Here are some of head coach [B]Joker Phillips’ comments[/B] from UK football’s weekly press conference:
COACH PHILLIPS: My wife told me that there would be a day that I’d have to face you guys when I wasn’t undefeated and I’ve been using that line … our injury report, (Nick) Melillo will try but is probably doubtful. Yesterday tried to go a little bit but still hampered by his ankle. has a back, but should be okay. Hurt yesterday during a drill. (Jacob) Dufrene has a quad which is from last week, should practice by Tuesday. (Stuart) Hines should be fine. Could have probably (practiced) yesterday but didn’t. We’ll hold him out until tomorrow, see how he looks. (Donte) Rumph has an ankle, should be fine, and Winston Guy has an ankle and should be fine.
Just looking at the tape, I really liked our effort (against Florida). We were trying to be physical and were physical at times. The disappointing thing was the penalties. We had seven penalties from 50 yards, five of those on defense, and that can’t happen when you’re going on the road. They weren’t hustle penalties is the discouraging thing. Hustle penalties are personal fouls when you’re going through the whistle. You might have a pass interference when you’re hustling to the ball. Our penalties were dumb penalties; lining up offsides, 12 guys in the huddle, two personal fouls which was retaliating to things that our opponents did. So those were discouraging things, the seven penalties.
Turnovers, two turnovers, turnover in the red zone, turnover for a touchdown, which was about 14 points.
Tackling, we talked about that last night with some of you guys. Our tackling, we’re not tackling with our feet, we’re not tackling with our face, we’re not tackling with our eyes. And then a couple of drops that we had on offense. Those are discouraging things.
But we’ve got another huge challenge. Got opportunity No. 5 that’s guaranteed to you, which is we go to Ole Miss. Another challenge, like I say, offensively those guys are averaging–if you look at statistics for both teams, they’re about even. They’re averaging about 36 points a game offensively. Third leading rushing team in this league. They’ve got a dual quarterback (Jeremiah Masoli) which we’ve had problems with in the past, and we’ve got to be able to go through our reads and also get people on the ground.
They have a really good rusher in Brandon Bolden, who’s averaging about 7.7 yards a carry, which is a lot. Defensively they have the leading tackler in the league (Jonathan Cornell). They lost probably their best defender, the defensive end, (Kentrell) Lockett, but No. 90, (Gerald) Rivers, who we tried to recruit a few years ago, will be his replacement, and he’s a good player.
And then the special forces, special teams, they returned a punt (for a touchdown) this week in special teams, really helped them win this game this week. So another challenge for us. We’ve got to stay focused. We can’t be walking around here (despondent). At 2 and 0 I pulled our team together on Sunday, and it felt like we were 0 and 2. I don’t know why, it just — just the feeling around the whole football team, I don’t know if it was hearing stuff from out in the public or what, but it felt like we were 0 and 2, and I pulled our team together and told them, hey, we are 2 and 0, okay? We’re 2 and 0, let’s act like we’re 2 and 0. Let’s get some bounce in our step, continue to forge ahead.
And same thing now; we’re 3 and 1. We’re 3 and 1. We’ve still got an opportunity to have a great season, do something special, but we can’t do anything special if we don’t take care of business and go down there and come away with a victory. Any questions?
Q. On the players getting over the loss.
COACH PHILLIPS: I think they’re over it. I feel like they’re over it. Kids get over it quicker than coaches. That’s the other thing … it lasts a little bit longer for coaches, a lot longer actually than it does for players. But as soon as you touch down in Lexington, the phones are starting to blast, the headsets, they’re listening to Nelly and Kanye West. Coaches don’t want to hear — we turn our phones off. We definitely don’t want to hear Nelly and those guys (laughter.) They get over it a little quicker than we do. But there’s some who were still hurting when we touched down.
But this team is a confident team, there’s no question about that. The things that we’ve put them through in the off-season, it’s given them confidence.
[URL=”http://www.ukathletics.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/092710aaa.html”]Complete Set of Quotes from UKAthletics.com[/URL]
