University of Houston Athletics
Houston vs. UAB Football Postgame Quotes
10/10/2008 12:00:00 AM | Football
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HOUSTON HEAD COACH Kevin Sumlin
On what they talked about during half time
"We talked at half-time about us and the schemes. We have to be a team that comes out and plays on the edge and we didn't do that early tonight. The way college football is now, you have to be ready to play emotionally or you will get beat. You see that every week."
On the team's performance
"The good thing that happened tonight was that we grew up as a team. Three weeks ago in that same situation we wouldn't have responded in the same way. The thing you can take from this is that emotionally there is no team good enough in football to roll your hat out and play."
On UAB
"UAB played a tough football game last week and lost by three and have some players too. They were a very good team this week, but their record doesn't reflect it. They have played in some big games like Tennessee and South Carolina.
They really took it to us in the first half and like anything else; you have to learn from that. As bad as the first half was, the second half was as good."
On the play of the defense
"Even though they put up big numbers in the first half, I think the defense kept us in the game. They only really gave up one little drive and that ended with a big play. I thought they played well as a unit. As a defense, they were physical. Joe Webb is a great player. He has been putting up 300 yards every game including up against some SEC teams. We weren't going to stop him, we just need to contain him and our defense played at that emotional level."
On sophomore quarterback Case Keenum and the errors during the first half
"He was a little bit off in the first half, but he is a good player and he just had to play his way out of it. (Case Keenum) leads the country in total yards. He had some dropped balls too in the first half. The entire team was just half a beat off. We had missed tackles and penalties. Those guys turned around and played well in the second half and it was good to see this team grow up."
SOPHOMORE QUARTERBACK Case Keenum
On what happened in the second half
"First half came off a little shaky there. We leaned on the defense hard and they played an incredible job tonight. They held them to twenty points in the first half and keep us in it. And the second half was a good second half, not taking away from UAB they came out and played hard. They came out more ready than we did."
On the biggest comeback in almost twenty years
"It's always fun to be a part of a comeback. I was talking to someone on the sideline and he said we should have flipped the halves there; we should have done what we did in the second half in the first half. You've got to give it to UAB they came out and played hard and got into us early and we weren't able to respond in the first half. We came out in the second half hard and were able to get some big stops on defense. A lot of the receivers made some big plays. Bryce made a lot of good scoring plays tonight.
On his seventh-straight game with 350 plus yards
"That's one thing that comes with the territory when you have receivers like we do. You can name off eight right now that can catch the ball. It is very nice to have receivers like that."
On winning the first game to Southern and then losing three-straight games
"After our preseason games we knew that our first four games were out of the way, and we started over at 0-0. Now we are 2-0 in conference. We decided that we were going to focus on the conference play. We have SMU next week and we are going to focus on them now."
On his first-half game
"I wasn't like myself there. There was little stuff here and there, but I wasn't there mentally and I didn't prepare mentally how I should have. I take full credit for not being ready to play. That is something I need to get better at."
On the mentality of the second-half
"The fans got into it and the sidelines were more pumped up. You could sense it when we came out. The fans were more into it and it was an incredible atmosphere when we started the third quarter."
FRESHMAN RUNNING BACK Bryce Beall
On his touchdown
"Coach called the rocket play he told me to be patient, he was going to show up and sure enough when I went up I saw a lot of Michael (Bloesch) ahead of me, he made a cut, he cut the guy down and I cut right off on him and I just took what I could. "
On the Cougars play in the second half
"We just came out of it came up on more energy, the first half it just seemed like we were dead and we weren't excited about everything. We came out against over the win against East Carolina we didn't come out with the same energy that we did then, and that second half we got together came out of it a lot easier."
On what the coaches said at halftime
"They really didn't say much, they know that we are going to do the same thing we did the first half the only thing we got to do is learn to execute so they didn't say much to us."
On what the team can improve on
"We create some bad situations for ourselves, we converted the third down situation, some of the things that put us in the bad situations and we have got to improve in the red zone, when we get down there we have got to be able to run it."
SENIOR DEFENSIVE END Phillip Hunt
On getting the win and facing a productive quarterback
"It feels good; we were able to put some pressure on him (Joe Webb). He is a big-time player, so we really wanted to get in his head early in the game and we were fortunate that we were able to do that. He is a great player and we did not want to allow him to beat us with his feet or his arm so we had to get pressure on him."
On the change between the first and second halves
"We just came out with more energy. It just seemed like that in the beginning of the game, the whole team came out flat. The bye week might have played a role in that, but for whatever reason we just were flat early on but were able to elevate our energy level in the second half."
On the offense's quick scoring in the second half, forcing them to play a lot of minutes
"We were happy with the production we were getting from the offense. We knew they would come along and be able to put up some points so we just had to keep getting after it and making stops."
On starting 2-0 in C-USA and evening their record at 3-3 overall
"Last week was a step in the right direction and we added to that today. Today was a good win over a solid UAB team, but we just need to keep things going and create a winning tradition here so we can make a run at the conference championship game."
UAB HEAD COACH NEIL CALLAWAY
On the game
"The first half score was 20-3, but really we had an opportunity to have a couple more touchdowns and couldn't get it done. Congratulations to Houston. They won the football game. It's all about us, about us making mistakes and not giving ourselves a chance to win. Again, hats off to Houston. They made the plays. We go back out the second half, and we make enough mistakes, and it obviously cost us the ballgame."
On the difference between the first and the second half
"We made a lot more mistakes in the second half. I don't think [Houston] changed up anything. No, they didn't do anything different in the second half."
On what you are going to do as a team from here
"We've got to get some self confidence. We are at a point here, where we have a lot of people doubting, but it all goes back to mistakes. There is no one mistake you blame for this, but bottom line we made too many mistakes in the second half."
