we would like. We gave up chunks of big yardage. You can't afford to do that to any team."

Eli Manning (Sr., QB)
On scoring 45 points in a loss:
"We should have scored more than 45. You can't play a game and kick six field goals. We were in the red zone so many times, and didn't put the ball in the end zone. That's what we had to do as an offense. I had a chance on the interception in the first half when our receiver was wide open in the flat. I missed him, forced the ball, and I can't do that. Besides that, we can't have that many chances down there, and not score a touchdown. We need to get a lot better at that."

On the fourth down decisions:
"I think we did a good job of kicking field goals when we had to. Those points are very important. We made the right decisions. I never question Coach Cutcliffe's decisions on that."

On being frustrated:
"The whole team is frustrated. Nobody likes losing. Nobody likes playing hard and not coming out with a win. As an offense, we just have to get touchdowns. We can't settle for field goals. It's great to have a kicker like Jonathon Nichols, who's going to put them in. But we have to rely on our offense to get the ball in the end zone."

On the double-digit, fourth-quarter lead:
"We felt good about our offense. I thought we were clicking and moving the ball well. I never thought that the game was out of reach for them. I knew what kind of offense they had. They had been moving the ball well. They just had a couple of turnovers that stopped their drives. I knew it was going to take a lot more scoring, and it was going to be a shootout. We fell short. We didn't score touchdowns when we need them."

Mike Espy (So., WR)
On the game
"This is one of the best games that I've played individually, but we lost, so I feel bad. We wanted to beat Texas Tech, because they beat us last year."

Confidence going into next week
"This has to give the offense confidence. When we were stopped, most of the time it was because of something we did. As long as we practice hard and strive to get better, we should be alright."

Getting in the redzone and settling for a field goal
"I want us to score more touchdowns when we get in the redzone. As I said before, we stopped ourselves when we got in the redzone and didn't score a touchdown because of penalties. We can't do that if we want to win."

Jonathan Nichols (Jr., PK)
On setting the record for field goals in a game with six
"First I want to give credit to my offensive line, my snapper, and my holder. I just went out there and tried to do my job. On the two that got through the goalpost, somebody up there is on my side."

On getting field goals instead of touchdowns
"We needed to get touchdowns instead of field goals. Any time you can score points, it's important. It's a risk you take. If you don't make the play, you don't get any points."

On the streak of consecutive field goals
"I am thinking about it, but I try not to focus on it too much."

Travis Blanchard (Sr., WS)
On Texas Tech's passing game
"We thought we had a really good scheme, and we did. Texas Tech is a very good passing team. There are some things we've to get better at and we have to keep our minds focused on the rest of the season."

On the future of the season
"It's going to totally depend on the secondary. We've got to get a lot of things corrected. We had a lot of mental mistakes, and as long as we get those corrected we'll come out on top in the end."

Jesse Mitchell (Sr., DT)
On getting pressure on the quarterback
"Evidently we didn't pressure him enough. He was able to get the ball off, and anytime a quarterback is able to do that I feel like we didn't get enough pressure on him. Overall, we just didn't get it done."

On rebounding from the loss
"We have to go out, regroup, work hard and try to eliminate our mistakes. In the areas where we're having let downs we just have to pick it up, regroup and come back to play Ole Miss defense."

Kelvin Robinson (So., SS)
On the first half interception return for a touchdown
"It was all Charlie (Anderson). If Charlie wasn't going after the quarterback I probably wouldn't have gotten it. Since Charlie was chasing him I knew it was my time to try to make that break."

On the interception return
"Coop (Josh Cooper) threw that block for me and I knew I couldn't let the quarterback tackle me, so once he threw that block I knew I couldn't be denied."

On the defense
"We could have played better. We just have to eliminate the big plays."

The University of Mississippi Athletics

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