Troy Football Press Conference Transcript & Video -- Tennessee Game

Troy Head Coach Larry Blakeney (Oct. 29, 2012)

Opening Statement
“I talked to the team last night and I told them they just experience the proverbial trap game and that we're not good enough to think about being trapped. Coming into the game, a 1-6 FAU team had beaten us one time in their history out of nine and they had won one game and just lost in double overtime to South Alabama, so immediately our guys mark up 21 for us. The humanness of this particular thing is hard to overcome no matter how good a people you are and we've got kids that care and want to win and do everything they can. Sometimes you'll be a little bit flat or maybe uninspired maybe not quite to 100 percent inspired and I'm not even sure it was that.

We got down there and it seemed like a 100 mph wind blowing one way, we had to deal with that. The other team has to deal with that too, but we lose the toss which puts them kicking with the wind and if you'll notice every point was scored with the wind with the exception of the last drive after we took the lead. The wind then sort of laid down, but you've got to give credit to your opponent. They were disciplined, they had very few penalties and they were hard to convert on from a defensive posture. We were not good on third down on offense and we certainly gave up some third downs on defense. Their guy, Wilbert, was exactly what I said last week. He reminded me of the guy from FIU, big tall, rangy guy that hits what he's throwing at. I thought our kids really tried hard and we did everything we could do. Our best defensive lineman and our most experienced corner both missed the game with injuries and I'm not even sure who else.

But, all that's just a bunch of excuses and I don't know of anything else to do except get ready for Tennessee. By the way they are an SEC team and they are pretty good. If you let those three or four guys that they got on their offense and their kicking game get a hold of the ball you're going to have problems. Quarterback is good enough and their defensive guys look like an SEC team and they're good. We'll have to find a way to attack them and find a way to defend them and we cannot kick it to either one of those guys. We'll try to have a plan, which I promised the team last night. We'll try to control them in all three phases and we'll have a plan to win. It's not a plan to go look good losing close. If it was I promise you I'd burn more clock and burn 40 every time we had it. But that's not how we play and that's not how we are successful to get wins and that's not what we will do. We play the early game, the SEC game of the week at 11 a.m. central, so I hope we don't get any remnants of the storm but we'll have to deal with the elements.

On motivating the team after a loss for a team like Tennessee
There are certainly some points I can bring out and some corrections we can make. There are observations by others that will certainly be evident and most of the time the frame of mind is a little bit better. If we're going to do what we would like to do we better get some brow. Our coaches coach hard and we try to give them the plan to make sure they understand the circumstances. No matter how hard I preached last week, it didn't matter. I knew they were 1-6 and I knew the players would treat it that way.

On now looking to a bowl game after the chances of a conference championship were diminished
There's one undefeated team in the league and we're at three losses. So we're trying to get to six at any way we can. With Tennessee, Navy, Arkansas State and Middle Tennessee left, I wouldn't have picked those four; I would have picked somebody else if I had a choice. Going back to the schedule, it's hard. It's local but it is hard. Not to make any excuses again but one of the top three, four or five teams that a head coach would not schedule ever is Navy and we're about to get them for two in a row. Our people love it; we're bringing in the Marines, probably bringing in a few submarines and we going to fly over and salute, but Navy is coming to town and they will be in the wishbone. But let's take care of Tennessee first, I've known Derek Dooley a long time and he's worked his way to a point where he's probably got one of the best football jobs in America.

Troy University Athletics

Troy Football Press Conference Transcript & Video -- Tennessee Game

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