Weekly Press Luncheon Quotes
November 20, 2006 | Football
Nov. 20, 2006
GREENVILLE, N.C. - East Carolina University head football coach Skip Holtz addressed members of the media prior to this week's game against N.C. State. The following are selected comments:
On Saturday's Loss to Rice: "The Rice loss was probably one of the most difficult losses that I've been through. It was difficult for a number of reasons. When we went back and watched the film we had a tendency to beat ourselves up and second-guess every question, call and personnel decision we made. It is easy to do and it is kind of human nature to do when you lose a game. The goal that we were trying to accomplish was to go 1-0. The bottom line is we failed and we didn't get it done. I failed as a head coach, we failed as a team and we failed as an offense and a defense.
"The great thing about sports is the life lessons that it teaches you and that's what I talked to the team about yesterday. It teaches you to learn how to handle success. It teaches you to stay humble and hungry when things are going your way. It teaches you to keep things in perspective with where you are but maintain that hunger in trying to achieve success and trying to get to the top. It also teaches you a lot about dealing with failure and having to go through adversity. Either you can have a pity party for yourself, feel sorry and bow your head, keep your eyes to the ground and mope around or you can pick yourself up and brush yourself off. Stick your chin up and chest out, stand tall with what you are tying to do. This [loss] was hard and it hurt. It hurt with these players. I have never been involved with a team that sat down the next day and watched game film and cried. This was a very painful loss with this team because of what they wanted to accomplish, because of the hard work an effort they put into this season and how far they have come. They were not satisfied with six wins and they really wanted to have the opportunity to play for a conference championship. That made it a very difficult loss. This team has lost before and these seniors have lost before. The one thing that made this so difficult though is everything that was on the line with it.
"Now we have to push our chin up and our chest out and look at what we have to do to get ready for N.C. State. There have been a lot of positive things that have happened during the course of the year. Right now isn't the time to reflect back and look at what's been positive and what's been negative. The only thing we can do is to control what we can control which is us and what we do to get ready to play N.C. State."
On N.C. State:
"This going to be a challenge for us as a football team. When you watch them on film they are in every game. With the exception of last week's North Carolina game their previous five losses have all been by eight points or less. They have been involved in every game and they are a talented football team. They are very big upfront on offense. They are very physical and they look a lot like Virginia. Their offensive line is much more aggressive than Virginia's as a run blocking unit. Their two tailbacks are very talented and are great players. They are playmakers and they make a lot of things happen. They have five wide receivers that are really good which makes it difficult to defend them. Daniel Evans is doing a very nice job as quarterback and running their offense. On defense, their linebackers are their strength. They have three upperclassmen linebackers that are very active and are not giving up a lot of points. I believe they are giving up an average of 300 yards a game and when you look at their schedule that is pretty impressive. The man upfront is [DeMarcus Tyler] "Tank". He is as good as anybody we've played and we haven't seen many like him. A guy that is as big as he is and can move like him can be extremely disruptive to an offensive line, especially one that is tattered and torn walking into this thing like we are right now. Their secondary has the experience. Their safeties are large linebackers and they try and stop the run. They are an aggressive defensive team. We have a challenge not only with N.C. State being an in-state rival but we have to get these players to get their chins up and their chests out.
"For me it will be a little bit emotional because when I was eight to twelve years old I was always at Carter-Finley running up and down that hill. As far as the in-state rivalry it is huge. It is the closest school we play. We talked with the team about it. They know a lot of guys on this team and used to play with them in high school. There are some natural things with this being an in-state rival that are going to juice these players up and really get them focused. That's going to be helpful after coming off a loss like we did last week. For the coaches it is a big game. It is an opportunity to play an ACC team."
On Rice Loss Affecting N.C. State Game: "We can't let it. An emotional win and an emotional loss sometimes are hard to get out of your system. The pain and the hurt will be gone by game day. As you start getting into the preparation for everything, that game becomes farther and farther away and you get it behind you. The concern now is that we have to get it out of the way for preparation tonight. With Thanksgiving this week, we are changing our schedule a little bit. We will practice tonight and we have to go out there today with the focus to prepare for this game. You worry more about the preparation after an emotional loss than the game itself because by the following game it will be out. We spent a lot of time addressing it yesterday with our players. We spent two hours as a staff and talked about how to handle this. Coach Holland gave us some good ideas and gave us some good advice. We just had a round table discussion about how to overcome things like this and what do we need to do to get our team back this week. We have an unbelievable staff of coaches that have a lot of experience. They have been on some great staffs and have all handled it different ways. There were a lot of great ideas thrown out on the table and we made a lot of progress with how to handle it. Then we handled it as a team. More importantly, we tried to handle it in our individual meeting rooms. We wanted to give them [the players] a forum to speak and have the opportunity to voice some opinions. The main thing that I am looking for when we go out onto the field is to see if everybody is dragging and moping around or if people are vocal and upbeat. There should be a lot of emotion at practice. When that lingering feeling is still there it makes it a little more difficult to go through and prepare. The staff did a great job with the team before we went out on the field. As hard as it is we need to put this game behind us. It's going to linger a little bit but we are going to have to fight through that and get ready to play."
On Starting Running Back:
"It will be Brandon Fractious. Brandon Fractious and Dominique Lindsay will be the two tailbacks. We made the change because of what they were doing."
On Importance of N.C. State Game From a Program Standpoint: "It is big in recruiting. There is no doubt about it. When you are competing against the ACC schools it's difficult. Coach Holland has put together a schedule that has given us the opportunity to play the ACC and Big East schools. We are trying to build this program to be at that level. This would have huge implications in recruiting in-state."
On Implications of the Marshall vs. Southern Miss Game:
"If we want any shot at the conference title we have to be Marshall fans. We would love for Marshall to go down and beat Southern Miss. Then we would get into the conference championship through the back door instead of the front. That is not the way we wanted to get into it but at this point we just want to get there. There is nothing we can do about that right now but wear our green undershirts when we go play N.C. State. Hopefully we can find a way to win in Raleigh and Marshall can go down to Southern Miss and win."
