Oklahoma State University Athletics
OSU vs. Arizona Postgame Quotes
September 08, 2011 | Cowboy Football
Sept. 8, 2011
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Oklahoma State Postgame Quotes vs. Arizona
Boone Pickens Stadium - Stillwater, Okla. - Sept. 8, 2011
Oklahoma State Head Coach Mike Gundy
Opening statement
"It was a good win for us. I was disappointed in myself and our coaching staff. We allowed our players to be undisciplined with penalties with the cuts and the chop blocks. I told the team after the game that I am really unsure, myself, of what that rule is and we will identify what the problem is and we'll get it cleaned up. We had way too many penalties. To have success and be a good football program, you can't have too many yards against you from a penalty standpoint. Other than the fake punt, we were terrible in the kicking game. Our coverage units were good, obviously, because Quinn kicked it deep, but we had two, or maybe three penalties, so that's not like us. We took ourselves out of our return game with our penalties. We took ourselves out of 60 or 70 and maybe more yards on offense because we backed ourselves up and put our quarterback in long yardage. It's a good win. There were guys that made a bunch of plays. Obviously, we threw the ball well. Blackmon made his plays. Joe made his plays. Jeremy made his plays. Quinn Sharp ran well, which he needed to get out of bounds and not take that last hit. The defense really played well. I wanted to take out the offensive part of the penalties. I'm disappointed in myself and the staff for not being better prepared, but our defense did a nice job and played well. We got beat on a couple of stutter moves, but for the most part we were in the right spot. I thought we tackled well again. We really got guys down that were in space. Their quarterback is a good player. He moves around and makes plays and he's hard to get your hands on. You can get pressure on him and run by him and he slips up underneath you and he makes plays on the move. It was a good win for us. Obviously we were able to limit their rushes for 41 yards, so it's good we could stop the run. We have work ahead of us and we've got to become a better fundamental football team and that's the responsibility of myself and our coaches."
On how Todd Monken has performed thus far
"Todd's doing fine and without reviewing the tape I don't know how many drives, I'm going to guess three or four, were stopped by dumb penalties and so you only get approximately 14 a game. If you take three or four away with a dumb penalty now you're down to 10 and we scored five touchdowns. Whatever those percentages are, we scored half the time. We have to do a better job of getting guys in the right place and not penalizing ourselves and knocking us out."
On Brandon Weeden's performance
"Well, I thought he made a lot of good decisions and he didn't force the ball. He threw one pick and threw the ball behind him. There were three or four times were the guy wasn't there and he just threw the ball away. That's what he has to do. As much as we throw the ball and as many shots as we take down the field. We want to do that, we want to be aggressive; we have players who can go get it. It's ok if its covered to throw it away and it be second and 10. He did a much better job of that tonight."
On keeping Arizona out of the end,zone for most of the game
"It does. As you know, you'd like to stop them and not give up so many yards. They're pretty good on offense. They have a good scheme and their quarterback's experienced. He doesn't make a lot of mistakes. I'm sure they that they wish they had the big receiver with them. The guy that really helped them on third downs and inside the 10-yard line, but I was proud of our guys for the fourth down stop. Sometimes that's part of it. You can give a little bit. We have to improve on our offense. We're not the finished product by any means."
Oklahoma State Punter Quinn Sharp
On the fake punt
"The way they attacked our fronts it was really open on that side just because they brought those two guys off the corner. And it was a really nice design. Cooper (Bassett) got a really nice block out on the edge."
"I was actually surprised because we haven't run a fake here in a while. It was something we had practiced. I was anxious to do it but at the same time you're nervous because you want to get it done and you want to get to the sticks and get the first down. And get the offense back out there and give them another chance to get it in the end zone."
On Coach Gundy wanting him to run out of bounds
"I agree with Coach Gundy. But I thought the guy was going for my knees. So I didn't really want to take a helmet to the kneecap. So I felt like at that moment that's why I lowered my shoulder and tried to nudge him off."
Offesnive Coordinator Todd Monken
On Joseph Randle
"He is a great player. That's the case. It's really nothing more than just letting him go. It's his second year in this offense and I know we've changed some things but he's very comfortable. He's just a really good football player so we would expect him to have great nights. He's had two tremendous weeks."
On the offense "losing steam"
"I don't think our guys lost steam. You have three good drives then Brandon trips. That's not going to help you much. The very next drive we moved it out from the five and moved it up to the 30, 35 or 40 and just couldn't move it from there. Then the next drive we get drove it all the way down there and we got a penalty then we miss the field goal. So really we had six drives and the only one we really stopped ourselves was the one started at the five and when Brandon tripped. The reality was it was a good football team and it was unfair to think we were going to score every time we had it and move it the length of the field."
Defensive Coordinator Bill Young
"We had a turnover in one of those situations like that and we got a fourth down stop. That really helped us. It got their defense back on the field. I think they had to be getting tired because we were throwing the ball so much. That was our goal. Although we wanted to get more turnovers than we got."
On Alex Elkins
"He just played so well. He has a great attitude on the boundary. He's a great guy to be around. He gets excited. He got dinged a little bit but he's a tough kid."
On Daytawion Lowe
"He stepped up big time tonight. I don't know how many tackles he had tonight but he had a bunch of them. He played a lot of snaps. We rotate him down in our nickel back situation so he's a real versatile guy for us."
Wide Receiver Justin Blackmon
On penalties
"There were a few penalties that stopped the drive and were against us. You can't do much about it except take the field and go on with the next play."
On touchdowns
"Weeden just throws a good ball. He knows where to put it where the defender can't get to it and only the receiver can catch the ball. He has a good way of throwing that ball."
On the difference in the offense from this time last year
"I'd say we're growing and the more we take the field the better we're going to get. Hopefully, next week we're better than this week. And it goes on from there. I think we're getting a lot more people involved. Last year it was like Kendall and Blackmon and Brandon. This year we've got Joe and Jeremy in the backfield, you got Hubert and Josh in the other side with Tracy on this side and Mike Harrison making plays."
Defensive Tackle Nigel Nicholas
"Defense played pretty good overall but we did have a couple of mistakes that we can clean up. But overall we did pretty good."
"The sack felt pretty good. As a defensive lineman a sack is the best thing that can happen to you. My eyes were pretty big when I got free. I just hit him and it felt good."
Arizona Head Coach Mike Stoops
Opening statement
"That was a tough night in a lot of ways. Oklahoma State, I knew they were better. I think they're a much better team, a more complete team, this year than they were a year ago. We knew we were really going to have to play well tonight. Our inability to run the football, offensively, just leads to kind of a seven-on-seven game, and until we move the ball more effectively, we can't be a complete football team. We only scored 14 points, so we know we have to find a way to run the football better. Their ability to run the football and throw it - they're as good a back, as good a quarterback, as good a receiver as I've seen in a long time. This is a team, Oklahoma State will contend. I thought our kids fought the way through, though. At 21-0, they got the fake punt. I thought they tackled our guy, but that's just me. That one play isn't going to change the outcome of that game, but that was a chance for us to put some pressure on them and they made the play. They switched the momentum of the game in that one play and that's what the kid did. After that, we were kind of hanging on for dear life. The fourth quarter, we sold out on the blitz, and they snuck the back down the middle. That was an error on our part. We were just getting desperate at that time. They knew we would be selling out, so I thought it was a great call on their part to get him the ball. That was our last gasp and it was over after that."
On if he thought it would be difficult to run the ball
"Not that tough. Until we run the football better, it's going to be hard to move forward the way we want to. We have to commit to that. Some of it's personnel, some of it's scheme, some of it's commitment, getting players to do better, and that's coaching."
On if he will change personnel to try to improve the run game
"No. Keola (Antolin) is our No. 1 guy. We have to block for him."
On Brandon Weeden
"He's pretty amazing. He threw the ball on some third downs through some pretty tight windows. He's pretty special. That's a big, physical team, and you can tell they've made the step. They're not a good program, they're turning into a great one. They're going to win a bunch of games this year. I know the top of the Big 12 looks awful strong, but they'll be there. I think defensively, they're better and a little more physical. For the most part, I thought we protected the quarterback. You have to score points against a team like this. Our inability to score more than 14 points is going to be tough because you're not going to be able to hold these guys down forever."
Arizona Quarterback Nick Foles
On issues running the ball
"You've got to be able to run the ball. We have running backs capable. We're very capable of running the ball. We're going to figure it out. We're going to figure out how to run the ball. This was a good test and Oklahoma State's a good team, but I have confidence in my guys. We fought hard, I thought we fought to the end and never gave up. We will come back together. We have a long week this week before we play Stanford. We need to figure out how to run the ball, we need to get the ball in their hands and that'll open up the passing game even more. I feel confident in our passing game. We just need to get the running game going, and we will."
On being down 21-0 so quick and if it changed the gameplan
"No, I think you stick with your scheme. The coaches felt confident and let me pass the ball. You know, we have running backs and we need to be able to run the ball. I think we stayed with how we play. We moved the ball on them. We had a fumble. We had a couple bad breaks and we had some penalties that put us in bad situations that were unforced penalties and that's something we've got to clean up. You can't be successful every week if you're making mistakes like that. We can't. Some teams can, but we're not capable of that. We've got to be a lot better than that. We've got to be a lot more disciplined. We'll work on it. We'll get it right."
Arizona Linebacker Paul Vassallo
On being down 21-0 and if the defense made changes to stay in the game
"No changes. We just started playing our defense. I really don't know what it was to get down 21-0 like that, what we did wrong, we'll have to look at it. But, we didn't have any miracle calls. We didn't change anything in our scheme. We just executed better than they did for those 5 series and tried to give ourselves a chance."
On this game being good preparation for the rest of the schedule
"I don't know if there are any consolation prizes, but definitely playing good competition, you know what to expect and how to prepare and how to execute. I think we need to take those five drives and really see what we did and just learn from that and just make sure we do that more often than not."
