Weekly Press Luncheon Quotes
September 12, 2005 | Football
Sept. 12, 2005
GREENVILLE, N.C. - East Carolina University head football coach Skip Holtz addressed members of the media prior to this week's game against Wake Forest. The following are selected comments:
Gary Freeman On Gift To The Red Cross"
"The players as a whole wanted to help out a fellow Conference USA member after seeing what has happened to Tulane and its residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. As a team we wanted to help and figured that giving this money ($2,000) was the best thing for helping out all the families involved.
"We think we have it hard going to practice every day but those guys are going through a lot. They are missing school but they still have to concentrate on playing football. We thought what ever little thing we could do to help them out we would try to do, so we thought we could at least raise a little money and let them know we care coming from East Carolina."
Skip Holtz On Players Donating To Red Cross:
"This donation speaks volumes about theses players. To pull money out of their own pockets and raise money is something remarkable. It speaks volumes for the leadership we have on this team. I've said in the past how impressed I've been with the senior leadership and the initiative role they've taken to lead this football team. Its things like this that really stand out as huge positive for this class. So I congratulate them for their effort and for their contribution to the Red Cross."
On The Off Week:
"We had an extremely physical week last week. We probably went against each other for and hour to an hour and fifteen minutes every day. We had goal line scrimmages, we had two-minute-scrimmages and went against each other a lot to get good on good and get that game like speed. It was a very productive week for us last week. We went back to the drawing board and instead of saying we are going to take two weeks getting ready for Wake Forrest we really said we are going to take this week and try and concentrate on us and try and improve our football team and then next week we'll get into Wake in a typical game week fashion."
On Wake's Team:
"I think coach (Jim) Grobe has done a great job at Wake Forrest. We have a heck of a challenge ahead of us right now. You look at Wake Forrest and they are 0-2, but look who they lost too. Last week they lose to Nebraska 31-3 and Nebraska scores 21 points on defense. That's not something that is going to happen every week. So really if you look at the game it was a 10-3 football game if you take those 21 points out of the mix that Nebraska scored on defense.
"Everybody talks about how they lost to Vanderbilt and then Vanderbilt comes back and beats Arkansas. Having the opportunity to play Vanderbilt the last two years, I think those are two very similar programs that from a tradition standpoint have more or less been at the bottom of their leagues, but are both improving tremendously and I think Wake Forrest has a heck of a football team."
On Wake's Defense:
"Their strength comes from their front four. I think they have a couple of NFL prospects on their front line right now and their linebacking core is very good. They are young but very solid. I think their corners are the other part of the real strength of the defense. That gives them the ability to turn and load the box.
On Wake's Offense:
"Offensively I think they represent a lot of what coach Grobe is all about. They are tough, hard nosed and they are a physical football team who wants to run the football. They're not overly huge up front but they are very quick. They run a lot of zone schemes, are a very physical group on their front line and they have some tremendous tailbacks. I think two or three of the best players on that entire football team are probably sitting at that tailback position.
"There aren't too many schools that can suspend their starting tail back and then have their back-up run for 250 plus yards in the opening game. Overall I think they are a well-rounded and good football team."
On Playing On The Road:
"When you play on the road you have to prepare a team for what they are walking into. You have crowd noise that is going to be more of an issue than it is at home. You've got to play great defense, you got to play great special teams and you really have to play together. You need to have a `foxhole mentality' that it's the 80 guys that are getting on the bus with verses everybody else. You have to cheer each other on, you have to complement each other. The offense has got to be verbal with the defense and the defense has got to be verbal with the offense.
"The problem so many times when you play on the road is when adversity hits and you are going up hill you don't have the support like you do at home. The crowd that we had at the Duke game was awesome. They were into it, they were loud and they were vocal."
On Winning The Season Opener:
"We take nothing for granted sitting here at 1-0. It was great to win but it was great to have the open date to really go back and have an opportunity to study ourselves and see the mistakes you made and try to improve on them. They say the most progress you make during a football season is from that first game to the second game. Hopefully with that open date we can make huge gains because we made an awful lot of mistakes in that opener.
"We were just very fortunate to come away with a victory. We understand where we are, we understand what we need to do to get there and we still have a pretty big mountain to climb because we are a long way from arriving where we want to be."
"We're in the process right now of trying to climb out of the cellar we've taken one step that's all we've done. If we can keep this blue collar approach going and go to work the way this team has been doing all season I think we will have the chance to be competitive as we get through the season."
Looking Back At The Duke Game:
"I felt during the course of the game we were physically being manhandled up front, but when you went back and watched the film it was one guy here and one guy there. On an offensive line you can have four guys that make great blocks and one guy that goes the wrong way and somebody is free in your backfield and everybody goes `boy they're not very good up front. If we can get that one guy shored up and get those five guys working as one we should be able to move the ball.
