WMU vs. UMass Post-Game Quotes
Western Michigan Quotes
Head Coach Bill Cubit
Opening Statement:
"Well offensively I think we played as clean as we've ever played. My biggest concern today was just playing a clean game and I thought we did that. We scored a lot of points and we held them. That 82-yard punt in the beginning was a big change for us, that was good. We have a couple kids banged up that we have to try and get back. A lot of guys that did get in today haven't played a lot of football yet because of injuries. Defensively I was really pleased. Overall a great win."
On using this game to get the season back on track:
"The biggest thing to me was asking them where do they want this season to go. You have to make a choice. There really isn't an option right now. You go in there and play all of the teams that we played in the beginning and there were a lot of misses and the board was 0 - 1. Our kids have to understand that we can't continue like that."
On the game plan today and Tyler's comfort:
"That's what we tried to do today. We just tried to get him really comfortable. Once he feels comfortable he's pretty good. You're talking about a guy who in four years is only playing in his third game. Its hard, it really is. We want to give him good easy throws."
Senior Quarterback Tyler Van Tubbergen
On his rhythm and comfort in today's game:
"It definitely helped feeling more comfortable today. Trying to stay out of negative plays on the first down makes it a lot easier to drive the ball. I just tried to keep the defense off of me and I think that helped us make those plays that we needed."
Senior Running back Antoin Scriven
On his offensive plays today:
"Whenever my number gets called I just go out and try and do the best I can. I go out there and give my best effort. I believe we as running backs want to get more involved and to help out our team. I really think we did that today."
Senior Defensive end Freddie Bishop
On defensive performance today:
"As a whole we try to go back to our basic defense and do a lot of movements on the line. That's what we really focused on this week and it helped us put the pressure on them."
UMass Quotes
Head Coach Charley Molnar
Opening Statement:
I'm very disappointed, I don't feel like they made any strides today as a football team. I think our special teams played OK. Offense and defense, if anything we took a step backwards.
What do you tell the guys after a game like that?
I feel really bad for the seniors, because if I was a senior here and I was sitting in that room, I wouldn't want to think that the coaches were A) Looking ahead to next year or B) that their teammates were tanking on them. I would want them to understand that, we're all fighting for them. We're all doing our best, we're trying to win football games right now. We have a bye week and when we come back; it starts our second season. We just played the best the MAC has to offer these past few weeks between Ohio and Western Michigan. That's the best. When we sit there on that plane they're going to say, "Well, we could have done this," or "If we did tha,t who knows how the game would have turned out?" Well, we're going to come back and try to eliminate those "would've," "could've," and go out there to win the next six games that we play. And certainly, are guys knows that they can compete in this league.
Can you talk about the kick-off they recovered?
They were squib kicking because they were trying to kick the ball. Our guy just turned his back and started running back and the ball just hit him. It was a lucky coincidence and it all worked out for them, but bad for us. They already had momentum on their side, and as you look across the field their a bigger faster football team then we are and a lot more experienced. We needed everything to go our way and already at that point you could feel momentum over on their side. When that happened it really just opened up the flood gates.
I knew that Western Michigan was good. There was no doubt in my mind. There were no surprises in me from what I seen from across the field. I thought our guys would have been more competitive. We had the plays to make it offensively at the beginning of the game, and we didn't do it. We didn't get the job done.
I thought the effort was there. Something I thought we did well earlier in the year was tackling. It seems like our tackling has fallen off and its always premature to talk about what went wrong until you look at the film but just at first glance as I stood there and watched. We did not tackle the same way that we tackled early in the year.
I don't think it was the environment, we have to play are A game and we did not play are A game today, there was no way that we did. We had chances to put momentum on our side, we had pays to make and guys didn't make the plays.
